Note: I wrote the below before the turmoil of Art Chicago 2006 that still hasn’t completely played out at the time of this article’s posting. I hope everything works out, but I have to admit, I wasn’t planning to attend the opening night no matter when or where it takes place. Just too many memories….
Dave asked that we all put forth our best stuff this week, as Sharkforum is participating, due to the generosity of Tom Blackman, in Art Chicago. I thought for a moment, wondering what my best stuff might be, and with a cut of dread realized it is probably Nostalgia.
Last week I was a guest speaker for a undergraduate class at UIC. I was there to talk about the inner workings of museums. In introducing myself, I was appalled to hear myself say “I’ve been at the MCA probably longer than most of you have been on this earth.”
Of course I wasn’t appalled because I was exaggerating or anything like that. I was appalled because when I was ‘their age’ I would have squirmed to hear anyone saying such a thing. How old-fogey can you get. (Now that’s a term you don’t hear much these days.) How does saying such a thing do anything except point out the obvious while using a really really embarrassing cliché? But the truth of the matter is I have been around a while now, and yes, I remember the ‘old days.’ In the course of my speechifying and exhorting of the ten or twelve earnest young people, including a girl who brushed her hair during class, which of course catapulted me far enough back to realize, with a start, that my self-conscious, how-do-I-look, hairbrushing-in-public days were so long past as to be terrifying obscure to me, I even mentioned the old days of the art fair. Yes, the art fair, for it wasn’t always Art Chicago, having started out at the Chicago International Art Exposition. Tom Blackman’s Art Chicago was in fact the upstart, much like Nova is to Art Chicago, begun with great excitement and anticipation cheek-by-jowl with the Navy Pier’s CIAE, in a tent on a parcel of real estate on Ogden Slip that surely now sports at least one, maybe even two, sixty-story shiny condo highrises. For this class, interested as they were in the inner workings of museums, especially the one I work for, I pointed out that in the 1980s and well into the 1990s the MCA routinely scheduled its ‘best stuff’ in May, when the international art world came town for the Fair. (The late April dates being a function of the “new” incarnation of Art Chicago, returning to its roots to a tent as it did last year).
Dave asked that we all put forth our best stuff this week, as Sharkforum is participating, due to the generosity of Tom Blackman, in Art Chicago. I thought for a moment, wondering what my best stuff might be, and with a cut of dread realized it is probably Nostalgia.
Last week I was a guest speaker for a undergraduate class at UIC. I was there to talk about the inner workings of museums. In introducing myself, I was appalled to hear myself say “I’ve been at the MCA probably longer than most of you have been on this earth.”
Of course I wasn’t appalled because I was exaggerating or anything like that. I was appalled because when I was ‘their age’ I would have squirmed to hear anyone saying such a thing. How old-fogey can you get. (Now that’s a term you don’t hear much these days.) How does saying such a thing do anything except point out the obvious while using a really really embarrassing cliché? But the truth of the matter is I have been around a while now, and yes, I remember the ‘old days.’ In the course of my speechifying and exhorting of the ten or twelve earnest young people, including a girl who brushed her hair during class, which of course catapulted me far enough back to realize, with a start, that my self-conscious, how-do-I-look, hairbrushing-in-public days were so long past as to be terrifying obscure to me, I even mentioned the old days of the art fair. Yes, the art fair, for it wasn’t always Art Chicago, having started out at the Chicago International Art Exposition. Tom Blackman’s Art Chicago was in fact the upstart, much like Nova is to Art Chicago, begun with great excitement and anticipation cheek-by-jowl with the Navy Pier’s CIAE, in a tent on a parcel of real estate on Ogden Slip that surely now sports at least one, maybe even two, sixty-story shiny condo highrises. For this class, interested as they were in the inner workings of museums, especially the one I work for, I pointed out that in the 1980s and well into the 1990s the MCA routinely scheduled its ‘best stuff’ in May, when the international art world came town for the Fair. (The late April dates being a function of the “new” incarnation of Art Chicago, returning to its roots to a tent as it did last year).
It was glorious, as I’m sure you who were there remember and you who weren’t have heard a hundred times or more. Opening night of Art Expo at Navy Pier, before it was turned into the hell hole of a tourist attraction it currently is, was positively magical. It is not only I who waxes nostalgic for the ramshackle series of sheds and broken-down warehousing facilities that was the “old pier.” I’ve not heard a single person say, “Oh, it’s much better now. A tent in the middle of a park really is a more intriguing location.” You would walk arm-and-arm with your companion for the evening, undisturbed except by seagulls, your finery ruffled by the still chilly early May winds, past the ghosts of maritime shipping and the UIC which called the pier home in the 1960s. Or perhaps you didn’t even know about this history. You instead walked blissfully in some twilight zone of timelessness the length of derelict, abandoned structures, admiring the offerings of Mayor Byrne’s Mile of Sculpture, (which evolved eventually into Pierwalk, which is on its last leg too, and hasn’t been on the pier itself for years now) to enter into the Grand Ballroom, the one part of the pier that apparently resisted renovation into a lame mall reeking of cinabons and the grease from a hundred different deep fryers. After all the dereliction, it was a wonderland, the dome of the ballroom soaring magnificently overhead. If you looked closely, yes, the Grand Ballroom was in disrepair too, various holes letting in birds (and yes, rain) that swooped over the floor of the space which had been transformed into a maze of booths.
It was one of the first of the international art fairs, and it certainly transformed Chicago. Europeans who had never before been to the city were effusive in their praise for our town, and this was before the current Mayor Daley ‘beautified’ it with all the median plantings and wrought iron. I remember one German dealer (yes, that was in the old days when they were called dealers) expressing amazement that Chicago had so many trees. I realized later it was because he had only experienced America in the form of New York, which had and still has none. I remember walking past the Castelli booth and seeing Leo Castelli himself holding forth with various of Chicago’s collecting luminaries. There couldn’t have been anything more glorious that Leo Castelli feeling it was important for his legendary gallery to be represented at the Chicago art fair. I remembered Chicago’s legendary collectors, Joe Shapiro, Edwin Bergman, and Jerry Elliott, now all deceased, scooting from booth to booth with almost maniacal energy, so stimulated they were by the opportunity to see so much art, and so much of it very very good. Angela Flowers always brought museum-quality works by twentieth-century masters. Carl Solway Gallery, an outpost of incredible international art located in Cincinnati, would routinely mount amazing major works by Nam June Paik. And on and on.
And if during the gala opening night you ended up with two dates, you could leave one stuffing himself with shrimp while you snuck out of the ballroom into the magnificent night air, the sounds of Lake Michigan drowning out the art bustle not twenty yards away. Out at the end of the pier you could look to the east and see stars in the sky, and look to the west and see Chicago’s skyline, and the splendors of the night would juxtapose with the splendors of the art you'd seen to create a state of mind that made everything vital and alive and utterly memorable. The location was as important as the event. There was nothing like it, not in Basel, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or wherever art fairs sprang up. And that’s not nostalgia, but the truth.
Enough has been written about the importance of the art fair to the growth of Chicago’s art community. What hasn’t been explored, I think, is how the Chicago International Art Expo, Art Chicago, and the other incarnations of “the fair” changed the international art world. Would Basel Basel be the same art fair it is today? Perhaps. But Basel Miami probably wouldn’t. Would the New York Armory show draw collectors and curators from around the world as it has for the past five years or so? Probably not. New York for years thought mounting a huge international art fair was unnecessary, as the international art world routinely showed up there anyway, didn’t it? And is it too much to suggest that the explosion in the art market of the 1980s and the explosion of attendance at international biennales had something to do with the fact so many American, European, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, South American art world players got to know each other at those early Art Expos in America’s heartland?
We’ve all known Chicago’s Art Fair has been seriously ill for a number of years now. MCA pulled out of the benefit opening night a while ago now, and no longer programs with the opening night of the fair in mind. What seems important is not to lament that the good old days have passed, but to keep in mind what we are currently reaping from those good old days. A hugely expanded art community, a different profile for contemporary art in the minds of the larger community, and so many artists and galleries that it is impossible to know them all. But for me, I’ll float for a while in my nostalgia, and let others tell me of the news from the Mart and the City Suites Hotel on Belmont.
More later,
Lynne.
It was one of the first of the international art fairs, and it certainly transformed Chicago. Europeans who had never before been to the city were effusive in their praise for our town, and this was before the current Mayor Daley ‘beautified’ it with all the median plantings and wrought iron. I remember one German dealer (yes, that was in the old days when they were called dealers) expressing amazement that Chicago had so many trees. I realized later it was because he had only experienced America in the form of New York, which had and still has none. I remember walking past the Castelli booth and seeing Leo Castelli himself holding forth with various of Chicago’s collecting luminaries. There couldn’t have been anything more glorious that Leo Castelli feeling it was important for his legendary gallery to be represented at the Chicago art fair. I remembered Chicago’s legendary collectors, Joe Shapiro, Edwin Bergman, and Jerry Elliott, now all deceased, scooting from booth to booth with almost maniacal energy, so stimulated they were by the opportunity to see so much art, and so much of it very very good. Angela Flowers always brought museum-quality works by twentieth-century masters. Carl Solway Gallery, an outpost of incredible international art located in Cincinnati, would routinely mount amazing major works by Nam June Paik. And on and on.
And if during the gala opening night you ended up with two dates, you could leave one stuffing himself with shrimp while you snuck out of the ballroom into the magnificent night air, the sounds of Lake Michigan drowning out the art bustle not twenty yards away. Out at the end of the pier you could look to the east and see stars in the sky, and look to the west and see Chicago’s skyline, and the splendors of the night would juxtapose with the splendors of the art you'd seen to create a state of mind that made everything vital and alive and utterly memorable. The location was as important as the event. There was nothing like it, not in Basel, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or wherever art fairs sprang up. And that’s not nostalgia, but the truth.
Enough has been written about the importance of the art fair to the growth of Chicago’s art community. What hasn’t been explored, I think, is how the Chicago International Art Expo, Art Chicago, and the other incarnations of “the fair” changed the international art world. Would Basel Basel be the same art fair it is today? Perhaps. But Basel Miami probably wouldn’t. Would the New York Armory show draw collectors and curators from around the world as it has for the past five years or so? Probably not. New York for years thought mounting a huge international art fair was unnecessary, as the international art world routinely showed up there anyway, didn’t it? And is it too much to suggest that the explosion in the art market of the 1980s and the explosion of attendance at international biennales had something to do with the fact so many American, European, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, South American art world players got to know each other at those early Art Expos in America’s heartland?
We’ve all known Chicago’s Art Fair has been seriously ill for a number of years now. MCA pulled out of the benefit opening night a while ago now, and no longer programs with the opening night of the fair in mind. What seems important is not to lament that the good old days have passed, but to keep in mind what we are currently reaping from those good old days. A hugely expanded art community, a different profile for contemporary art in the minds of the larger community, and so many artists and galleries that it is impossible to know them all. But for me, I’ll float for a while in my nostalgia, and let others tell me of the news from the Mart and the City Suites Hotel on Belmont.
More later,
Lynne.
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