After decades of teaching, Richard Stern opts for a change of scenery.
Author Archives: Mark Swartz
Posted inArts & Culture
Creeping Menace
Sarah Sze: Many a Slip at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through August 1 By Mark Swartz If Sarah Sze’s shopping list had fallen into your hands a few months ago, you might have thought twice about returning it to her–for her own good. Razor blades, pushpins, sewing shears, pills, and other potentially hazardous materials […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Touching the Scars
Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century at the Smart Museum, through April 18 By Mark Swartz Here in America we like to think the 60s were a big deal because some students grew their hair long, took drugs, and burned the flag. France looks back in awe at the same […]
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Art People: Willie Doherty imagines Ireland
Bord Failte, Ireland’s tourism agency, works hard to project a romantic image to potential visitors. It’s been so successful that tourism has surpassed agriculture as the country’s leading industry. The comforts of Guinness stout, the bouncy charm of the folk music, and the hundred shades of green that make up the unspoiled landscape combine to […]
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Loving Portraits
Tom of Finland at TBA, through March 27 David Seltzer: Sex Tales and Other Unrelated Matters at Lallak + Tom, through March 27 By Mark Swartz Tom of Finland used to strip naked before drawing, and as he drew he played with himself. Today he’s celebrated not for ambidexterity but for contributing to a particular […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Forward Into the Past
New Artists Old Techniques at Schneider, through February 13 Homage/The Vintage Photograph at Yello, through January 31 By Mark Swartz The 11 artists in these two shows have all found something useful in photography’s warehouse of obsolete technology. It’s as if they’d discovered old cameras and other equipment on a shelf in the corner, dusted […]
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In His Own Worlds
Paul Thek at the Arts Club of Chicago, through January 16 By Mark Swartz Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Paul Thek belonged to the first generation of artists to see photographs of the earth from outer space. And though nobody could have been surprised to see a blue marble adrift in vast emptiness, the impact […]
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Chi Lives: more than just window dressing
For the last 16 years, Marb Jones has designed the window displays for Tiffany & Co. on Michigan Avenue. An artist whose medium is retail merchandise, Jones’s job has essentially stayed the same through the years and after the store’s recent move across the street. “I make you smile as you walk by,” she says. […]
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Guy Things
Buffalo Hunting: Images of Shame and Power at NFA Space, through February 1 Spaced Out: A Voyage Into Sci-Fi Art at Steppenwolf Theatre, through January 24 By Mark Swartz “Do you think it’s misogynistic?” Iain Muirhead asked me as we stood amid the stereotypically male iconography of “Buffalo Hunting,” an all-male art exhibit he helped […]
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Rebuilding the Material World
Envisioning the Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through April 5 By Mark Swartz As part of its fall series of public programs, the Museum of Contemporary Art is offering a workshop titled “Using Contemporary Art to Stimulate Creativity and Innovation.” The instructor, Gerald Haman, is a consultant who works with Fortune 500 companies […]
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Art People: Brett Bloom’s special dispensations
When he worked as a messenger for Facets Multimedia, Brett Bloom was responsible for stocking the theater’s dispensers around the city with film schedules. “I hated that part of the job,” he confesses. But he also saw how the dispensers, when filled, created a point of informal street-level interaction for passersby, and as an artist […]
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Deadened Kids
Altered States: Alcohol and Other Drugs in America at the Chicago Historical Society, through September 21 Domestic Bliss: Family Life in American Art at the Terra Museum of American Art, through June 22 By Mark Swartz I saw school groups at both the Chicago Historical Society’s “Altered States” and the Terra Museum’s “Domestic Bliss,” and […]
Posted inMusic
Dissecting Dylan
Greil Marcus Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (Henry Holt) The little bag of honey-roasted peanuts I got on a recent flight to California bore the slogan A Symbol of Freedom. I was especially spooked by this because I was reading Greil Marcus’s Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, a book nominally about a Bob […]
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Torn Between Two Cultures
Dilemma at the Gary Marks Gallery, through April 26 By Mark Swartz At the beginning of the century, Asian art represented either a pathway for collectors interested in cultivating different sensibilities or a resource for European and American modern artists searching for novel techniques. The differences that gave rise to such impulses have diminished since […]