Letter

Yom Kippur is the traditional Jewish day of atonement but my day of penance for the past twenty-five years has come a few weeks earlier. It’s gone by several different names and has moved locations and undergone a lot of upheaval but is currently called Expo Chicago. It’s just an art fair but it never fails to stir up all sorts of conflicted feelings about the commercial and social side of the business I’ve devoted most of my life to. Every year I say I won’t go back but September comes and I can’t stay away.

Navy Pier has been the fair’s home for most of its nearly forty years of operation. Having to walk the length of that tourist-infested food court/tchotchke mall to get to the show will test even the sunshiniest souls. The $20 admission doesn’t help anyone’s mood either. This year, for the first time, there’s also a $2.50 amusement tax which isn’t noted on any signage and comes as more salt on the wound.

My usual strategy is to walk all the aisles quickly, then go back to linger with whatever caught my eye. I’m pretty inured to the gallerinas, avant-garde eyewear, and uncomfortable outfits of the attendees. I also don’t bother with much video, photography, installation, or sculpture. I’m sure there’s worthy work in those mediums but when faced with some hundred exhibitions crammed into one you have to pick and choose. I only really care about drawing and painting so that’s what I look for.

This time I was struck by how much of the stuff looked like wrapping paper or an outer shell, as if what I was looking at was hiding something more inside. Trouble is that there isn’t anything inside; visual art is all on the surface or else it’s not really visual. Of course paintings can have meanings beyond a first impression but it all has to stem from what is visible. If you have to read or have what you’re looking at explained to you the piece of art has failed.

I always end up wondering whether I’d hate the whole thing less if I was part of it. But because I rarely have a good time at my own openings I kinda doubt it. Still, it would be nice to get a little acknowledgement in my field. I saw a few people I knew. Some I’d gone to school with who have done well in this environment. I don’t envy them because I know I can’t do what they had to do to get where they are. Year in, year out I look for Robert De Niro paintings. He was the actor’s father and is mostly forgotten today but is one of my favorites. I only saw one this time around and it wasn’t a great one, but it was comforting to see it, kind of like encountering an old friend.

Like every year, after leaving the fair I feel instant relief. Even the tourists zombie-lurching from Build-A-Bear to Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company seem to burst with life. I always wonder why I wasted $20 when I could’ve just sat on a bench and watched this parade of humanity and not feel like such a failure.

Maybe in twenty years or whatever, when I’m gone, if they still have art fairs, something of mine will be on one of these temporary walls, and maybe, if I’m lucky, someone will take the time to seek it out. But by then it won’t be my concern. All I know is I’m definitely skipping it next year.

—Seventeen years ago I wandered into the Empty Bottle from work at Bite next door and saw a schlubby guy in an ugly, multi-patterned button-down shirt asleep on the couch. A couple hours later, that same guy got up on stage with an acoustic guitar and played a bunch of his beautiful songs to the couple dozen of us in the audience. After awhile he even took requests. He said he’d play any Husker Du song that he wrote and he did. A few times he stopped mid-song to add sarcastic asides like, “Insert gratuitous guitar solo here.” It was a show I remember as much for how haunted and ravaged he seemed as for the music. RIP Grant Hart.

—RIP Harry Dean Stanton. Thank you for Paris, Texas and so many others.

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‌A couple weekends ago I went to Humboldt Park two nights in a row to see bands play at an idiotic food truck festival. Normally I wouldn’t be caught dead at an outdoor festival of any kind, especially one centered around overpriced, mediocre street food, but the bands in question were the Gories and Endless Boogie. I hadn’t seen either play in person though I’ve been a fan for years. The only place they were playing was this glorified ribfest for the cool crowd. I had to go.‌
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‌After Endless Boogie played Saturday night I waited around to see if the band was hanging around, maybe selling merch. I wanted to show them the sketch I’d done. Paul Major came out after awhile and talked to the three or four of us loitering around the side of the stage. He liked my drawing so I said I’d email him a copy. He thanked me, saying he wouldn’t see it till he got back home from tour because he doesn’t take a computer on the road. Sure enough, he emailed me about a week later to thank me again. It felt like a genuine moment with someone who’s work I love. It doesn’t happen very often, so I’m extra thankful when it does. One of the main reasons I draw people playing music is to bridge the gap between the stage and me. The result is kind of an afterthought, but if the subject likes it that’s definitely icing on the cake.‌

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‌The night before, on the same stage, down the way from a bunch of food trucks peddling overpriced crap, the Gories bashed out a set of their fractured blues. Mick Collins and I have become friendly over the last few years. He used ask me for Russian translations on Twitter and we had drinks the last time I was in NYC. He had a food ticket so we wandered down the line of trucks so he could grab something before he played. I told him that coincidentally Tim Kerr, an old bandmate, was having an art opening in the burbs the next night. After an uncomfortable pause, Mick told me Kerr hates him. Apparently when they were recording a follow-up to their first LP Kerr wanted him to scream as loud as he could and Mick took exception. He didn’t think Kerr had a right to tell a black man how to scream. Kerr brought in a different black singer to finish the session. Mick said Kerr has been badmouthing him ever since, costing him chances to work with a bunch of people. I dropped the subject and we chatted about other things while he tried to eat the gloppy kimchi concoction he’d settled on.‌
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‌I’d pitched the Reader on a review of Kerr’s art show before hearing Mick’s story but didn’t get the green light till after. The trip out to Miishkooki gallery in Skokie would’ve been loaded anyway because it is John Maloof’s place. Maloof is the guy at the center of the Vivian Maier story which I wrote about a few years ago. He was the only one of the main actors who never returned my calls, yet he wrote back promptly when I asked for an appointment to see Kerr’s show in order to write about it. ‌

‌A dark cloud hung over that whole trip. How to reconcile a guy who presents a gallery full of portraits of his heroes, the majority of whom are black, treating a black colleague so badly. Was it just a misunderstanding between two big personalities, egos rubbing one another the wrong way? I don’t know Kerr but know Mick well enough to be disturbed when the first thing out of his mouth at a man’s name is a story of mistreatment. At the same time, there’s no way I could include it in my article because I couldn’t verify it. Neither could I include my misgivings about Maloof’s gallery. After looking around awhile I asked him how he kept the doors open, since it was a nonprofit and he didn’t take a cut of sales. He said that if an artist sold work he asked them for a donation. This seemed nebulous and questionable to say the least. But this was the same guy who, until recent lawsuits put a damper on it, was running a thriving racket making new prints of a dead woman’s pictures with no permission other than the dumb luck of stumbling onto her belongings at a storage locker auction.‌

I wrote about Kerr’s portraits and didn’t say anything about any of this. Neither Kerr or Maloof are villains even if both have made some questionable choices. But who among us hasn’t? Despite the unmitigated evil emanating from the White House on a near-hourly basis, most of the rest of us can’t be categorically labelled hero or villain. Most are a bundle of contradictory impulses which can’t be boiled down to one simple value judgment.‌

The news this past year presents a comic book array of clear heroes and villains but separating the artist from their art isn’t nearly so cut and dry. It’s easy for me keep loving Endless Boogie after the lead guy was so gracious but much more difficult to appreciate Kerr’s portraits knowing in the back of my head he treated a friend like garbage. Luckily for me, the former is a lot more important to me than the latter. Every bit of information you get about the people who make what you love will color how you take in their work. Sometimes I think maybe it would be better if they were all anonymous like the medieval icon painters were but that’s a pipe dream in our oversharing age. ‌
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‌I wanna look behind the curtain but dread what I’ll see. You probably know what I mean.‌
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‌—Seeing Alex Cox present the 30th anniversary screening of his mad masterpiece Walker on Friday was the cherry on top of this thread of thought. Here’s a movie about the worst tendencies of this country which rings truer today than when it was released, yet effectively got its director blacklisted…‌

Go read Lydia Davis’ story collection which this painting (as well as this week’s newsletter) is named after. It’s killer. This painting and a few other recent ones will go up at the Gold Star this Thursday and will stay up until somebody buys them or Mary Ann tells me it’s time to take ’em home. I get criticized sometimes for putting my stuff up in bars, but until the museums start calling I’d rather have them up on walls where people might see ’em rather than in my place where no one ever will. 

I went to the Chicago Jazz Festival and heard a bunch of good stuff including The Tim Stine Trio, 

The Dave Rempis Quintet, 

Steve Gibons Gypsy Rhythm Project, 

Hearts & Minds, 

and the Mary Halvorson Octet. I prefer to hear bands play in small dark rooms but it’s hard to stay away when there is so much amazing music.