The Essential New Art Examiner

A Painter Reviews Chicago, Part I

F rank P annier A Painter Reviews Chicago, Part I Summer 1974 It is conceivable that in certain cities most of the major visual statements of the past twenty years have been made within the realms of “pictorial” or “prepresentational” art. However, for the most part, this is not the case in Chicago. Here, through the continual: re-hash of the same old tired “Dada Surrealist” concepts and also through the constant proliferation of simple-minded provincial aesthetics, most “pictorial” art is reduced to that infectious manifestation of visual gonorrhea most clearly typified by the “Hairy Who?” and its many offspring. There are, of course, a few “picture-painters” who are exceptions to this rule. On the other hand, there is being produced in this city a large and rapidly growing body of fine and important “non-objective” art and despite a currently popular misconception, this work is not historically indebted to New York (or to any other American city). Its beginnings are on its own soil in the 1930s and 40s when major European artists began emigrating to the United States and a few of them (including, among others, Paul Wieghardt and László Moholy-Nagy) decided to settle in Chicago. While teaching at the school of the Art Institute (and later in life at the Evanston Art Center School) Paul Wieghardt, although himself always a primarily “figurative” painter, introduced several generations of Chicago artists to the concepts that eventually led many of them to work in a totally “abstract” manner as early as the 1940s. With the founding of the Institute of Design in the 1930s by several of Wieghardt’s European colleagues (who had arrived in Chicago at earlier dates) many of the basic concepts and philosophical ideals of the displaced German Bauhaus were continued and further developed. Ex-Bauhaus 16   T h e E s s e n t i a l N ew A rt E xaminer faculty members (such as Georgy Kepes, Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) began an open dialogue with the existing art community in Chicago and an era of creative excitement began to unfold. As a direct result of this cultural influx, Richard Koppe painted in Chicago (in approximately 1938) what are argued by some to be the first truly “abstract” or “non-objective” paintings done in the United States. These canvases which were known as the “chemical paintings” were done at a time when, for example, Adolph Gottlieb, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko were still painting figuratively. When I began my formal education in art at the University of Illinois at NavyPierinSeptemberof1964(afterhavingstudiedwithPaulWieghardt at the Evanston Art Center, which at the time was a somewhat serious school), I came to personally know Richard Koppe and later John Walley, both of whom had been closely associated with the Chicago “Bauhaus.” It is through many conversations with these two men that I have been able to construct the preceding historically sketchy paragraphs. There exists very little in the way of documentation of this period available for research and with the recent deaths of Richard Koppe and John Walley it is quite possible that a great deal of this information may disappear forever. Unless whatever was written by these men amid the others who shared this era can be located and then made public, we stand to lose a great portion of our cultural inheritance. This is inexcusable. Today “non-objective” art is entering an amazingly beautiful and prolific period in this city. The work of almost two dozen artists (although infrequently allowed exhibition and almost totally ignored by most “critics”) stands as Chicago’s finest contribution to the visual arts to date. There currently exists the greatest number of artists manifesting the highest degrees of visual perception and aesthetic excellence in Chicago’s history. The city is finally coming of age; a new period is beginning. The work of Ted Argeropolos, Phil Berkman, Mike Crane, Carol Diehl, Tony Giliberto, Roland Ginzel, Barbara Housekeeper, Martin Hurtig, Michiko Itatani, Vera Klement, Mary Jo Marks, Corey Postiglione, Angels Ribe, Lawrence Soloman, Francesc Torres, Monika Wehrenberg, and (the hell with humility) myself, as well as several other artists, clearly shows the abundance of superior work being done in Chicago. (Footnote: Berkman, Crane, Ribe, and Torres are “conceptual” artists, and their inclusion in the category of non-objective art is my action solely.) But, for the most part, Chicago has traditionally chosen to ignore its best work by championing generation after generation of imitation...