A recent review by Roberta Smith in the NY Times (Sept. 22) caught my attention. In part, Ms. Smith wrote: "Some younger painters seem to be countering the strictures of Late Modernism by revisiting the early modernist cusp between abstraction and representation...where the figurative, the geometric, the spatial, and the visionary still remain tangled."

Smith's comment reminds me of the situation in Chicago art over thirty years ago. At that time the Chicago Imagist style was at its peak. Less recognized Chicago abstractionists were divided between mainstream formalists (via the Chicago Bauhaus and NY) and what might be called quasi-formal-allusionists. This latter group was actually larger than the former but since the work was idiosyncratic, aside from abstract intent, individuals often went unnoticed.