Contemporary Art, Chicago-Style

by sarahcoggrave

After a pleasant visit to Lincoln Park Conservatory (and a less than pleasant encounter with the inadequate zoo nearby), I found myself face to face with one of the most famous figures in US history.

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Or, to be more specific, a statue of him.

Former president Abraham Lincoln has been dead for well over a century and a half now, but his professional life (as a lawyer) began in Illinois – the state to which Chicago belongs.

In another historical vein, I was also pleased to pass some older Chicago homes, choosing to switch the lakeside for a more suburban wander back through the city.

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My destination was the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which proved to be perhaps one of the only true highlights of my visit to Chicago. An excellent arts venue and some incredible work on display.

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Following a cursory perusal of some of the smaller showings (including the above collection of Alexander Calder pieces, which I loved), I was excited to see the Doris Salcedo exhibition.

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I knew little of Salcedo previously – mainly only knowing of her chairs piece (1550 Chairs Stacked Between Two City Buildings) at the 2003 Istanbul Biennial. Reading about this work many years after the event (sadly I couldn’t jet off to Istanbul in 2003 – I was only a teenager at the time) intrigued me, and I was glad to get this opportunity to find out more about the artist and her work.

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The exhibition was a comprehensive one, spanning thirty or so years of work across a network of rooms filled with all manner of materially and conceptually complex installations, ranging from an assortment of hospital furniture to shoes in translucent voids. And yet there were also more direct and emotive messages embedded in her work – the viewer could ostensibly choose how deep to travel into each carefully woven vortex of ideas.

Indeed, Salcedo’s pieces offer many possibilities for dialogue- she truly understands the power of materials, and her work is engaging at all sorts of levels, as was testified by the large and diverse body of visitors in attendance during my visit. A pile of neatly folded white shirts, impaled on metal standsm for instance, make an intriguing visual spectacle, as does her maze of wooden desks, one on top of another, with soil and green shoots sandwiched in between.

Each of these works has a context, should you choose to read about it, but such is the power of the statements made, knowledge of a back story is not a prerequisite to enjoyment of the work.

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Whilst I loved seeing and puzzling over her installations and sculptures, I felt that Salcedo’s most intriguing work had been made and exhibited out in the world, beyond the insular white cube of the gallery space. The aforementioned chair piece is an excellent example. So too is one from her native Columbia – the artist invited people to filled the square outside the Palace of Justice in Bogotá with candles, thus creating a poignant space in which to consider the huge loss of life to violence in the city.

I read that Salcedo’s work is sometimes criticised for leaning towards sentimentality, but I found it refreshing to see emotion and feeling in contemporary art, especially when communicated in ways that were both direct and sophisticated. Often I feel work that is deemed ‘clever’, is championed by critics above work that is moving. The latter need not be synonymous with the crude or the saccharine, nor need it be separate from intellect, as Salcedo’s work demonstrates.

As well as the Salcedo show, Chicago’s MCA had an impressive programme and collection.

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It was with a lifted mood and spirit that I returned to the brown-grey streets of Chicago.

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Ever since arriving in the city I’d been keeping my eyes open for Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture (also affectionately known as ‘the bean’), and on the second afternoon I found it. Much smaller than I’d imagined, the sculpture was still nonetheless impressive; its strange mirrored surface behaving in all kinds of unexpected ways.

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Obviously this kind of piece was a magnet for the selfie generation, but, vanity aside, I think we all draw some kind of peverse curiosity from seeing ourselves as a distorted reflection.

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The city too, enjoyed its own selfie of sorts – the grey brown skyline twisted and bent into unusual configurations across the curved surface of the sculpture. I wish I’d returned to see it at night, or sunrise. No doubt many different scenes could be painted by nature across its manmade surface.

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As I’ve mentioned, Chicago embraced art in every corner of the city. Even the hostel windows were decorated with colourful murals.

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Art can do much to bring any location to life. Last year I visited Folkestone, a small seaside town in the South of England, for an arts triennial. The town itself did not inspire me, and I’ve seen better, more spectacular seaside views, but the incredible collection of public art there, plus the triennial and associated developments, in my opinion, transformed the landscape from an average British town to an exciting cultural hub. But, were a few examples of intriguing art sufficient to make me reconsider my uncertainty about Chicago?

I wasn’t so sure.

With two days left, I searched for new sights to see. Meanwhile the weather remained resolutely cold and dull.

See also:

A Change Of Heart And Mind

Chicago: Not As Expected?

A Long Walk North

America