Mediums, Well: Art Institute's Gauguin Exhibit Aptly Illustrates the Diverse Explorations of an Ever-Restless Artist -- Art Review

Art Exhibition Review

Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist
Art Institute of Chicago
Thru September 10
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How does one fairly assess an art exhibit?

Without pretending I have the wherewithal to offer a scholarly critique, my reviews of museum exhibitions--as with almost any other type of show, including live performances--aim to address whether attending is worth one's time, money and effort...and to what degree.

Regarding the Art Institute of Chicago's latest survey of a famous artist, the answer for me personally is a definitive, "Yes, very much so."

In fact, after feeling a bit rushed the first time I saw the exhibit, I decided to Gauguin.

That translates to "Go again" for those who lack punderstanding or aren't aware that the 19th century French painter--but not only, as the exhibit well-showcases--Paul Gauguin's surname is pronounced roughly "Go-gan."

But such an answer may be much easier and more decisive on an individual level than a universal one.

Paul Gauguin, Interior of the Painter's House, rue Carcel, 1881

I live an hourlong transit commute from the Art Institute, am happy to get there a good handful of times each year, will almost always see--and typically enjoy--their large-scale exhibitions about artists I know in idioms I like, am pretty familiar with the museum's outstanding permanent collection and freely attend each visit as part of a yearly membership. (Standard admission is up to $25, with an additional $7 for the Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist exhibit for non-members.)

Having visited over 150 major art museums worldwide, often as a focal point of my travels and occasionally up to four in a day, I'm well aware that the merits of seeing a special exhibit can vary by contexts.

In terms of the Gauguin exhibit--which features a relatively limited number of "Oh, wow!" paintings as it depicts the artist's fertile creative reach across sculpture, ceramics, wood carving, printmaking, etc.--this would be my advice for various potential audiences:

Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard, Earthly Paradise, 1888

- If you are an Art Institute member,  Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist is by all means well-worth getting to.

- If you knowingly like Gauguin's painting style and/or appreciate artistic processes in an academic sense, the exhibit justifies the extra $7, a special trip to the museum or up to 2 hours of a longer Art Institute visit. (For ways to avoid General Admission, see the Free Admission Opportunities section on this page, as well as Bank of America's Museums on Us promotion.)

- If you visit the Art Institute as a tourist--particularly one with limited time to allot--unless the above applies to you I think you'd be better off focusing on the permanent collection, which still includes some Gauguin paintings as good as many in the exhibit.

- Unless you're a Gauguinologist, the exhibit in itself likely doesn't merit plane travel.

The exhibit is excellent in terms of being a well-curated, thoroughly-researched, scholarly exploration of a well-known post-Impressionist most famed for painting subjects in Tahiti, but who worked impressively many in mediums and venues. (It was interesting to note that when Gauguin went to Tahiti in the later years of his career, he was vexed to find it so colonialized and frequently painted people to look far more "native" than he actually encountered them.)

Even in a relatively casual walk through the numerous galleries, one should appreciate how Gauguin incorporated recurring subjects and themes across different idioms, locales and/or eras, such as seated women (as shown nearby), a motif he initially portrayed during his time in the Brittany region of France..

Simply at face value, much of Gauguin's non-painting work is quite beautiful, such as the Earthly Paradise cabinet shown above, which he carved and painted in conjunction with his contemporary Emile Bernard.

I'll include more pictures of various types of pieces below to provide a better sense of what you'll see in Artist as Alchemist, which per its introduction, "delves deeply into the artist's radical experiments in the applied arts."

I relished the illumination provided--twice--but in keeping with my general affinities, most embraced and best recall the large, colorful paintings, of which there are about 15. (Simply in this regard, there are nice insights about how Gauguin deviated from many of the Impressionists, even those who influenced him.)

If your abiding interest in art, as essentially is mine, is simply to see "pretty pictures," you'll certainly get that in this exhibit, but not really predominantly. Nor to the extent of mind-blowing wonder the Art Institute's astonishing Impressionism collection provides, along with fantastic holdings in many realms.

I don't think anyone who opts to view Gauguin: Artist as Alchemist--especially if understanding the multidisciplinary focus--should come away disappointed, but whether it's "worth seeing" can largely depend on one's own tastes, time, priorities and budget.

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MCA's Finely-Curated Takashi Murakami Exhibition Introduces Me, Contemporarily, to Mr. DOB, Arhats and the Concept of Superflat -- Art Review

Art Exhibit Review

Takashi Murakami

The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago

Thru September 24

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I've repeatedly conveyed my inability to appreciate much in the way of contemporary art, at least at the museum level.

I have a number of friends I consider excellent artists, and routinely see pieces I very much like at local art fairs, so I will not say that great art is no longer being made.

And acknowledging that art--like beauty--is in the eye of the beholder, I hold all working artists in high regard, even if I may not be smitten by the resulting works. That some are able to make a good living, or even a fortune, is something I applaud, simply on principle.

But whether in the contemporary galleries of some of the world's best art museums, or at institutions specifically devoted to newish works--including Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)--I have rarely found myself enchanted.

This may well be a silly generalization, but I tend to find contemporary art heavy on gimmick and light on aesthetic allure or--per my admittedly imprecise barometer of perception--"greatness."

So although I seek out art museums on every vacation I take and get to the Art Institute of Chicago several times each year, in recent years I've generally only gone to the MCA for special exhibits or events.

The last of these, until now, was the traveling David Bowie Is exhibition in 2014, which I had originally seen in London the year before. I felt it was excellent, but a look at what else was hanging at MCA at the time reiterated my general distaste for museum-level "contemporary art."

When I first heard mention of a "Murakami exhibit" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, my mind went to the acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami. I haven't read any of his works--which include Norwegian Wood, IQ84 and Kafka on the Shore--but saw a play based on the latter and wondered if perhaps an exhibition was created to showcase striking visuals suggested in the books.

But I soon learned that the exhibit focuses on Takashi Murakami, a contemporary artist of some renown though unknown to me. (It seems he may be best known to some for designing cover artwork for Kanye West's 2008 album, Graduation.)

I took a bit of note when some art-savvy friends posted on Facebook about visiting the exhibition--officially titled Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, which comes from a Japanese saying about an octopus in distress that chews off its own leg to survive, knowing that it will regenerate--and became all the more intrigued by a Tweet sharing that Bono and the Edge got a private tour while in Chicago for a pair of U2 concerts in early June.

Appreciating that the museum is free for Illinois residents every Tuesday, I decided to take a look recently prior to carrying on to a White Sox game.

Before getting to the exhibition itself--which I found to be an excellent representation of a worthwhile artist, if not quite filled with what I'd consider phenomenal art--let me note that I am not thoroughly versed in Japanese culture.

I love the films of Akira Kurosawa and others of that realm, and found the film Spirited Away to be sensational, but am generally oblivious to anime and manga.

As noted, I haven't read Haruki Murakami though I've heard nothing but high praise, yet--largely incidentally--just prior to my MCA visit, I had read three novels by Keigo Higashino, seemingly Japan's most popular mystery writer.

So I was happy to further indoctrinate myself into the contemporary creativity of Japan, a country I hope to one day visit.

The exhibit, which is wonderfully compiled, curated and written to show how Takashi Murakami's art has developed and changed over the past 30 years, begins with a short video interview of the artist that I highly recommend all attendees view.

Via the clip, I learned that in addition to Japanese animation, Murakami was heavily influenced by "American sci-fi," predominantly Star Wars, and that one of his primary aims is to blur the line between high art and low culture.

In the spirit of merging these realms, many of Murakami's works--at least to a certain point in his oeuvre--feature a Mickey Mouse-type character dubbed Mr. DOB, as those three letters are represented in his ears and face.

Murakami has used--and in a variety of ways, morphed--Mr. DOB, from singularly dominating canvases to being rather small in a sea of color to being depicted sculpturally.  

Although I can't say the exhibition left me with a precise understanding of the term "Superflat," this is--per wall text--a theory of art Murakami coined in the late 1990s as he blended Eastern and Western artistic traditions.

"Superflat describes a world that blurs disctinctions between high art and low culture, a world that is metaphorically flattenend by the atomic bomb. Murakami explored these ideas in his mutable character Mr. DOB, which he continued to mutilate, duplicate, stretch, distort and adapt."

The video and exhibit text also explained that--following the artist's rise to widespread prominence in the early years of the new millennium, including the work with Kanye--he was, understandably, tremendously affected by the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011.

This led to a series of large-scale works--aided by a vast studio staff, as chronicled in a video depicting Murakami's working methods--featuring numerous "arhats," which are Buddhist monks on their way to spiritual enlightenment, tasked with spreading understanding and healing.

In the exhibition, there is a long gallery featuring two huge arhat sculptures and giant paintings that spread the length of the room, reminding me of Monet's Water Lilies at the L'Orangerie in Paris and perhaps stylistically even more so, Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze in Vienna. (I also had perceived the influence of Lichtenstein and Warhol in the Mr. DOB pieces.)

Takashi Murakami also created a roomful of large works expressly for the MCA exhibit, with a multi-paneled painting and monumental sculpture inspired by the show's subtitle, The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg.

Certainly the exhibition went a long way in helping me understanding its subject's artistry, and if rating merely the exhibit's breadth, explanations and accompanying materials, I'd probably bestow @@@@@.

But while I genuinely enjoyed much of Murakami's art, I don't feel much compunction to seek out more of it.

If I were to come across a similar exhibit at some other major museum, with time allowing to peruse either it or a well-regarded permanent collection, I'd undoubtedly choose the latter.

And forgetting that they fetch a fortune, I don't think I'd opt to hang a Murakami on my walls, even if given an original.

Incidentally, one of my favorite pieces shown is among the least emblematic of the styles for which Murakami has seemingly become well-known worldwide.

Picture of a Turtle "Does It Dream of the Lindberg Star," created in 1987 when the artist was just 25, uses muted hues and--though obviously hard to make out on screen--a considerable amount of raised texture.

Call me a traditionalist, but I guess I prefer to see what I perceive as impressive technique, and perhaps aesthetic depth, rather than simply eye-catching flash.

So while I'm glad to now know of Takashi Murakami as a renowned, living, contemporary artist, and liked much of what I saw at the MCA strictly at face value, I can't say the exhibit--excellent in its own right--all that greatly abetted my appreciation of what appears to constitute museum-level fine art created in this century.

But especially for the right price, I'm glad I took a look.

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Great Depression -> Great Expression: Art Institute's 'America After the Fall' Rises Beyond Hopper, Wood, etc. -- Art Exhibit Review

Art Exhibition Review

America After the Fall:
Painting in the 1930s
The Art Institute of Chicago
Thru September 18
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(Note: Clicking on images will enlarge them.)

I've always been stirred by the contemplative melancholy in the paintings of Edward Hopper, likely my favorite American artist.

So the inclusion of three borrowed Hopper masterworks--as shown nearby--was alone sufficient for me to visit, value and enjoy the Art Institute of Chicago's moderately-sized exhibition, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s. (The AIC's own, brilliant Nighthawks by Hopper dates from 1942 so wasn't part of the exhibit in the Modern Wing, but is a must-see on any visit to the museum.)

But in addition to a nice curatorial bent--with informative wall text noting how following the stock market crash in 1929 that begat the Great Depression, painters re-examined American values, cast a spotlight on newfound hardships, looked back through depictions of American history and captured rural landscapes, urban entertainments, Dystopian visions and more--what made the exhibit quite worthwhile was the number of fine pieces by artists I'd never heard of, or only little knew.

It is cool that an artist like Grant Wood--who by virtue of his quirky American Gothic (1930) being a mainstay of the Art Institute's permanent collection well may be the first painter many Chicagoland schoolkids come to know--is also represented in the exhibit through at least five less-famed works (at least in these parts).

While patrons may see familiarity in Wood's Daughters of Revolution, works like Young Corn, Fall
Plowing and even the grisly Death on the Ridge Road show that he was just as much--if not more so--a landscape artist as a portraitist.

And although I've always assumed that American Gothic depicted an Iowa farmer and his wife, the placard accompanying the painting in the exhibit informed that the woman is rather the man's daughter.

With noted regional/rural American painters Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry also represented, it was fun to see Wood's landscapes accompanied by the whimsical Erosion No. 2--Mother Earth Laid Bare by Alexandre Hogue, an artist with which I wasn't familiar.

Alexander Hogue, Erosion No. 2--Mother Earth Laid Bare, 1936,
The Philbrook Museum of Art

Similarly, while I relished seeing a Stuart Davis abstract I hadn't seen previously (see below)--even in compiling a fairly in-depth online exhibition about him--and works by Jackson Pollack, Georgia O'Keefe and Ivan Albright, my eyes were opened just as much by several far less known artists.

These included names I knew but whose oeuvres I haven't much surveyed--Marsden Hartley, Reginald Marsh, Archibald Motley, Charles Sheeler, Walt Kuhn--and several that were completely new to me, including:

Paul Cadmus, Federico Castellon, Aaron Douglas, Joe Jones, Helen Lundeberg and William H. Johnson, among others.

Peter Blume, The Eternal City, 1934-39, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

I'll include exhibition pieces by many of these painters below, but one of the works that most beguiled me was The Eternal City by Peter Blume, whose The Rock I've long loved at the Art Institute, but from whom I knew no other paintings.

It's probably hard to tell unless you click to enlarge The Internal City, but along with images of ancient Rome and much else, Blume surrealistically depicts Benito Mussolini as a green-headed Jack-in-the-Box.

Rather than taking up numerous galleries in the Art Institute's Rice Building like most of their major exhibition, America After the Fall fits into the Modern Wing's considerably smaller first-floor exhibition space.

Paul Cadmus, The Fleet's In, 1934, U.S. Navy Art Collection

Even those stopping to read all of the thematic and painting-specific explanations should get through all these fine works from the 1930s in an hour or less.

Which makes it about perfect for members to peruse if downtown for other reasons--as I was--or for tourists and other less-frequent visitors to comfortably add onto an exploration of the Art Institute's staggering and diverse permanent collection.

Not only should you get a good sense of the disparate tenors and themes depicted during a time of domestic turmoil between the the World Wars, you should discern that some of the most compelling artists to bring these perspectives to light are those about whom you--perhaps like me--have been kept largely in the dark.

Aaron Douglas, Aspiration, 1936, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Federico Castellon, The Dark Figure, 1938, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Helen Lundeberg, Double Portrait of the Artist in Time, 1935, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Reginald Marsh, Twenty Cent Movie, 1936, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Georgia O'Keefe, Cow's Skull: Red, White & Blue, 1931, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stuart Davis, New York-Paris No. 3, 1931, Private Collection

Jackson Pollack, Untitled, 1938/41, The Art Institute of Chicago

William H. Johnson, Street Life Harlem, about 1939-40, Smithsonian American Art Museum

George L.K.. Morris, Indian Composition No. 6, 1938. Brooklyn Museum

Marsden Hartley, Mt. Katahdin (Maine), Autumn No. 2, 1939-40, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Joe Jones, Roustabouts, 1934, Worcester Art Museum