As promised, today was Ben and Kelly’s Chicago Art Day! We took some photos and put them in the 2005.10.11 – Chicago Marathon: ART DAY! gallery.

We slept in until about 9:30 or so and I ran down to Chicago Take-Out in the bottom floor of the hotel to get Kelly a “thing with things in it” which I took to mean a veggie omelette. Me? I was in the mood for pancakes and bacon. I don’t each much bacon, but I do love it, especially with maple syrup.

I should also make a note about the “family” of people who run the Chicago Take-Out. If pressed, I’d have to say they aren’t Russian, and they aren’t quite Greek — somewhere in between. Maybe Armenian. They are all very short (save for the one) and have the demeanor of folks who have been short-ordering to we gringo tourists for a little too long. So when the young cook (perhaps a young Turk?) told me “I make you best breakfast in town — any time of day! You get up 3 PM I make you chicken — BOK BOK BOK!” and smiled a shivvy smile, which made me smile after I realized he was joking. I want you to think of a cross between Eddie Munster and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley. Then when I reminded him that I also had two coffees, he said “Not me, man – you tell her!” pointing his thumb in the direction of the older lady behind the counter, who earlier had said “Your machine is broken! No paper! No paper!” in regards to the short-order printer. Tee-hee, I’m a sucker for ethnic banter, I guess.

I was hyped to get down to the Art Institute of Chicago, so we took a right turn out of the hotel and down to Grant Park for a scenic route and a snapshot of the fountain. On the way, we passed by some of the many art students that are in this south-end of the Downtown. These happened to be apparently shooting something in 16mm film involving a wooden cross. I’ll admit to thinking “Oh, please! 16mm and a cross? Art preschoolers do that every day before they take their naps! Go have a milk.” But they are here in this big city sowing their artistic oats before the crushing reality of the real world shoulder-checks them into designing whimsical cocktail napkins for Bunco parties. But I shouldn’t be so cynical. Or maybe I should be — cynicism about art is what keeps high art high and low art profitable.

The Art Institute is a fabulous place, if not terribly confusing. Large, parquet-floored wings with no real obvious pathways which lead to a lot of map-looking and backtracking to ensure you’ve seen everything. I haven’t been to many art museums, though, so this might be par for the course.

Considering I had been here before, I knew what I had wanted to see again, and found myself saving certain wings for last – savoring them, I guess. Kelly and I have in the last few days been having an ongoing conversation about what is art and what is not. For grotesque instance, shitting on a canvas in front of an audience to Kelly is not “art” because it follows her dictum that “If [Kelly] can do it, it is not art”. I understand that idea and I used to think that myself. However, as my consideration of art as a thing and art as an idea changed that rule faltered. Let me explain…

A good example is the apparently time-honored tradition of the peformance art shitter. Shitting on things is really what humans do best. Literally anyone can do that. And anyone will do that. So then, the real art of shitting on things — canvasses, flags, other artist’s pieces of shit-art — is the whole production of the piece. Who in their right mind would shit in public? Very few — hobos and artists come to mind. Hobos do it out of necessity. Artists do it to remind you that everyone shits — or if they are wearing a star-spangled top-hat, that America is the shit. The point is is that they actually did it, for you to see, and that according to one woman’s account, if someone paid to see it, it is art. That said, shitting on flags is not gonna get my dollar. Shitting on flag shitters maybe — a documentary on the design, preparation and ultimate performance and cleanup of a sucessful flag-shitting — yes! I love documentaries.

Anyway, back to the Art Institute. We saw all that could be seen, and certainly took photos (no flashy). The great exhibit of papal artifacts in the “gun and knife show” wing that was there a few years ago when Hunter and I went was sadly gone, as were many of the awesome combinations of sword-and-gun that we observed last time. Sad! But I was really there for the Magrittes they have on permanent display. I can’t really say what it is about Magritte that interests me so, but I think it has something to do with the amount that some of his work transfixes me. You may have seen his paintings like “Time Transfixed” or “The Son of Man”, which when compared to the fantastic images that Dali painted are rather… pedestrian. In fact, the man in the painting “The Son of Man” could very well have been a pedestrian -and the argument could be made that Magritte painted such subjects in a surreal way to get just that effect. But there are many Magritte works that are not as obviously surreal and play more to his mastery of light and shadow, like “The Voice of Blood” or “The Empire of Light”. The one painting that I think mixes both of these sides of Magritte the best and makes for the simplest yet most indelible of marks is “The Banquet” (shown above) which is on display at the Art Institute. Upon first encountering it in the flesh a few years ago, I was completely captured by it. As with many paintings — it does little to impress when shown 3″ x 4″ on a computer monitor. They may as well throttle you by the throat in real life. I used to think that art could be seen in books on a screen — but that is not the case.

After the Art Institute, we decided to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art specifically for the Dan Flavin Retrospective there until October 30, 2005. I saw a subway poster for this on an L platform in Chicago, and was immediately reminded of the NPR piece I heard last October entitled Dan Flavin’s Fantastic Lights. The premise sounded simple enough: one man uses off-the-shelf fluorescent lights to create his art. What one can’t fully grasp on the radio or even on the web is just how much his art relies upon it’s surroundings. His medium is truly light, and hence, reflection is the eventual outcome. Paintings are graced by frames, but his art can be recreated in any room and will thereby become a different piece altogether!

The entire 4th floor of the MCA was without any lights save for Flavin’s works. (They had even gone so far as to remove the fluoresecents from the ceiling fixtures!) The longest work in the hall stretched before a long series of windows facing the street — reflecting it’s beautiful green glow upon not only the ceiling and walls of the floor, but the museum itself – a beacon to all that passed by.
To enter that floor was to enter a world of otherworldly lights. At first it was difficult to stand, but after a few moments, you got used to the 60Hz pulse of the lights and passing between rooms (which often housed a single piece) meant changing the tint of the world in which you operated. Inspecting a piece close-up was to ruin the spectre of what the hardware had created. Each person in the room became part of the piece, part of the canvas and it was breathtaking. A sidenote: photography was not allowed in the gallery, so I had to be sneaky.

Later that evening, we went to go see The Second City’s Mainstage doing the show The Red Scare, a long-running show playing with the differences and similarities between the left- and the right-wingers in the world. Absolutely hilarious! Some really great stuff there and a visit to Chicago isn’t complete without seeing the Second City. I’ve been there twice (once to the Mainstage and once to one of their “lesser” shows”) and have been totally destroyed by the funny both times.