Art Institute of Chicago

A spectacular museum - the best I've visited on this trip so far.

Chagall - "America Windows" (1975-77) - the panels represent music, painting, literature, architecture, theatre and dance

It was a couple of days ago that I visited, and what's most endured has been the trio of Magrittes that were on display: "Time Transfixed" (1938) or, in the French, "La duree poignarder", apparently "ongoing time stabbed by a dagger" and indeed appearing like a stab in its full dimensions; the Magritte-motif remix "On the Threshold of Liberty" (1937); and a final one which was less familiar, "The Banquet" (1958), but/and which has most lingered, glaringly. In fact, surrealism in general was particularly well represented, with strong examples from all its best exponents.

Dali - "A Chemist Lifting with Extreme Caution the Cuticle of a Grand Piano" (1936)

Yves Tanguy - "Untitled" (1940)

Paul Delvaux - "The Lamps" (1937). I don't know much about Delvaux, but the couple of his on display were striking - I remember being quite captivated by one of his several years ago in Vienna too

More generally, there was a heap of good stuff by the European moderns; in addition to the above (not even mentioning a great de Chirico), there was a trio of Kandinskys, a couple of Chaim Soutine's (including another landscape at Cagnes), an interesting pointillist Klee ("Sunset", 1930), some intriguing Ernst Kirchners, sculpture and paintings by Giacometti, iconic Van Gogh, etc.

Kandinsky - "Painting with Green Center" (1913)

Giacometti - "Diego Seated in the Studio" (1950), which (a) reminded me of Bacon and (b) made me realise I'm drawn to representations of tortured human figures!

Van Gogh - "Self Portrait" (1887)

Really, the breadth and quality of what was on show was nearly overwhelming. The impressionists are very well represented too, including multiple examples of all Monet's most famous subjects - haystacks, water lilies, and bridges (and other buildings near water) ... my liking and admiration for him just keeps growing. The numerous Degas pieces are almost incidental in this setting, as good as they are.

Monet - "Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)" (1890-91)

The hits keep on coming. Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte - 1884" (1884-86) is vastly more impressive, not least because of sheer size, when seen in the actuality; Grant Wood's "American Gothic" (1930) to a lesser extent but still; and still more Georgia O'Keeffe, of course. A great Jackson Pollock ("Number 17A", 1948), and heading into the contemporary period, Gerhard Richter and some very charged Cindy Sherman.

Cindy Sherman - "Untitled #87" (1981). I don't know if I've ever seen any of hers that were as sheerly erotic as the ones here.

And of course, there was a lot of remarkable stuff by artists who I'd never heard of before, though if I'm honest, in this company, it was probably harder than it otherwise would have been for them to pierce through.

Hughie Lee-Smith - "Desert Forms" (1957). Actually, I have come across him before, but only very recently, in Boston.

Charles Sheeler - "The Artist Looks at Nature" (1943)

Eric Fischl - "Slumber Party" (1983)

Amy Sherald - "A clear unspoken granted magic" (2017)

One disappointment: "Nighthawks" was on loan as part of a travelling exhibition.

Downstate (Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago)

Convicted paedophiles who've served their sentences but can never again lead normal lives due to their social pariah-dom and the restrictions on their movement and access to online communication, victims claiming absolute authority in relation to their experiences and factual recollections, the extent and limits of responsibility for one's actions and for one's recovery from trauma - tricky stuff, which Downstate takes on head-first in staging these as issues in messy tension with each other, without particularly playing to conventional social outrage at such acts. I found it thought provoking and well-performed, but a bit dramatically unsatisfying, although I wonder whether that last is because the play is a bit unfocused, or rather just that it doesn't present clear answers.

Hamilton (CIBC Theatre, Chicago)

So good, so much fun and filled with terrific and varied songs. Maybe its greatest trick was to make me feel that its depiction was, in some meaningful (though obviously not literal) sense, how things actually happened - including through its all-POC cast and African American-styled music.

(w/ my aunt Sheal and uncle Tim)

Colson Whitehead - The Underground Railroad

As he did in both Zone One and The Intuitionist, in The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead finds a mode and register which serves the story he's telling - here, one that preserves a sense of concrete reality (which can only be valuable when slavery is the subject) as it melds in carefully controlled fabulism (the literalised railroad itself, as well as a general thread of feeling that runs through ... the episode in South Carolina, for example, made me think of a similar one in Watership Down). I appreciated the novel's commitment to giving voice and representation to many of its secondary characters, and while I felt a certain distance from its central figure Cora, that seemed fair enough given the type of character she is, and the circumstances that form her. 

"Global Shorts Forum: Woman Walks Ahead" @ SCAD Savannah Film Festival

'A wide range of topics from the feminine perspective', which meant ten shorts ranging from about 5 to 25 minutes. Best was "Period. End of Sentence.", a documentary about the provision of cheap menstrual pad manufacturing machinery to a group of women in a village outside Delhi, serving hygienic and medical, educative, empowerment and stigma-combating purposes.

Jepson Center for the Arts, Savannah

A range of good stuff here, in a fairly spectacular building (designed by Moshe Safdie). Mainly:

Walking the Horizon: Works by Bertha Husband

My introduction to Husband (Scottish, 1948-2017) and she is excellent! Politically engaged contemporary surrealist collage and mixed media.

'When Night Falls', 2005

'Hail Erinyes #3 ... the first death' (two of three panels), 1994

Therman Statom - 'Glass House', 2005

Complex Uncertainties: Artists in Postwar America

An 'evolving' exhibition; the current iteration includes a few artists I knew, including a couple as of very recently. Most strikingly, another pair of photos by Sheila Pree Bright, 'Anjre Kerr' (2007) and 'Jenny Liu' (2008), both from her Young Americans series.

Monet to Matisse: Masterworks of French Impressionism

Selected from the collection of the Dixon Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee, which must be quite some collection given the quality of the artists represented in this exhibition - admittedly not always particularly standout examples of their work/style, and spanning a number of artists who were 'around the time of the impressionists', and in some cases quite a while after, rather than actually painting in anything like an impressionist style.

Renoir - 'The Wave', 1882

Monet - 'Village Street', about 1869-71

I found myself having trouble turning off the intellectual and categorising part of my brain, making it difficult to really immerse myself and open up to the art, probably for a bunch of reasons (quite a lot of exposure to most of these artists, somewhat disconnected - ie not very concrete - frame of mind).

Chaim Soutine - 'Landscape at Cagnes', about 1922

Chagall - 'Dreamer', 1945

Interestingly, Maximilien Luce's 'The Cathedral at Gisors, View of the Ramparts' (1898) really popped in this context, by contrast to my overall somewhat lukewarm recollections of the neo-impressionism exhibition at the NGV a few years back (though I see I liked his stuff then too).

Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye

Marvellous; its simple lyricism and humaneness accentuate the suffering and sorrow of the black American experience on which it sets its sights, and its movement between characters to successively layer in their respective stories is, well, moving. In her afterword, Morrison faults herself for not giving greater shape to the 'unbeing' at the novel's centre - that is, 11 year old Pecola Breedlove's. But even in its form at it is, The Bluest Eye has both power and grace.

Forrest Gump

Sentimental and homily-dependent, and Jenny's character is frustrating, but nonetheless nice. Turns out I walked past the spot where he sits (the bench was a prop though) in Savannah yesterday all unawares.

SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah

Neat contemporary art museum embedded on campus, where SCAD = Savannah College of Art and Design.

Highlights: the Elaine Mayes retrospective, especially the 1960s Haight Ashbury portraits, and "Inverso Mundo", a film by Russian collective AES+F filled with shiny inversions.

"Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South" (Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art / City Gallery, Charleston)

Nearly the first thing I saw upon walking into this exhibition was a graphic, with supporting interactive screen, illustrating and explaining how southernness was being understood - a smart move, highlighting the way these designations are always up for grabs, and that this fluidity is itself a theme across the contemporary photographs gathered for the exhibition. Lots of high quality stuff.

Maude Schuyler Clay - 'Anna, Ishy's Haircut' (2000) 

 Lucinda Bunnen - 'Dixie Dogs' (2014)

Sheila Pree Bright - 'Protesting White Nationalists at the "White Power" March in Stone Mountain Park I' (2016) 

Eliot Dudik - 'Alligator Alley, Oregon Road' (2009) 

Shelby Lee Adams - 'Preacher Dillard' (2012)

Stacy Kranitz - 'Island Road' (2010)

Langdon Clay - 'Horse Tomatoes' (2003)

Anderson Scott - 'Clinton, Georgia' (2007)

Greg Miller - '21st Avenue South' (2008)

Jeff Rich - 'Hartsville Nuclear Plant (Abandoned)' (2013)

Once Upon a Time in America

This movie takes its time, and not only in the ways one might expect from a crime epic - the shifting back and forth through time gives it the feel of an elegy, with something of the air of a dream. Great soundtrack too, as you might expect. Leone/Morricone/De Niro.

Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston

Birge Harrison - 'Rosy Moon off Charleston Harbor' (1908-16) 

Thomas Fransioli - 'Rain in Charleston' (1951)

Louise Nevelson - 'The Wedding Present' (1977-79)

Big Mouth seasons 1 & 2

Extreme puberty! Sex positive and empathetic, and as the show itself points out, able to do what it does only because it's animated. Good stuff.

Black Panther

Watched again. I wonder whether the casting of the very English Martin Freeman as an American was a deliberate reversal (ie all white ethnicities/nationalities are interchangeable).

(first time)

Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Cape Cod

Selections from the permanent collection; a retrospective of Mary Sinclair whose work surprised me by pulling me in after a while; some recent award-winners of various kinds, amongst whom Helen Miranda Wilson stood out.

Mary Sinclair - "Yellow Room" (1961)

Varujan Boghosian - "48" (1968) ... I don't know what this is, but I like it

Peter Watts - "Tidal Marsh" (1984)

Helen Miranda Wilson - "The House Dream" (1987)

Specular Maps: Progressive and Avant-Garde Music from Indie Video Games, 2010-2018

A Believer magazine compilation, and given its theme, the preponderance of bleeps and pulses is unsurprising. The ones I especially like are essentially those that could be on a Sofia Coppola soundtrack: "Friendly Diplomacy" by Chipzel, "Epiphany Fields" by Scntfc, "Resurrections" by Lena Raine, "The Ballad of the Space Babies" by Jim Guthrie, "Marketing Director" by fingerspit.

Mitski - Be the Cowboy

This is so many different types of good - the impeccable, sharply-cut opening four tracks, the perfect left turns of "Me and My Husband" and "Nobody", the moody series of songs with which it ends. Arty pop and alt-rock stab. Probably my favourite album of the year so far.

(Puberty 2)

Holly Miranda - Mutual Horse

Two or three brighter moments aside, this one's on the bland side.

(The Magician's Private Library, Holly Miranda)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Everything about the MFA was impressive, including the size of its collection (that part of it on display, that is) and breadth. Given the aforementioned - size and breadth - and that we only had one full day in Boston, a selective approach was called for, which took in:

'Making Modern', spanning essentially the first half of the 20th century of art and design in North America (with an unsurprising tilt towards the USA, and tipping a bit into the 50s and 60s): O'Keeffe, Hopper, Kahlo etc, with some new discoveries too.

Hopper - 'Room in Brooklyn', 1932

Arthur Garfield Dove - 'Motor Boat', 1938

Hughie Lee-Smith, 'The Juggler', about 1964

There was a Winnie the Pooh exhibition, which was charming.

A whole lot of impressionists.

Renoir - 'Landscape on the Coast, near Menton', 1883

Pissarro - 'Two Peasant Women in a Meadow (Le Pre)', 1883

A room of Monet (always very impressive, and especially in aggregate).

'Grainstack (Snow Effect)', 1891

'Morning on the Seine, near Giverny', 1896

A room that had basically every other super-famous European post-impressionist painter of the late 19th to mid 20th century (Gauguin, Cezanne, van Gogh, Munch, Degas, etc).

Munch - 'Summer Night's Dream (The Voice)', 1893

Plus: some pretty fun contemporary selections (though this didn't seem to be a focus), including Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin; a selection of French pastels dominated by several Degas pieces; and a fair bit more looked at only quite quickly.

(w/ Penelope)