Letter

I don’t remember the last time I went to the Guggenheim in New York, nor the art I saw there. That’s by design. The man who dreamed up that multi-story fuck-you to every other artist in history made sure that visitors could never forget his genius or remember what was hung on the walls of the temple he built to his own ego.

The corkscrew walkway that constitutes the main thoroughfare past the honeycomb cell-like alcoves that serve as galleries cants down at a gentle slope, ensuring a viewer never sees any painting level with the ground. This guarantees that we don’t for a second forget the structure housing the painting and undercuts whatever impact the picture was meant to have.

The only remedy is to come up as close as possible to the art you’re looking at. Still, even then, a curving wall or worn and crumbling light fixture often invades the periphery. It’s an incredibly frustrating experience.

What made me come here on my drive east is an exhibition by an artist I’d never heard of. A long article in the Times with several installation shots convinced me Gego’s wire forms that she often called drawings without paper might be able to withstand the bullying impact of Wright’s edifice.

Two hours before opening time I sit with my book on a bench across from the museum. I watch a hot dog truck and street vender set up for the day’s trade. A parade of professional and amateur dog walkers parade every breed devised down the sidewalk, sometimes in packs of up to five or six. There’s barely a yap or quarrel. They trundle meekly past, barely acknowledging one another. Are they all sedated or so well trained that their animal instincts no longer fire no matter the circumstance?

It takes a few minutes but Gego’s skeletal hangings cast their gentle spell. Like models for imaginary objects and organisms they hover suspended within the white curvilinear expanses of the building. By not being beholden to the vertical/horizontal constraints under which wall pictures function, there are moments when Wright fades away from view. But it only happens within the alcove galleries, facing away atrium center that’s impossible to ignore while slowly descending. From there, Gego’s wire shapes seem insect-like mirages. Much further away than they really are. Looking down to the ground floor, several tarped shapes make the place feel more like a construction site than a palace of art.

Gego’s floating forms echo in my mind like afterimages after I leave to go have lunch.

J.G. Melon is a cash-only burger place populated for the most part by business folk. The two guys a table over are involved in a casual-sounding but likely dead-serious conversation. The one keeps dropping hints about how much he’d love to join the other’s team. He loves the “culture” that they’ve created over there. The other one apologizes for choosing a burger place after hearing the pacemaker the first guy just had put in.

At my parents’ I notice the coffeebag I drew of Frank Lloyd Wright hanging over the kitchen table.

In the basement, in a tube of rolled-up posters, I find a drawing of my father reading on their uncomfortable living room couch. I keep looking at it, unsure whether I drew it or not. Whoever drew it, did so thirty or more years ago. I find a frame downstairs, fold over the mostly empty top and bottom of the paper, and fit the drawing in.

Now it lives on my mother’s bedroom table.

—Listen to practice readings for my Comfort Station show.

—I reviewed a play about a genocide in Namibia, recommend Beau is Afraid in this week’s Cine-FILE, and a doc about David Johansen of the New York Dolls too. But don’t watch the schmaltzy biopic of Swedish abstract art pioneer Hilma af Klint made by Lasse Hällstrom and his entire family; the doc about her from a few years back is much better.

I haven’t messed with oil paint in about three years. There are many reasons. I’ve been moving away from the medium a long time. There’s a lot of gear involved. Nobody would appreciate a French easel and turpentine fumes on a CTA bus, for instance.

I’ve never liked working from sketches, memory, or imagination. I need direct experience to spark a reaction. That means the only oil paintings I’ve made in the last couple decades are of my living space, the view out the windows, and the occasional human or animal inhabitant. The options are limited.

My current place—where I’ve lived the past three years—is below street level. This means that the views I’ve had in my previous Chicago homes isn’t as readily within sight. I depend on everyday vistas, seen over and over, for subject-matter. The ankle level vantage point from my studio windows has rarely translated into paintings. Living here I’ve realized that I need a combination of close-up and far-away points of interest in a cityscape to make me want to render it.

During lockdown I started making collages from the archival detritus I’ve hauled around over the past thirty-plus years. It’s a project I expect to be ongoing indefinitely. It doesn’t mean though that I’ve rejected working from direct observation. My sketchbooks continue to be filled with drawings of musicians, bottles, cafe sitters, and the like. I don’t see the two modes as clashing. They’re more of a counter-point. A way to talk visually about and between past and present.

A few weeks back I tracked down Chuck Walker after not seeing much of him since before The Plague. Chuck has been a touchstone since my first days in art school. I remember clipping one of his painting out of an Art in America review and tacking it to the wall of my first Chicago apartment at Foster and Sheridan. I made friends with him and his girlfriend Angie when they lived on Damen near Augusta in the early ’00s. He lives the kind of painter life you read about in books about Paris at the turn of the 20th century.

His new spot is a storefront on Irving Park. We sat and talked there one evening, surrounded by stacks and stacks of canvases. That’s what gave me the itch to take out the oil paints. I set up in the alley behind the house, turned on a Bluetooth speaker for some tunes, and started. It felt alright. I did a couple more, turning the easel for a different view each time. Then I set up on the front sidewalk. It’s different than working from inside the house but it works. I’ll probably keep going.

It feels different but also very familiar. Like picking up a guitar that’s been sitting in storage gathering dust. I still know the chords, more or less.

—I recommend Kelly Reichardt’s great new movie for Cine-FILE. One of the best movies about how art people act that I’ve ever seen.

—Listen to a short post-mortem about my visit to EXPO Chicago 2023.

Keefe writes that he wants to meet up to talk about something. Last time we talked I recorded it. This is about something else. He wants me to collaborate on something with him. Last time he asked I found myself on stage at Constellation painting him and a couple other guys improvising. He doesn’t want art this time; he wants words.

We sit in his practice space on Lake Street talking it out. It’s a little daunting. Three brass instruments and my voice reading. No way I can compete. A saxophone is in the same tonal range as the human voice but far louder. Even with a mic I’d have no chance. Plus: what will I read?

As we sit there I try to picture it in my mind. The venue is Comfort Station. A refurbished former public park bathroom in Logan Square that is now an art space. There are grants given to stage exhibits and performances. Ours will be part of a series called Comfort Music. These euphemisms remind me of terms like ‘Joy Division’.

Whatever my misgivings, I say yes. It’s so rare that anyone invites me to do anything that I can’t refuse for the novelty if nothing else. I’m not a performer and never will be. But a professional musician is asking me to share his stage. It’s flattering and pushes me out of my comfort zone. Worth doing for that reason even if it falls flat on its face. Keefe says it’s an experiment. If it works we can do more.

In the following weeks I keep rolling it around in my mind. I choose a bunch of writing that might work. No through-line or narrative. Maybe not even connected at all. I’m on more solid ground with the visual part. I tell Keefe I’ll design a poster. I make a stencil of the text, then apply the words with markers, pencils, charcoal, and paint to different colored paper, to lithographs and to collages. I make twenty unique pictures, hang up five around Bridgeport and Pilsen and give the other fifteen to Keefe to share with Jeb and Aram.

If you want to see what we come up with, show up on 4/20. No jazz cigarettes but I promise to read at least one poem in Russian.

Listen to my talk with Chicago writer Jasmon Drain and/or Mallory and I discussing both versions of The Fly. When you’re done with those maybe read my review of Catherine Lacey’s The Biography of X.