SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Art Green painting

Art in Chicago: Resisting Regionalism, Transforming Modernism

Curated by Robert Cozzolino, it's at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Some of the press about it:

"When it comes to aesthetic and creative movements, Chicago is often more closely connected with architecture and music than painting and sculpture. However, a new Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts exhibition — curated by a native of Chicago — aims to give a new look at the Second City as a place that inspired and produced trailblazing visual art."

''There's a real need for rethinking 20th-century art to include the whole country,'' said curator Robert Cozzolino.

''One of the unique characteristics of Chicago is there's always been a very pronounced effort to not be derivative, to not follow the status quo,'' he said. ''They insisted on following their own vision.''

Is that still true? Shouldn't it be? Hurray for Cozzolino. Get the show, Chicago!

Read about it and see images at:

here

here

here

or here

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Hey, I love this show if for naught else than for the subtitle. Doesn't it piss anyone off that it is not IN Chicago? Doesn't it make anyone excited that such a show exists? And what about that "not derivative" quotation in an artworld that seems ever more derivative, ever more "fashionably correct"?

Posted by: Mark Staff Brandl | March 12, 2006 12:27 PM

Yes, the Art in Chicago: Resisting Regionalism, Transforming Modernism should also be shown in Chicago. But it's too bad that the show doesn't encompass the vital anti-mainstream abstract tradition that was also developed in Chicago during the same period. That abstract tradition had lots in common with the imagists and some artists (like Schwartz, Ito, Rossi) could be situated in both abstract and imagist camps. As early as 1970, critic Dennis Adrian was the first to note the common root in Chicago imagist and abstract art as being formal, abstract, organic. He organized several " Chicago Style" exhibitions that mixed imagists with abstractionists. In the early 80s he broadened his thesis to include an new group of figure painters in his "The Other Tradition" show that traveled nationally for two years. In 1984, artists Richard Loving, Frank Piatek, and I organized a widely traveled show (through the Illinois Arts Council) "Abstract/Symbol/Image that again revealed the shared interests among many Chicago artists -- mostly painters. The phony history that divides the imagists from abstractionists in Chicago was largely a marketing gimmick that didn't fool artists. It's too bad that this new Chicago show continues the false history.

Posted by: William Conger | March 25, 2006 10:04 AM

Good points William! I agree. Don't forget other phoney histories as well --- especially the tendency nowadays to sever all connection between other art directions --- such as Neo-Con artists or Buzz Spector or even mine --- from those earlier in Chicago. I love your work, by the way.

Posted by: Mark Staff Brandl | March 26, 2006 12:28 PM

SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

What a wonderful exhibition! Bring it to Chicago.

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