11:34 AM 05/12/2002
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It is Saturday 12:40 PM, May 11, 2002, and I am driving east on Illinois Street approaching Navy Pier. The traffic is light, it is unseasonably cold, windy, and raining hard enough to make a half-block walk extremely unpleasant. I am trying to decide whether to try and find parking on the street, or to pay the exorbitant price one pays, for parking in the Navy Pier garage. The rain convinces me to go for the garage, in spite of the price. As I pull into the Navy Pier turnaround, traffic is still surprisingly light, but when I reach the parking entrance, the cops are turning everyone away... the garage is already full. Damn!
Heading west on Grand Ave, I am surprised to see that the very first parking lot west of Lake Shore Drive is virtually empty. I pull in, get a good spot, stash my camera and notebook under my coat, and head east on foot. The wind is unbelievable along the side of the high rise between LSD and Navy Pier, but once I clear the wind tunnel it creates, it's not so bad, just a steady rain. In a few minutes I have reached the shelter of Navy Pier, and I am being carried along by an amazing crush of people, through the mall areas. Then the crowd falls off, depositing me in front of the booths selling Art Chicago tickets. The line is only about three people deep. A minute later, I am passing the ticket taker, up the escalator, and entering the exhibit hall.
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The place is huge, and there are already a lot of people, but because of its size, it is not crowded. I decide on a viewing strategy almost immediately. There is so much stuff here to see, that one person might be able to see it all... but to absorb it all... never. I decide that I am going to cast myself in the role of a buyer, who has been given a blank check, and can therefore buy anything that he wishes, with no concern for money.
Ninety percent of everything on display here is crap... the only proviso being, that there would be very little agreement as to which ten percent was good, among the viewers. There are a few exhibits that I suspect almost everyone would agree were crap, though. I see one or two displays that surpass comprehension with their lameness... I wonder what kind of people pay the kind of prices demanded to exhibit - sell here, only to fill their space with stuff that almost certainly isn't going to cover the nut.
My first two impressions of this year's show... and these are just impressions based on memories of previous shows... are that there are more Chicago based exhibitors now than in previous years, and a lot fewer International exhibitors. I see a few European booths, where in years passed, I seem to remember there being a really solid International (non-U.S.) contingency. The slack seems to have been taken up, in large measure, by local Chicago galleries.
I see a lot of 'famous names'... Picasso, and other Moderns 'masters', but for the most part, it is the dregs of their production, being offered more for the pedigree of the executor's name, than the artistic merit of the work. I see a Kentridge exhibit, and one of the pieces is really something to see. I begin to notice that most of the pieces I am being attracted to wind up having been done by artists with Oriental (Chinese, I think) names... but not in any traditional Oriental style... they look quite Western to my eye... or perhaps it is, that they supersede any stereotypical 'national identity', and are more international in flavour than is usually the case. I'm not sure. What I am sure of is that these artists with their Oriental-looking names (they might have grown up in New York, for all I know) demonstrate a high degree of competence in communicating visually, in painted media.
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I hit my first major finds at the booth of Bernarducci.Meisel.Gallery, New York dealers who have a website at http://www.NewRealism.com/. These fellows are quite laid back and friendly, and happy to allow me to photograph their offerings. If I actually had the blank check that I wished upon myself, I would have spent heavy at their booth. Although my own work tends to be grittier than the 'clean' pieces these people favour, my personal tastes tend to be a lot broader than my paintbrush, and I would have been happy to hang any of the three paintings I photographed in their booth on a wall in my house.
Clive Head just blew me away with his 'Fresno' - Oil on canvas (52" by 75.6"), and on an adjacent wall, was Bertrand Meniel's 'Abbey Hotel' (50" by 70") - Acrylic on linen. Then I tried to get a photo of one of the dealers, but he was a little camera shy, so I wound up getting a shot of the painting behind him, instead... 'Bali Mist' (48" by 72") by Ken Danby. I have often suspected that galleries have names that are simply contrived... made-up, for their photogenic and - or audiogenic value... but this fellow handed me a business card which seemed to indicate that, in this case, Frank Bernarducci was a real person... who is also selling what is, in my somewhat slanted opinion... the real work, of real painters.
As I left their booth, I wondered why it was; that a New York dealer was selling paintings that reflected a 'West Coast and points west' state of mind. I bet I can find at least partial answers to this question, by going on line, but I am not going to bother with that, here.
Moving on further into the exhibit, I encountered a wasteland of booths, which attracted me not at all... I am after all, a realist myself, and in spite of my (heh) 'open-mindedness' where the Moderns and Post Moderns are concerned, the only reason I would ever buy any of their work, would be if it was drastically undervalued, and I stood to make a killing on its resale. The mission I had set for myself today, was to see what I would buy to keep for myself... not for resale... so I moved on.
I saw some pretty deranged shit along the way, but all in all, the show was less dedicated to shock art than in years passed. One large painting seemed to be enamoured of mutilation with knives, and strange sexual couplings... none of the passers-by appeared shocked, though. In fact, no one appeared interested at all, except for a few kids in their early teens.
I saw a lot of people tending the booths who looked like they had stepped out of conservative fashion magazines... especially the young women... I wondered if some of them were professional models, hired specifically for their refined and intelligent-looking demeanour. I began to get a whiff of what I always smell at high-end visual fine art venues... bullshit. These people were just too pretty to be real... all these nicely manicured hands... all these finely turned-out, aristocratic-yet-sensitive females... when something looks too good to be true, heh, it usually is.
Then I walked around a corner, into my next find.
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Angela Flowers Gallery, of Santa Monica, California, had on exhibit a painting titled 'Carol' - Oil on Canvas, by Tai-Shan Schierenberg. It was big, in the 4 by 4 foot range, and it struck me immediately, causing the rest of the paintings on exhibit nearby, to go immediately out of focus. I knew I had to get a photo of it, but had a little difficulty getting a shot, because the area in front of the painting was littered with beautiful VARPS (Various Art-Related PerSons) who were too busy noticing each other, and themselves, to realise they were standing in front of a real painting, that people might find more interesting than themselves.
While waiting for the area to clear, I discovered my next find, just a few yards away at the booth of Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco, California. 'Pasadena Discount' (30" by 40") - Acrylic on Canvas, by Suong Yangchareon, is an amazingly 'California-Clean' painting of an otherwise grungy subject. There were several other very interesting pieces in this booth as well, but I was beginning to hold back on shooting pictures, as my digital camera has a limited amount of memory, and I had dreams that I was still going to happen upon several more treasure troves.
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Unfortunately, this was not to be the case...
I happened upon my final 'find' almost immediately afterwards, in the space of the Maya Polsky Gallery, a Chicago institution that I know well, for their amazing stable of Russian and Eastern European artists. 'The Flood' - Oil on Canvas, by Vasily Shulzhenko, a Moscow painter, is big... around 4 feet tall, or possibly larger... I'd buy it in a minute, even though I don't think I have a wall large enough to hang it on.
I noticed a small quote by Vasily, on the wall next to the painting, that said in part... "the beauty of paint, and the ugliness of life..." or words to that effect. I think I know what he means, but I probably only know what I think he means. Heh. I imagined all the classically beautiful, dressed-to-studied-perfection young female VARPS I had seen throughout the show, with their decorously-official badges quietly proclaiming their insider status here, nodding their serious understanding at these words, glued to the wall...
I passed Forum Gallery's display... they had some really impressive pieces up... but I knew I was done shooting pictures... I was already making my way to the exhibition hall exit... I had already seen what I had come to see... some 'California-Clean' cityscapes, and a beach scene... an introspectively sad young woman, painted with a broad brush, and a crazy man in a barrow, going with the flood, wherever the water took him... the ugliness of life, even when it is dressed up in the finest attire, and the beauty of paint... even when it shows us at our worst.
The show was, in my opinion, and unqualified success, and a bargain at $12.00.
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I let the flood of humanity carry me away. I had been in Art Chicago for roughly 2 hours. The lines of people going in were now about 60 people deep, and the Navy Pier mall was an impassable mass of humanity, mostly seeking bread and circus. When I hit the bricks, it was raining considerably harder than it had been two hours ago, and by the time I had walked the two blocks to my car, I was pretty much soaked through, except for my precious camera, nested in its waterproof case inside my coat, under my arm. The parking tab was $14.00, two dollars more than the price of the show. Amazing.
An hour later I was back in my basement, drying myself out and checking my own paintings, to see which were dry enough to mess with. At the show, I had seen stuff on sale for what I considered to be truly awe-inspiring prices, and much of it was, in my well-informed opinion, real dreck, that does nothing, says nothing, moves no-one, and can only hope be sold... to fools... by liars. Mixed in with the crap, there were a few diamonds, that have the power to actually move peoples' minds, and emotions, in a hopefully positive direction.
I am not a part of that 'pretty' scene, and this is a matter of choice, in large measure. I could never dress up all nice, and play the game, and kiss wealthy peoples' asses, in order to sell my work for lunatic prices. The money is tempting, but not if its price to be paid, is loss of personal autonomy. I just need enough money to eat, and maintain a place to work, and to sleep, and to examine the ugliness of life, by viewing it through the beautiful medium of paint.