Category: Uncategorized

Greenwich Connecticut Shows Off By D. Dominick Lombardi “Paul Manes Solo Exhibition” Trimper Gallery, Greenwich, CT, May 15–August 15   Paul Manes thinks like a sculptor and paints like it’s nobody’s business. Never one to follow trends, Manes finds inspiration in the works of seventeenth to early twentieth century painters such as Rembrandt, Velasquez, Goya, and Cezanne rather than concerning himself with current trends. With finesse and boldness, making changes and reinventing on the way, Manes carves his own path as he moves from representation to abstraction and back again—often on the same canvas.           The best way to understand the ever-changing thinking process and approach to painting of Manes is to start with the three small works near the entrance. In one, the application of overlapping and oddly cut pieces of unprimed canvas in Goin’ Up (2024) clearly shows how Manes often paints over textured surfaces. The painted element, a snaking line that has been through a series of changes in tone and color, ends up as pewter—a visual shift that exemplifies changes in tone and color that are sometimes seen in other works in this exhibition. Then there is the cohesive flow of the composition that arises when the uneven edges of the pieces of cut canvas and the curves of the line slowly harmonize.         Noche en Torrijos (2024), which hangs across the room, is a painting made in the same year as Goin’ Up. Filled with detail and representation, Noche en Torrijos was created using endless applications of precisely painted browns and tans that represent a fantastical field of wildflowers. The result is a canvas that looks like it could have been painted in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, if pure landscape painting was a thing back then. Although handled differently in Goin’ Up, Noche en Torrijos has a clear concern with texture, line, and tonal range, and how they play off each other.           Two additional paintings created on textured surfaces are Marigot (1991) and Tangled Up in Red (2021). In both, the canvases are covered in cut and torn paper and printed materials. The minimal tactile quality created by the paper layer is quite different from Goin’ Up, where here the texture is more visual than actual. Marigot is about contrast between the geometric and the organic when looking at line as opposed to edge, and about how those two formative fronts create a rhythmic composition that is both beautiful and meditative. At first glance, Tangled Up in Red, a title that refers to Bob Dylan’s “Tangled up in Blue,” has a strangely uplifting and slightly imperiled effect, like the first time one ventures onto a trampoline, and is both curious and cautious. In painting a number of cascading bowls (consisting of colorful lines, mostly red) to having others more fully resolved in tones that mimic the warm gray color of the ink on the printed materials results in this profound back and forth in the picture plane.           Woman with Pearls (2018) and Untitled Plane (2024) are the two most distinctly different paintings in the exhibition. Woman with Pearls, because the subject summons up a bit of humor through the slightly cross-focused eyes, demands our attention. As a portrait, the framing of the subject is very tight to the form, cropping off the crown of the head and most of the shoulders. This zooming-in is combined with an imposing stare, dark arching eyebrows, and ruby red lipstick that are somewhat filtered through a veil of thick gray netting. The netting contrasts, but does not significantly lessen, the strong presence of the subject. From a painter’s standpoint, the fact that the color of the netting was changed at least once says a lot about the dedication of the artist to his craft and aesthetic. Another markedly different work, Untitled Plane (2024), brings to mind the mid-century fighter planes that were romanticized to the hilt in World War II films made in the US. The crosshairs in the area of the cockpit, which when combined with the stormy skies, intensify the visceral effect of the work.   “Martin Kline: The World in all its Plenitude” Heather Gaudio Fine Art, Greenwich, CT, May 3–June 14         Unlike Paul Manes, the art of Martin Kline is far more focused and color specific. The primary medium in “Martin Kline: The World in all its Plenitude” is very thick or built-up blue encaustic. Roughly half of the art here has the encaustic applied and inevitably shaped with a brush, while others are formed by casting the encaustic in variously sized bubble wrap creating mechanical looking grids of concave circles. As paintings, each piece is distinctly sculptural—encaustic paint, like candle wax, that can be shaped as it cools and hardens. In some instances, the encaustic is less tactile and more reliant on color changes from light to dark blue, with the artist applying overlapping same-sized streaks in a crisscross pattern.           Most of the paintings are done on what looks like birch panels. Where the color of the warm wood peeks through the thickly applied blue encaustic, there is a distinctive inner glow, an element that hits your peripheral vision as a quick afterimage. In Blue Lilac Jewel (2023) and Memento Mater (2024), the depth of the medium descending from the center to the edges has a hypnotic effect, while simultaneously suggesting soundwaves looking something like the Chladni patterns created when strong waves of sound hit flat metal plates resulting in amazing reverberating geometric patterns in sand. The patterning in Blue Leda Tondo (I) (2024) is quite different, and more like what you would see when tiny bits of metal get caught in magnetic fields. With all three works, the application of the blue encaustic is intriguing at a distance and awe-inspiring at close range.           The bubble wrap cast pieces by Kline

Rediscovering Black Genius The Collection of the Johnson Publishing Company at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center (currently on view) by Charles Venkatesh Young From the early 1940s on, the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) filled a crucial niche that no other conglomeration of its time could: it represented Black America as it saw itself. Through its flagship magazine Ebony and sister publication Jet, JPC navigated fluidly through the Civil Rights movement (in all its incarnations, dedicating large articles to both the March on Washington and the Black Power movement) while maintaining exhaustive coverage of African American creative producers.         Though JPC moved out of its Michigan Avenue high-rise in 2010, its legacy and possessions have continued to provide gratification for Chicagoans—only now through museum exhibits, not print media. Theaster Gates recently assembled a great deal of JPC’s original furnishings at his Stony Island Arts Bank, where a three floor installation carries on the company’s endeavor of celebrating Black greatness. Those wishing to immerse themselves in JPC before Stony Island reopens in February 2026 need not fret, as a concurrent show at the DuSable Museum showcases highlights from its eclectic art collection.           JPC tended to collect artists similar in temperament to their publications: vivifying of everyday Black life while being socially engaged about racial inequality. (Or, as Ebony’s first edition put it, to “talk turkey” while acknowledging race as “the No. 1 problem of America.”) One such artist was Garrett Whyte, who contributed a satirical comic strip entitled “Mr. Jim Crow” to the Chicago Defender in the late 40s. (Issues featured a beaked caricature of segregationist politicians embroiled—hilariously, despite the serious subject matter—in the contradictions wrought by racist ideology.) His Rose of Sharon, created two decades after his comic stint, evinces his taste for more poignant subjects: it depicts with breathtaking stillness a swarthy, Madonna-esque woman against a gold background.           JPC’s fondness for comic artists with religious underpinnings also led them to collect the work of Alvin C. Hollingsworth, represented here by a shoulder-up portrait of Jesus carrying a cross. The subject’s usual trappings—halo, crown of thorns, crowd of disciples—are rendered by Hollingsworth with gleaming contours of red and blue. While Whyte and Hollingsworth employ those conventionally thought to belong to the Renaissance, the stern countenances which figure so heavily in each work give these once-opulent scenes a sense of divine solemnity.           Though its publications centered on the Black experience in America, JPC’s collectors didn’t hesitate to incorporate paintings by non-Americans. Natives of Haiti figure especially prominently: Fritz Rock’s The Market Scene, for instance, renders a scene of hustle and bustle in his hometown of Port-au-Prince. Its buyers and sellers are rendered economically with a sharp-edge geometry that can start to feel cubist—each figure seems to tumble into the next. (Its clutter of bodies recalls the nightlife paintings of Archibald Motley, an artist represented in the DuSable Museum’s permanent collection.)           Conversely, Philton LaTortue’s Terrestrial Paradise series encloses a profoundly calm instant in a populous jungle. That LaTortue, another Port-au-Prince native, was labeled a “naif” (“naive” in English) artist by a prize he won in 1980 is oddly patronizing—he was formally educated at great length, including at Paris’s prestigious Academie des Beaux Arts. JPC recognized artists like LaTortue not under the condescending banner of “naive artists” or “outsider artists” but as no-strings-attached “artists,” bringing long-deserved recognition to names who were often overlooked.         Susan Simmons’s 1983 canvas of JPC’s high-rise on Michigan Avenue brings to mind its unparalleled achievements: it was the first African American-owned building in downtown Chicago and remains today the only Chicago high-rise designed by a Black architect. JPC’s effects in the media world were similarly groundbreaking, resonating with African Americans en masse like nothing else since. Though its headquarters has since been converted into an apartment complex, the JPC sign—which endorses its two flagship publications—remains, attesting to the continued legacy of Black greatness that the company embodied. Charles Venkatesh Young is a Chicago-based journalist of the arts interested in fusing art theory with bodily experience. He has contributed to the New Art Examiner, Chicago Reader, Newcity, and Whitehot Magazine.  

The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869–1939 Wrightwood 659, May 2–July 26, 2025 This exhibition chronicles the evolution of the meaning of the word “homosexual” from its genesis in 1869 until its usage in 1939, which is not much different than the word’s meaning today. This is shown via works of art collected from all around the world that illustrate how the term developed through the kind of images that artists made at a particular time. Strictly speaking, this show is more of a history lesson than an art exhibition, and it is open to varied interpretations depending upon the orientation of the viewer. With that in mind, the New Art Examiner has assigned three different writers to review it. Paul Moreno, our New York editor, looks at it from the point of view of a practicing Catholic gay man. (His visit to Chicago was made possible by Tom Tunney and the Ann Sather Restaurants who underwrote his transportation.) Annette LePique examines it as a woman familiar with the LGBTQIA+ community, and, in early July, Andrew Hart Benson will respond to the show from the perspective of a nonbinary member of the LGBTQIA+ community. We hope these three views will give the reader an appreciation for the depth of content present in this show.   A Word is Worth a Thousand Pitures by Paul Moreno         The title of this exhibition, The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869–1939,” demands to be parsed. The conceit of the show is that in 1869 the term “homosexual” was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny, and as it was disseminated, an identity was born. The homosexual (adj.) was one thing—a word that might be used to describe a singular act or a fleeting moment or a passing fancy—a concept we knew about from the ancient Greeks, at least. But the Homosexual (n.) was something altogether different and, for some, troubling. This was a person whose very nature, whose repetition of homosexual acts, whose identity, was now named and othered. This exhibition looks at these others, combing the history and margins where they lived, often in plain sight, and attempts to re-create a very concentrated tableau of the art this intellectually rich margin left us. The show points out that the artists involved were not the first to experience homosexuality but were the first to have their work subjected to the power of that word. Further, work that preceded the invention of this word was now viewable through a new lens that gave that work a new appeal to some and a new stigma to others.           The challenge of a show like this is that unlike one dedicated to an artist, a movement, an era, or a genre in art history, the criteria for inclusion become quite vast. Even an exhibition dedicated to landscape, which could include artists as different as Caspar David Friedrich and Joan Mitchell, would still have some established qualities of “landscape” by which to estimate the relevance of selected works. In this case, there is not so much a list of qualities as much as a keeping an eye out for a vibe. Is the artist or the subject of the work doing something, blatantly or tacitly, to evoke a kind of knowing? The show contains over 300 objects, many by artists you very likely have never heard of, that were gathered to illustrate something that is not at all subtle but by its very nature, is not obvious. The show almost feels like a dance floor crowded with queers, where, if you are a queer, you at once feel safe in the panoply of faces and bodies, and when you leave, there are things that amalgamated indistinctly into the aforementioned vibe. But there will likely be that handful of faces, bodies, moments, that become indelible and fill your mind with thoughts and fantasies. Here are a few of mine.   *     *     *           This painting was easy to walk past in a passageway surrounded by larger works, yet, in an almost humorous moment, it caught my eye and has since remained in my mind. Four male figures in pale blue-gray habits are paired off and engaged in sexual acts. The environment is a barely lit room, but the cluster of men are illuminated, almost glowing. One pair is concentrated in their activity, and both their heads are severely bowed, while in the other pair, one attentively watches the first couple and one looks into the darkness. Though the chiaroscuro of the work is not unusual for the 1700s, the quickness and vagueness of the brushwork feels quite modern. It is in some places hard to understand what exactly is being depicted—for example, is the platform one pair occupies a table or a bed? And what is the golden explosion of light upon it? The head and face of the friar to the furthest left is a blob of light and shadow. Still there is a fussiness of details: the erotically large sandals that rest in the foreground, a toppled jug and goblet, an open book that appears to have fallen on the floor. But there is the tidy stack of books on a stool, and the shelf at the top of the painting contain a sparse collection of vessels.         The wall text accompanying the picture reads, “This scene from the first decades of the 1700s satirizes the monastic vow of celibacy—while underscoring how contemporary assumptions about monks in monasteries have a long prehistory.” I have to imagine this painting was shocking at the time of its creation. It is still a bit shocking now. I would posit though that the shock is not from the sex depicted, as I would also speculate that viewers of the show have seen such things depicted elsewhere, if not maybe even seen them live and in person. The tantalization is generated from

Malice and the Phallus Robert Polidoro at 1969 Gallery, March 21–April 26, 2025 by Charles Venkatesh Young Robert Polidoro’s Oh the Places You’ll Go, an April show at Tribeca’s 1969 Gallery felt something like a temporally disjointed tennis match. Polidoro’s propensity for referencing the fiercely intellectual and utopian “isms” of the past few centuries (all stemming, in one way or another, from big bad Neoclassicism) is constantly belied by a contemporary sense of petulant banality. “We must make the world anew!” he seems to say—before lamenting his inability to make his bed. Coming from Polidoro, a painter of pretty pictures, this conceit is invigoratingly fresh; aesthetic dogmas seem to realize their own multiplicity, resulting in landscapes as sleek and sharp as they are eclectic.           Polidoro’s industrial subject matter seems to place him within the realm of the precisionists: pipes with void-like mouths, out of which small water drops fall tantalizingly. Yet the beauty of a hardline precisionist painting like those by Charles Sheeler—which stems from the sense that the industrial society depicted is completely self-sustaining, an economic cogency rendered in aesthetic terms—is absent from Polidoro’s work. His paintings are pathetically impotent, evoking, if anything, the inability of the artist and Western society to conquer nature—or, for that matter, to master their own bewildering desires. That is not to say that Polidoro is a nihilist: his canvases are far too serene to fit into such a package. Polidoro wants us to pick a lane: either the optimistic aesthete who believes in art’s power to effect a social good or the down-and-out realist who scarcely believes in paint’s ability to illustrate something beyond itself. But he makes each ideological package seem ridiculous once we’ve considered its implications. The aesthete realizes the true nature of his pipe dream, and the realist is nagged at by the canvases’ latent (but never obvious) beauty.           This is to say nothing of the experience of viewing Polidoro’s work–the way their craftsman’s charm allures you at first glance before their blatantly phallic cynosures render you embarrassed. It doesn’t take much imagination to read sex organs and erogenous zones in the tubular pipes—always slightly dripping!—and bulbous hills of each painting. They hit you like a dirty joke, yet in the same breath manage to encapsulate the lives and deaths of great empires, the struggles between nations, the constant interpersonal struggle that seems to be the tragedy of human life–but via a juvenile illustration of sexual frustration. To say that Polidoro does a lot with a little would be a gross understatement: the ideological heights achieved by his bare bones celestial abstractions make fertile land of a pulpy aesthetic bog.           Viewers come away from Polidoro’s work without any aesthetic revelations, but they are vastly more aware of their present position. He makes you run on a hamster wheel for the duration of your viewing, forcing you to confront both the ridiculousness of early-twentieth century utopian art movements and your complete inability to disavow the aesthetic frameworks to which they gave rise. The upshot is oddly affirmative: if Western art is built on delusional thinking, Polidoro cautiously reasons, at least it’s made some pretty mistakes. Charles Venkatesh Young is a Chicago-based journalist of the arts interested in fusing art theory with bodily experience. He has contributed to the New Art Examiner, Chicago Reader, Newcity, and Whitehot Magazine.

Dorota Gawęda and Egle Kulkokaitė: -Lalia The Renaissance Society May 3–4, 2025 By John Thomure For the Renaissance Society’s latest installment of their performance art series “Intermissions” Giulia Terminio performed an expanded monologue titled -Lalia, which was written and conceptualized by Dorota Gawęda and Egle Kulkokaitė. Terminio channeled the Slavic demonic entity, Południca, recounting a poetically sinister monologue. The performance took place simultaneously in twin locations, occurring on a specially built stage as well as in a small theater as a livestream. This was the primary conceit of the piece—the audience was encouraged to flit between the fourth-floor gallery space and a small screening room on the third floor in order to have a unique experience and interpretation of the multimedia performance. By interweaving the languages of theater and film, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė approximate the digitized existence which dominates our culture. The line between material and online reality continues to grow thin. The audience was caught in flux between the two experiences of the Terminio in person and the Terminio on screen.         The stage was divided in two, separated by a narrow alley with the audience viewing the performance in the round. One side of the stage had a blank white wall equipped with utilitarian coat hangers and a simple wooden stool. On the opposite side, the wall was a deep maroon and adorned with a large convex mirror at its center. Terminio crawled from the hallway into the gallery, dressed in ragged brown pants and a white button-up shirt. Her face, painted red with makeup exaggerating her features, bore a childish grin corrupted by her yellow cat-like contact lenses. Her appearance and movement immediately evoked the Południca as a droning soundscape rang out a forbidding, dissonant harmony. Terminio clutched a camera in her hands and set it into different positions and angles. She launched into an erratic pantomime as a voiceover monologue began recanting parables, riddles, and vignettes of ecological disaster.           Terminio’s movements descended from diverse performing practices like Butoh, Bouffon, and cinéma vérité. The camera transformed from a passive viewer to an active one, sometimes creating impossible situations for Terminio to perform in. Particularly notable was when she set the camera in an overhead position and began performing while lying on her back. From the live audience perspective, she took on an insectile posture, struggling on her back with her arms flailing in the air. Yet, from the livestream video perspective Terminio appeared upright, defying gravity in a clumsy fashion. These two versions happened at the same time, though, depending on the perspective, generated two disparate interpretations. We did not see the objective truth of an action, but a subjective manipulation. This is an on-going issue of our digitally mediated existence—events online, on the news, or told through word of mouth come with biases, redactions, and ideologies attached. Gawęda and Kulbokaitė took a Brechtian approach to addressing this fact by letting the mediation process play out in front of the audience. The meditation itself was obvious and therefore transformed into a critical commentary of how ecological evidence of climate change is presented to us.           The monologue was compiled from a variety of sources and alternated between English and Polish, all structured around the refrain: “Drive your plough over the bones of the dead.” 1 Repetition is key in the monologue with stories being told and then told again immediately afterwards. There was a cyclical nature to the stories orbiting around the constant interplay of the Earth and humanity. The Południca, according to the monologue, appears to “stop people and ask them difficult questions to engage them in conversation. If anyone fails to answer a question or tries to change the subject, she will cut off their head or strike them with illness.” 2 Only those who are honest survive the encounter. However, can we be honest about the impending ecological disasters and incremental meteorological shifts which will lead to mass displacement, infrastructural decay, and agricultural devastation? 3 Furthermore, is art equipped to really comment on such a perplexing, nuanced, and globally relevant issue?             Unfortunately, the performance of -Lalia I attended was plagued by technical issues which undermined Gawęda and Kulbokaitė’s intentions of critically examining ecology and media. Early on, Terminio accidentally knocked the camera from its tripod resulting in the lens shattering and the camera battery flying across the room. She pressed on and deserves credit for her commitment to the performance, folding this mistake into her mischievous, trickster persona. Yet, this contributed to a larger issue as the camera eventually died and effectively neutered the livestream element.           While sitting in the screening room and watching the livestream image cut to black, I was confused initially. The music and voiceover continued uninterrupted, obscuring that this was an unintended disruption. After all, this could be a dramatic aesthetic choice. Considering the existential element of any conversation about climate change and the impact of our industrial societies, the cut to black could become significant whether as a call to disconnect from the mediated reality and confront the material reality in front of us or as a symbol of the meaningless void which serves as the backdrop to life on Earth. Yet, after several minutes it became clear that this was not a dramatic choice. I left the screening room and headed to the fourth floor, but I noticed that others in the screening room were confused as to whether to stay for some big reveal or follow me out the door.         Now, mistakes happen. They are part of the excitement of performance art in a way. Mistakes are par for the course; however, this means that any institution hosting a live performance must have some way of coping with these accidents. It was disappointing that the Renaissance Society did not do more to direct people from the now defunct screening

Charles Burnett: Killer of Sheep Gene Siskel Film Center, April 18-30, 2025 By John Thomure The new 4K restoration of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep is essential viewing for any lover of American cinema. Burnett’s debut feature was selected as one of the fifty films to initially be preserved by the Library of Congress. It has been lauded by critics as historically and aesthetically significant since its premiere in 1978. However, like many of Burnett’s films, it struggled to find distribution due to his extensive use of jazz and blues standards culled from his family’s record collection. Unable to pay the copyright claims for the music, the film was unfortunately trapped in limbo for decades. Killer of Sheep is not solely important for its portrayal of life in Watts County, Los Angeles, during the 1970s, but also for Burnett’s communal approach to production. His aim was to empower his community to represent and express themselves. The extras in one scene would hold boom mics or lighting equipment in others. Adopting these strategies and methods from Italian Neorealists like Robertio Rossalini, Burnett treated filmmaking as a tool for social change. Rossalini’s films like Rome, Open City, and Paisan were shot on location in the streets, used non-actors, and displayed scenes of the struggles facing working class people in post-fascist Italy. Killer of Sheep emerged from the same impulse nearly two decades later. Burnett’s juggernaut debut feature film is just as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.         Killer of Sheep has an elliptical structure which primarily follows Stan, his wife, his teenage son, and his young daughter. Their stories are interspersed with vignettes of neighbors, friends, and other community members. Overall, it paints a portrait of the people and places Burnett grew up alongside. He cut through to the reality of their situation by juxtaposing the strain of adulthood with fun, chaotic, and lackadaisical depictions of childhood.         The film opens with a flashback of an elder son being chastised by his parents for not defending his younger brother. The camera lingers on the boy’s weeping face (a running motif throughout the film). This culminates in a stern slap delivered from the father and he instructs his son that once he and his mother die, his brother will be the only person left for him in the world. It is a stark introduction in its unflinching honesty and establishes the central thesis of the movie: family is the only thing you really have in life.         Burnett transitions to a shot of Stan drinking coffee in his kitchen, unable to sleep due to increasing anxiety and depression. Stan trudges through life in a daze. In contrast to everyone around him who is expressive and vibrant, Stan is muted and restrained in his actions and speech. His wife laments that he used to smile and be vivacious. He hasn’t been the same since taking his current job at the abattoir. The grueling work certainly might be wearing him down, but really it seems like society itself is grinding him down to the bone.         Stan’s weakening resolve drags everyone around him further down, as we see his wife desperately attempt to connect with her husband again. Their most romantic interaction of the film is the most revealing and tragic. In the darkened living room, husband and wife slow dance together. No dialogue is uttered between the two, only unreciprocated glances and awkwardly loving touches. You can feel the chemistry and understanding in their familiarity with each other’s bodies. Yet, the gestures of romances are executed mechanically like a routine. There is no more passion. These two are grasping at the memories of their love. It is heartbreaking.           Killer of Sheep portrays numerous perspectives of adult life. Some people like Stan work hard while others consider work to be a sucker’s bet. Instead, they are willing to do anything to survive and get ahead. In one instance, we see Stan approached by some acquaintances who proposition him to take part in a robbery. Stan rejects their advances until his wife angrily interrupts them. She chastises them for their duplicity. The two men counter that they live in a duplicitous society. They aren’t bad men; they are just ahead of the curve; they’ve adapted to their environment. Who are we to judge how another person survives in America? This cutthroat attitude towards life doesn’t emerge out of a vacuum. It is a lesson learned in childhood–which Burnett reveals throughout the film as well.           The most iconic scene of adolescence shows some children leaping overhead from one roof to the next. They soar above it all, seemingly not weighed down like the adults around them. Killer of Sheep documents childhood as a time of great joy, pain, and boredom. Proof positive is a moment when the boys build up a tower from discarded planks pulled off an abandoned building. The boys sit on a wall and hurl rocks at their construction as music swells and a turn of the twentieth-century jazz standard proudly sings “That’s America, to me!” This fleeting moment displays Burnett’s mastery of film editing as it puts into stark contrast the work ethic and initiative the boys show in their casual recreation with the desolate future they face growing up in the United States.         The boys find all manner of ways to pass the time, fighting, biking around aimlessly, and participating in poorly judged and ill-conceived handstand contests. At times, fun gives way to fear or pain such as a moment early on when a group of boys have a battle in an abandoned lot. The scene opens with the frame cut in half by a rotted wooden board, an errant hand gripping it in place. A mischievous face peeks out, ducking the rocks hurled at him. Other boys join in a makeshift

Rhona Hoffman and Carl Hammer Galleries: Fifty-year Stalwarts of Chicago’s gallery scene close shop. Chicago has lost two galleries this spring that were part of the backbone of Chicago’s contemporary art scene for the last fifty years. Our editorial advisor, Tom Mullaney had compiled a brief history of each gallery summarizing its contribution to Chicago’s cultural milieu. Happily, both galleries will continue online to help nourish Chicago’s art community going forward. Rhona Hoffman Gallery: The Voice of Late Twentieth CenturyContemporary Art in Chicago.         On the evening of March 14, 2025, close to 200 attendees came to view “Not Just A Pretty Picture”, the final opening at Rhona Hoffman’s Gallery at 1711 West Chicago Avenue.         Museum directors, curators, artists and collectors had come to pay tribute to Chicago’s top female director on her gallery’s 50th anniversary—half a century of exhibiting a whole host of the leading artists of the twentieth century.           Rhona founded the gallery with her then husband, Donald Young, in 1976 and then went solo in 1983. Their artistic roster in the first year included Sol LeWitt (also present in her final show) Donald Judd, and Robert Ryman. The next year included the same three artists along with Gilbert and George, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Richard Tuttle. It was an auspicious start.         Over the years, Rhona represented a galaxy of art stars. For the gallery’s 40th anniversary, she published a 513-page catalog of the current and one-time artists she had represented. Featured on the list were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Dawoud Bey, Julia Fish, Leon Golub, Jacob Hashimoto, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Martin Puryear, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Michael Rakowitz, Fres Sandback, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Nancy Spero, Carrie Mae Weems, and Kehinde Wiley. In the decade since, she has taken on artists Derrick Adams, Brian Maguire, and Amanda Williams.           Rhona has maintained loyal and long-standing relations with her artists. She told this writer that the only artist she had a difficult time with was Scott Burton.         She has been an ultimate art world survivor due to a variety of factors: a solid grounding in art history, her openness to a broad range of art genres, and a very keen eye.         Rhona is quick to dispel any notion that she is exiting the art world. She told Ginny Van Alyea of Chicago Gallery News, “Segue is a much better term as it implies transition within the gallery’s program.”         While she recently turned 91, Rhona intends to curate shows and sell art from her home, according to gallery director, Elise Siegenthaler. Chicago will not lose her vast wealth of knowledge and expertise,and she has donated several paintings and the gallery’s archive to the Art Institute of Chicago. CARL HAMMER: Pioneer Advocate of Outsider Art by Tom Mullaney         When Rhona Hoffman opened her gallery in 1976, Carl Hammer had been teaching English at Evanston High School through the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam War. However, he and his wife would take road trips on weekends in search of folk or “grass roots” art. After several years, they decided to open a gallery.         So, in 1979, twelve years before the founding of Intuit Gallery (now a museum), they opened Hammer and Hammer/American Folk Art in the Breskin Building at 620 N. Michigan Avenue, home to a number of art galleries including Richard Gray. Hammer moved west to an historic building at 742 N. Wells Street and was part of the original 16 galleries that constituted the River North Gallery District. He remained in that district until he closed the gallery this April after 45 years         The term “Outsider” wasn’t used yet and was referred to by a variety of terms, for example, folk art and self-taught art. In 1972, Roger Cardinale, a professor at the University of Kent coined the phrase “Outsider Art” as a synonym for art brut. Since then, the term has come into use to mean art produced by an untrained artist and/or an artist using highly unusual materials and techniques.           Hammer thought of himself as an outsider, having had no formal art training. He mounted exhibits by noted Outsider artists as Henry Darger, Lee Godie, and graphic artist Chris Ware. He had a hard time selling such work in the early years but, eventually, the art world followed.         In his second year, Hammer was invited to show at Art Expo. He filled his booth with work by the newly discovered, self-taught artist Bill Traylor. He sold nearly everything by the artist, who had become an international art star.           But he told Chicago Gallery News that “art fairs have replaced the older notion that clients establish loyal relationships with galleries and purchase work because they identify with the aesthetic of a particular gallery.” That is Hammer’s preferred model. He not only showed outsider art but also represented more academic artists such as sculptor Neil Goodman, Mary Lou Zelazny, and Vanessa German.         Hammer had inherent curiosity, combined with affection for artists and collectors. The genuine fellowship that he and his gallery director of 37 years Yolanda Farias developed made visiting the gallery a particularly pleasant experience. No wonder Hammer survived for more than four decades. Hammer’s gallery records have been donated to the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. Tom Mullaney is an editorial advisor to the New Art Examiner. He served as managing editor of the magazine from 2016 to 2020.        

Life after Death: The case for Donald Judd A sculptor’s appreciation. by Neil Goodman Along with Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt, and Carl Andre, Donald Judd (among others) is known as one of the defining pillars of minimalist sculptors of his generation (1928–1994). Although originally New York City-based, he began looking elsewhere in the 1970s, principally to expand the scale of his work independent of the incumbrancers of a more traditional gallery or museum setting. Beginning in 1973, Judd started buying properties in the little-known West Texas town of Marfa, and by the time of his death, owned 300,000 acres there as well as numerous buildings, including a massive former army artillery shed. Several of these buildings also house monumental installations by his contemporaries, including Dan Flavin, Richard Irwin, John Chamberlain, and others. Initially funded by the Dia Art Foundation, current Judd administration at Marfa is supported by both the Judd and Chinati Foundations. Collectively, they are the caretakers that oversee both the exterior landscape and buildings that encompass Judd’s studio, home, workshop, and outdoor and indoor installations. A complete overview on Judd’s work in Marfa would be more suited for a book, as his sculptures and properties are one of our countries most massive permanent installations devoted largely to the work of one single artist.           Marfa’s inconvenient location is equally its charm (getting there is half the fun), as it is a rite of passage. At best, it is a three-hour drive from El Paso, which also includes going through a U.S. border patrol. The topography has a lunar quality—bleak and desolate—but with a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western charm. Another significant landmark within proximity would include Big Bend National Park. Marfa is also known for the Marfa lights, flickering orbs that hover over the nighttime landscape about nine miles out of town—their origins unknown. Earlier claims to fame include the 1956 filming of Giant, with James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as more recently There Will be Blood and the Coen brother’s movie No Country for Old Men.           I was always curious about Marfa, although my interest in Judd was more historical—as a textbook page turner on the long chapter of contemporary art. I found Judd’s boxes rather monotonous, and if they reflected the period, they seemed quite unable to transcend it. They were the personification of serious art, and as rigid and emotionless as the material they were made of. Growing up in Northwest Indiana, stacked steel boxes were part and parcel to the landscape, hence the Judd boxes seemed right at home with me, yet of limited aesthetic interest. They were of their time, and unlike the work of Richard Serra, seemed unable to surpass their generation.           First thoughts are not always second thoughts, and if I was initially tepid concerning Judd’s work, the impact of walking into his massive indoor installation was a quick game changer. Housed in a large, vaulted, glass-encased pavilion (formerly an artillery shed), it consisted of one hundred fabricated aluminum boxes, each 41 by 51 by 72 inches. The sculptures were at once dimensionally consistent, yet subtly distinct, as they were bisected by slight shifts of internal planes diagonally, horizontally and vertically. If they first seemed identical, they were far from it—as their differences counterbalanced their similarities and time spent among them amplified their uniqueness. The spacing between the boxes was equally considered, and the distance from each other was measurable, repeatable and consistent. Paralleling the pleasure of looking was walking through the massive installation, as you were always near and far, close to each box, yet incrementally further from others. Light from the massive windows created another dimension, as sculptures, depending on their position and time of day, could be either brightly illuminated or enveloped in shadows. The exterior landscape was a vital partner in the experience of the sculptures, as you were always looking out and in, and the flat desolate west Texas landscape was the quintessential counterpoint to the enormous installation.           If the Chinati installation was the realization of a complete and succinct vision, the “Block” at the Judd Foundation showed a much broader picture of Judd’s work and domestic life. Located in what was once a two-story house with two large hangers (a former office of the U.S. Army) and surrounding grounds, Judd’s sculptural opus is represented through early, middle, and late works. The culmination of the “Block” is a breath-taking installation of several of the wall-mounted vertical boxes juxtaposed with aluminum floor cubes. If they had seemed overly familiar in museum settings over the years, they are reinvigorated in this context and, in my view, a perfect pairing of his life’s work. The compound also contains Judd’s massive library with his collection of more than 13,000 books. The spartan yet considered living quarters are a revealing snapshot of Judd’s domestic life and the objects and artifacts that he both collected and lived with. Equally, the relationship between buildings and courtyards is clearly thought out and creates a symmetry between interior and exterior space. As with any comprehensive body of work, some sculptures are preferred over others. Yet taken in mass, the “Block” powerfully clarifies my understanding of his work and the ideas which generated his sculptures.           Paralleling this accomplishment are corollary questions regarding a project as massive and enormous as Judd’s in Marfa. Can smaller more succinct installations or objects communicate with power, or is bigger always better? Secondly, what is the responsibility of passing forward one artist’s work to the next generation for eternal care and maintenance? Although these questions remain just that, they are easily applicable to many of today’s most prominent contemporary artists as well as the generational future of Judd’s work at Marfa.         Although one can hold differing thoughts simultaneously, there is something about going to Marfa that conjoins them. It is a

Offline with the Art Right by Erik Orup I.D.E.A.Informed Discussion Engagement Area From time to time, the New Art Examiner gets a piece that is not strictly a review. This forum allows for an individual author to expound on a certain topic that is related to the visual arts without the constraint of a formal article or review.   A few weeks before Donald Trump entered the Oval Office, the hosts of the Red Scare podcast wanted the audience at the School of Visual Arts Theatre in Manhattan to know that they were drunk. Anna Khachiyan explained why she and her co-host, Dasha Nekrasova, were qualified to comment on contemporary art. “As art hoes, you’re in touch with artists. You’re in touch with collectors, art handlers,” she said.         The duo had joined art critic Dean Kissick to discuss his Harper’s Magazine essay, “The Painted Protest.” Its title recalled Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book savaging the art critics of his day, “The Painted Word,” itself excerpted in Harper’s.         While Wolfe took aim at an establishment top-heavy with theory at the expense of art, Kissick speaks into a void of serious experimental thought. In his telling, contemporary art—art delivered from modernism into the enchanted labyrinth of postmodernism—had reached a cul-de-sac. What seemed like an endless universe of possibilities had shrunk to tedious, identity-driven narratives, motivated by various flavors of indigenous nostalgia, dully recapitulated by descriptions on the gallery wall.         For Kissick, a few creators—Rember Yahuarcani and Susanne Wenger—had blown the windows off with new, hybrid forms—showed you the stars again. Most, though, stuck to the script. “I have seen too many shows which have the same basic premise,” he told the Red Scare girls. “It doesn’t feel that urgent”—Dasha took drags off her vape.             I showed up minutes before the panel started, hustling up Eighth Avenue from Penn Station. New York is the best, perhaps the only place offline where I could assess the “Art Right,” first at the SVA Theatre, and later at the National Futurist Party in Brooklyn.         On the SVA Theatre stage, there was a lot more provocation than thoroughgoing right-wing sentiment or, for Kissick, what seemed to be the real enemy—formal conservatism.         Anna of the Red Scare girls pushed back against the claim that social justice ideology has stultified art, linking it instead to competition on the Internet and social media.         The art world, Kissick said, is no longer a source of guiding narratives; today it’s “downstream of Internet discourse” on social justice. He comes close to calling Louis Fratino kitsch. He reassures his audience that no great white male artists are waiting in the wings.           Kissick’s salvos against nostalgia seem rather wedded to his own nostalgia, though not for some variant of western traditionalism or high modernist discipline. He misses the contemporary scene of fifteen years ago—a freer and easier postmodernism, too inventive to settle for pastiche, too expansive and questioning for solemn adherence to progressive verities.         It’s of a piece with the vision of architect Robert Venturi, for whom “messy vitality” bested “obvious unity.” “Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have been acknowledged,” Venturi wrote in 1966, setting himself against Mies van der Rohe and other high priests of architectural modernism.         In 1970s Las Vegas, spiritual antecedent to the grotesquely commercial, dopamine-inflaming Internet of today, he found vitality in what he called an “architecture of inclusion.” Visually discordant signs and casinos hang together in an order embracing seeming opposites—”continuity and discontinuity, going and stopping, clarity and ambiguity, cooperation and competition, the community and rugged individualism.”         Venturi contrasts the radical break—Le Corbusier’s Paris Plan, or what he doesn’t cite, the Italian city of Latina, created by the fascists after they drained the Pontine Marshes—with his “more tolerant way” to architectural revolution—“to question how we look at things.”         The Harper’s talk opened with an AI-generated song about Kissick: mildly funny, postmodern play, a rhizome of the Internet that found its way to the stage. Another, slightly edgy choice for the listener to “dirtbag left” podcasts; another tendency to be tolerated, Karl Popper’s paradox under no great strain. *****         Through the cloud of sidewalk cigarette smoke, one train, then another, then a short night walk to an undisclosed location in Brooklyn. The kids, and many few middle-aged adults, were playing with ideas.             Deep inside a church, underneath a balustrade, Rachel Haywire was hosting the National Futurist Party’s Manifesto Salon. It doubled as the pre-launch party for Haywire’s new Chelsea art gallery, Fiume—” a Futurist space heralding in a new rising class of artists for the regime ahead.”         Before I showed up, a Fiume artist, Canadian painter and X shit-poster Giovanni Pennachietti, delivered remarks by video, the projector magnifying his fez to the size of a clerestory window.           Drinks, food, a few dozen people. More drinks meant more courage to read manifestos from the balustrade, sometimes in pinched tones, at other times in bursts of thunder. On average, the crowd was further to the right than the audience at the SVA Theatre, or perhaps just less beholden to residual late-20th-century pieties. Less white, more autistic; still, not so far removed from the Red Scare universe.         Writer Nic Dolinger declaimed humorously on a few themes, including the annexation of Greenland. He compared the party to an early punk show where everyone who attended went on to found a band.           If there’s visceral and deeply felt nostalgia in this world, it’s for an older era of right-wing creativity online. On a more conceptual and theoretical level, there’s a search for grounding in