Anxious about Addition

Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

After reading through multiple reviews of architect Renzo Piano's extension, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art I have to say that I am somewhat anxious about how the addition to the Art Institute of Chicago will turn out. They were, at best, only slightly disparaging. You can read the reviews in New York Times here, Los Angeles Times here, and the New York Review of Books here. The picture above picture from the NY Times is the frontal view of the museum which illustrates one of the many problems cited, that is, the huge dull walls facing the street which gives the museum a hulking and monolithic feel. The palm tree-on-blue is actually are giant banners hung on scrims, presumably to disguise the weightiness of the exterior.

Considering that Piano's "Modern Wing" addition to the Art Institute of Chicago is opening in 2009, these lackluster reviews are probably causing more people then just this author some anxiety. However, I think that the pitfalls in LA will be avoided here in Chicago. To see the plans for the building click here. The frontal facade, facing Monroe St., will be sheer glass which allays concerns about a weighty and boring entry. The dull, hulking wall criticized in LA here will be turned to the Metra train line that bisects the museum and as such will be needed and appropriate.

This is not avant-garde or daring architecture, but that's alright. The proposed design is classical and elegant modernist architecture and as such is perfectly in step with both the collection and the institution. It would be odd for this respectable and historic institute to have a really radical addition. The Piano addition is essentially updating the language of the classical Beaux-Arts hall that is the original building of 1893. The Piano is likewise reserved, rectilinear, and displays the art in natural light. For modern art, this building seems to fit the bill both for the art and the institution, for a contemporary art museum Piano may have been too conservative for LA.

Check back for updates, time will tell as the building takes shape over the next few months.

Ed Ruscha at the Art Institute of Chicago

If you're not on the e-mail list for the events at the Art Institute of Chicago, I would suggest that you sign up. They are in the habit of bringing very important cultural figures in to talk, which is precisely what Ed Ruscha did last Friday In a here's-what-I've-been-think-lately style artist "lecture," Ruscha ruminated on everything from Muhammad Ali to Gertrude Stein to photography, the supposed subject of the lecture set to coincide with the opening of the exhibit Ed Ruscha and Photography. While he did not lay out his style shifts strictly chronologically as one attendee griped, it was much more interesting to hear his current thoughts on art and art history then to just drone about his influences with slides clicking in the background.

Ruscha began by saying that he has recently bought a Peter Schuyff painting and displaying a slide of it. Utilizing for the base of the image what Ruscha describes as "a thrift-store painting" of a still life of flowers, Schuyff layered over the flowers concentric rings of blue and red paint until it mostly obscured the image except for the center and the edges. Ruscha noted that the artist lives in Amsterdam and said he imagines this is what flowers may look like in a psychedelic state (i.e. tripping). After implying that the artist was on drugs, Ruscha seemed to soften his opinion by saying that once he saw it he had to have it. Ruscha then moved to the next slide which showed the display of the Schuyff: sitting on top of Ruscha's toilet, propped up by a Kleenex box with the tissue sprayed out of the top obscuring the painting. Ruscha said he liked this display and thought it appropriate to the image, complimenting its form. This prompted quite a bit of laughter.

Ruscha also recalled the first time that Leo Castelli showed him a painting by Roy Lichenstein of converse sneakers emerging from a yellow star burst shape. He recalls the encounter with the image to be like "having lemon juice flung in your eyes."

Aside from these and other side stories, Ruscha did talk about the influence photography has had on his work. He cited Walker Evans as a influence in terms of his straightforward and historical style, methods which certainly manifest themselves sometimes in Ruscha's work though usually nuanced with text additions. He also noted that Evans was the artist that made him appreciate the United States, a statement quite interesting in its implications. Ruscha also noted influence that film technique has had on his work, particularly his very famous Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1963, top image) and his Standard Station series (1966, below). Recalling a scene in a film, or many films, Ruscha noted how an approaching train would begin as a speck and then grow bigger as it approached until it eventually filled the screen with image and noise, an event Ruscha tried to adapt to two dimensions.


While it meandered in its topic, hearing Ruscha speak was quite interesting. He avoided talking about his most current work which was too bad, instead focusing his more well known work. Next speaking event is Robert Pinsky, another not to be missed.

Free February at Chicago Museums?

February was a sly month for the museum-going people of Chicago. The Shedd had a "discount week" in the middle of the month with free admission to their permanent exhibits (the net one to come in June). Meanwhile, the Field Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago were free the whole month of February, to little publicity. I only found out about the Field when a bus advertising it passed me about a week ago. The Art Institute was a little better, owing mainly to the publicity about the opening of the nationally traveling show Edward Hopper and the Chicago-only Watercolors by Winslow Homer usually included a side-note about the free month and the exhibits which are not free (tickets are now $20). One of Chicago's major assets in its bid for the Olympics are the cultural institutions that truly make the city world-class, institutions that I believe should be operated on a free basis as the national museums are in the UK and closer to home the art museums in Madison, WI. However, it's a shame that media outlets didn't play this benefit up, that Chicago would beat the coasts to free cultural access. I hope they try out the free month again to larger fanfare, open institutions will make London's 2012 Olympics notable I am sure, Chicago should follow suit and the media should take note.

Hirst's Gambit

I thought that I should link over my article from CulturalChicago.com about Damien Hirst to this site, in case someone might want to comment here also. My argument here is essentially that the skull functions as a business plan rather than an objet d'art (emphasis on the decorative and collectible aspect of that word), and is much more interesting as such. The maneuvering of both artist and dealer are so shady and calculated they are more important or at least equally important to the object itself, especially since it is called "For the Love of God." The title (unusually relevant considering the breadth of Hirst's titles) brings to mind not only Hirst's reliable rhetoric of taking on "big" subjects, but the prime part price plays in an artist's career, and especially his career. What he sells at, resells at, donates, buys back, have all been prime concerns of Hirst et al. recently. Not to mention that the media attention was due to its much publicized price: a theatrical $100 million dollars. So why not enjoy the skull for what it is? An expensive pawn, as I posit? The art world is full of art about it's own price as it were, Duchamp, Warhol, and plenty of artists have bought back their works to control them, why not just be up front about it? Anyone else have any thoughts about this? If you didn't click the link above click here to be redirected to the post.