moments of quiet desperation

Actor Bill Murray was recently promoting his latest film The Monuments Men with its art-related theme, and at a press conference at London's National Gallery he noted how at one point things were quite down and dark for him during the earlier years of his career in Chicago.  He was ready to pretty much end it all in Lake Michigan but wandered into the Art Institute instead, and while he was numbly walking around he came across Jules Breton's 1884 The Song of the Lark.  The peasant girl in the painting made him realize how life isn't always at its best, but the sun will rise beyond us and sometimes it's worth going on.  Click here for the whole article -- I think it's interesting how sometimes we can be moved deeply by a painting, whether you're just randomly walking through the halls of a museum or you specifically seek out a certain work when you need to feel centered.  I always head upstairs to see El Greco's Saint Francis Kneeling in Meditation at the Art Institute myself, and I like visiting that part of the museum because it's usually quiet and peaceful.  Other times it's fun to watch the crowds gathering around more popular paintings like the Monet series or Hopper's Nighthawks or Seurat's La Grande Jatte, because it shows the power of still seeing an actual work of art right there in front of you, even though we can look at any of these masterpieces instantly online.

"Well there's a girl who doesn't have a whole lot of prospects, but the sun's coming up anyway and she's got another chance at it...."  (Bill Murray, contemplating Jules Breton's The Song of the Lark)

art and appetites

The Art Institute of Chicago's Art and Appetite exhibit is reaching its final weeks and closing up the visual kitchen on January 27th.  This is a sumptuous showing of American food-related art from colonial times to the late 20th century, with occasional social or satiric commentary -- but for the most part a fine spread that confirms the fact that Americans like their food and drink, and plenty of it.  Some of my favorite works are featured, like Willard Metcalf's The Ten Cent Breakfast, John Sloan's Reganeschi's Saturday Night and Richard Estes' Food City.  And the pictured Vegetable Dinner by Peter Blume, which I like even more because Blume was apparently a fellow vegetarian.  All in all an enjoyable show that includes some beautiful servingware as well, and a book of postcards available for sale in the gift shop with vintage recipes on the back.  (The corn "oysters" from Jennie June's American Cookery Book of 1870 fry up nicely and are especially tasty with a splash of green Tabasco.)  My only negative commentary on American appetite in general was in the Members' Lounge at the Art Institute, when the poor guy who works there was trying to bring out a fresh pot of hot chocolate and was descended upon by some rather aggressive persons.  Hot chocolate is free for members, but I've seen stock footage of Depression-era folks waiting in breadlines with more courtesy and patience than these supposed patrons of the arts.  Clearly paying for a membership to the museum entitles a body to shove ahead and cut in line and crab at student workers, all in pursuit of a the privilege of a cup of cocoa worth about $1.50. 


Pictured:  Vegetable Dinner (Peter Blume, 1927) Smithsonian American Art Museum

blue splendor

Ferris Bueller aside, sometimes you really do just have to step off of the treadmill of life and contemplate something amazing.  This 1977 six-panel stained glass series -- the "America Windows" -- was presented to Chicago's Art Institute by Marc Chagall to commemorate the American Bicentennial and in memory of Mayor Richard J. Daley.  (And yes, they were featured in Mr. Bueller's big day off movie.)  They were removed for a few years during the construction of the Art Institute's Modern Wing; they have been back since 2010 and are beautiful, bright and liberating -- and this is only a camera phone photo so imagine their true glory.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.  -- Marc Chagall (quote courtesy of www.brainyquote.com).

studs centennial

Activist, author, and great talker Studs Terkel would have been 100 on May 16th, had he not signed off forever on Halloween of 2008. Studs was born in New York with a given name of Louis; he came to Chicago when he was eight years old with his parents and made the city his home base for the rest of his life.

Studs had a long-running radio show on Chicago’s WFMT, on which he did many an interview in his characteristic raspy voice. Terkel also wrote several books, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1985, and he often used the oral history format in order to keep the full power of a person’s words and experiences.

In Terkel’s Coming of Age, he conducted interviews with a wide range of older Americans to give a collective portrait of how they felt about growing older, and what they had witnessed in their particular slice of the 20th century. One of the interviews in Coming of Age is with Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), the prolific African-American artist who created such great works as the Migration of the Negro series, as well as portraits of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and another series detailing the life of abolitionist John Brown.

Since May is Older Americans Month, and since Studs sadly isn’t around to remind us about his book, an excerpt from Jacob Lawrence’s interview seems apropos:

How I became an artist? In elementary school, we were given crayons, poster paint, and were encouraged to put down color. In the great 1930s, I heard stories from older people…[t]hey’d talk about Marcus Garvey, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass. I’d walk the streets of Harlem and hear corner orators talk about these people. It inspired me. I realized I couldn’t tell their lives in one story, so I painted a series of their lives....

When I was a youngster growing up, a person would never attack an older person, a weaker person, because of the fear of God. Now an older person is vulnerable because of something lost, a sense of morality, of ethics…I’m not pessimistic. I think about these things. I talk about them. I feel as long as there’s one person or two people who are aware of the quality, of our capacity to think and feel, we’re on pretty sound ground. I hope so.

From Coming of Age, Studs Terkel (St. Martin’s Press edition, 1995)

poetry and parking

The jewel-like words of poets and city parking garages generally don't have much in common, unless you're leaving your car at 201 West Madison in Chicago, also known as the Poetry Garage. Here while you're off on an urban adventure, your vehicle waits on garage levels dedicated specifically to poets like Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson and Carl Sandburg, the man who conjured up visions of Chicago fog and little cat feet. You still have to pay for the parking, of course, but it's a much more aesthetic experience and probably easier to remember that you parked your PT Cruiser up with W.H. Auden -- instead of just somewhere on Level 3.

(Pictured: Calliope, muse of poetry and The Poetry Garage; painting by Cesare Dandini, 1595-1658)

the artful theatre

Chicago's Goodman Theatre is presently showcasing John Logan's Red, with its reincarnation of artist Mark Rothko holding court on stage (I'm not calling him an Abstract Expressionist because he apparently didn't want to be minimized by a label). Last week would have been Rothko's birthday on September 25th, and then Mayor Rahm (I'm calling him by his first name because he just seems to be a first-name mayor) declared "Paint the Town Red Day" in honor of the play, and it was all a dramatically fun, art-centered crimson tide.

However, though I haven't seen Red Rothko yet, three diverse Chicago theater-goers I've spoken to have noted that the play that recently and quietly won their hearts is The Pitman Painters at the Timeline Theatre. Lee Hall of Billy Elliot fame is the author, and the story involves a group of British miners from Ashington who took a sponsored art appreciation class during the 1930s. Their instructor found the miners to be less than interested in the appreciation aspects of the lessons, so he urged them to approach the subject directly and create their own works. The men became the Ashington Group and ultimately found critical success and a patron, along with broadening their own horizons and sense of collective and personal identity. Yet they still stayed in the mines and true to their "pit" roots, and if this doesn't sound like the next The King's Speech-type movie adaptation that will net plenty of Academy Award nominations I don't know what does.

Here's a link to the Ashington Group's website, and the tiny pictured work is by Pitman Painter Harry Wilson (Ashington Colliery)

a visit to the hot l baltimore

Steppenwolf Theatre's revival of the late Lanford Wilson's 1970s hit The Hot L Baltimore is currently happening through the end of May, with direction by Tina Landau and a cast of many fine actors. The set is also impressively rundown and offers a two-story action view, featuring stairs leading to rooms without doors to allow for a kind of voyeuristic, back of a dollhouse effect. If you can sit close to the stage and you're fascinated by authentic props, you'll enjoy noting how magazines leafed through are truly from the 1970s, and that the TV set shows Pringles commercials of the era -- and that some super-groovy ribbed blue bellbottoms are worn by Bill, the desk clerk. And if you lived through the seventies or have a more youthful retro interest in them, the timeline boards of the decade's major events and hit songs set up in the theater lobby will likely round out your nostalgic experience.

Back in the real day, The Hot L Baltimore debuted in March of 1973 and ran through 1976 at New York's Circle in the Square. It showcased the then-new talents of forever tough cookie Conchata Ferrell (who so refreshingly dominates Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men), and Judd Hirsch as Paul, a young man in search of his elusive grandfather. At that time, the play surely had a very different vibe, because it was an immediate representation of 1970s upheaval and change, and America wasn't so familiar with the lives of sassy hookers and/or needed to come to terms with the fact that many of its former glories were crumbling and in the line of the wrecking ball.

So essentially, The Hot L's revival now is pretty much evocative and not a social slice of life, with a note of melancholy added due to the recent death of playwright Lanford Wilson. The play is further deepened by many primary roles being filled by African American actors in this production, including standout performances by de'Adre Aziza, Alana Arenas, Namir Smallwood, Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, TaRon Patton and Jacqueline Williams.

Still, if the play is truly supposed to take place in the early 1970s, changing the racial makeup of the cast would have--at the time--caused all sorts of alternate issues and dynamics. Yes, Baltimore has a larger black population than other cities, but perhaps the elderly Mr. Morse might harbor some old school inherent prejudices, or perhaps the fact that Bill the desk clerk is attracted to The Girl might create a greater interracial frisson of conflict -- and the idea of a brash young black woman and her timid brother planning to farm acres in predominately white 1970s Utah seems even more worrisome. Mrs. Oxenham is into making a traditional African fashion statement -- what consciousness-raising led her to that? And why does Mr. Katz dislike Jackie so much? Is it hard knocks disapproval or just, as she complains, because of the way she dresses?

I have to wonder whether being in the front row made me connect more with some of the characters and have more questions about them. Probably too many questions, because in the long run it seems best to just take The Hot L Baltimore as a retro piece -- to enjoy the team effort, the set, the props and the onstage radio crackling out soul tunes, and don't really think that much about the rest.

Pictured: Bill (Jon Michael Hill) and The Girl (Alison Torem) in The Hot L Baltimore

forget the map and try an app

Spring is just a few hours away and with it comes the need to venture out and explore -- and if that involves spring travel, perhaps to take a walking tour of a new or even familiar city. These GPSmyCity.com iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch apps are a great way to tour an area at your own pace, with an impressive variety of walks and cities available. GPSmyCity.com is sponsoring the following quiz about Chicago here; e-mail your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com and you could win three city walk apps to use this spring, summer, fall...or whenever you choose.

1) Chicago is known by several names. What isn't it called?

a) the Windy City
b) the City of Big Shoulders
c) the City of Lights

2) Chicago’s downtown area is known as ________. The nickname refers to the area encircled by the elevated train tracks.

a) the Loop
b) the Hook
c) the Ellipse

3) Chicago is the birthplace among others of McDonalds, the chewing gum giant Wrigley’s and the cell phone giant Motorola. What sport has been invented here:

a) 16-inch softball
b) baseball
c) squash

4) At the time of its completion in 1974 the Willis Tower was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years. How many states are visible from its roof?

a) 3
b) 4
c) 5

5) Chicago is the third largest city in United States, its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland," being the 27th most populous metropolitan area in the world. What American cities are more populous than Chicago?

a) New York and Houston
b) Los Angeles and New York
c) Philadelphia and New York

6) Chicago is home to the largest population of _______ in the world, except Warsaw:

a) Poles
b) Czechs
c) Serbs

7) In 1900, Chicago successfully completed a massive and highly innovative engineering project. Since then the Chicago River is the only river in the world that:

a) flows North in the Northern Hemisphere
b) flows backward
c) the only river in the world that flows both northwards and southwards across the line of the Equator

8) Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of what country?

a) Ireland
b) Scotland
c) Poland

9) The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. Which of these painters was not an Impressionist:

a) Monet
b) Cezanne
c) Dali

10) The University of Chicago is the site of the world's first:

a) atomic reaction
b) unmanned flight
c) extraterrestrial encounter

Good luck -- and I'll also be featuring an art-related question next week on this blog for another chance to win a GPSmyCity.com walking tour app for the city of your choice.

(Pictured: Chicago's Prudential Plaza at night)

luminous luma

The Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) is one of Chicago's museum gems, and this week they're featuring tours by candlelight of their Martin D’Arcy Collection. As LUMA itself details: "Walk through the medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque galleries and see the art with new eyes, viewing the work as it would have been seen when it was created hundreds of years ago." The pictured The Penitent Magdalen by Georges de la Tour is at the Met and not LUMA, but thoughts of Baroque art by candlelight brought it to mind. It all sounds great, especially at this time of year with candles and bulbs flickering a little bit earlier each night.

white zone

There are lots of people visiting Chicago in the summertime, and whenever I happen to see any interesting city place that's strangely and briefly empty in the midst of crowds, I try to get a picture of it (kind of an eye of the hurricane effect). Like this was a pure white noiseless view of the Art Institute's Modern Wing last week before a wave of museum-goers came off the elevator....

stuart's seven stairs

Stuart Brent, one of Chicago's great booksellers, died at age 98 this week. His first shop opened in 1946 and was a frequent hangout for the then up and coming Nelson Algren, who had just finished a collection of short stories known as The Neon Wilderness. Algren's biographer Bettina Drew describes Brent's Seven Stairs at that time as "a tiny literary bookstore on the Near North Side with a woodstove, a barrel of apples, a hanging salami and a knowledgeable owner...."

Brent soon became an Algren fan and hosted "Neon Wilderness parties" when the book was finally published. Beyond his relationship with Nelson, Brent was friends with many other Chicago writers and even the proud recipient of an oak desk given to him by The Front Page author Ben Hecht. An item in Chicago Breaking News also notes how Brent would sometimes "rise from behind a pile of invoices on the table to offer browsers a bit of advice -- or criticism. Sometimes he'd take a book from a customer's hands, quickly substituting one he thought better."

He closed things down because the world of book sales and publication had changed and Michigan Avenue turned too sleek and upscale. He lamented that the Garrett Popcorn shop had outlived his small book oasis, but that kernel-popping place has seen the closing of many other stores, and in its own way Garrett is one of the few Mag Mile locales that attracts all kinds of people who share a democratic love of their rich gooey caramel or super-cheesy mix.

Brent's 1962 autobiography was titled Seven Stairs: An Adventure of the Heart and details how his shop and career came more from a love of reading and writers than any desire to make money. Brent noted that "I have never had what the public wanted to read, and I lost out because of it," but without doubt Brent's loss was Chicago's literary gain.

newly distinguished

Abstract painter William Conger became part of the Chicago Union League's roster of Distinguished Artists last month, joining such other notables as Ed Paschke and Ruth Duckworth. I had the chance to interview Bill Conger last spring for Suite101.com -- a really enjoyable experience because he's a great conversationalist and can talk about anything. Click here to read the interview and here for Bill's official website.

(Pictured: Chinatown -- Wm. Conger, 2007)

hopper probably would have eaten at the orange garden

Every time I see Edward Hopper's 1929 Chop Suey (pictured here) I think of an old-school Chicago Chinese restaurant called The Orange Garden, which was retro before retro was even a concept. The painting has more windows and light than The Orange Garden does, but there's still a shared days-gone-by Chinese restaurant atmosphere, with lots of rich red tones in the decor. And chop suey on the menu, along with the classic CHOP SUEY sign out front.

kaffee and koloman

A recent visit to one of Julius Meinl’s coffeehouses brought to mind another Austrian who made the planet a more creative and interesting place: Koloman Moser. Moser was born in Vienna in 1868 and died in 1918, and throughout his varied career was a painter, graphic designer and printmaker who also worked with ceramics, tapestries, textiles, jewelry and stained glass. Moser was one of the driving forces behind the Wiener Werkstätte movement and was a founding member of the Vienna Secession with Gustav Klimt and various others. This Moser painting is from around 1913 and titled Waldwiese, which seems to translate to something like Forest Meadow in English.