Gladys Anson

About to fold camp in one of city’s many unheralded treasures, the Civil Rights Photography of Maria Varela has a mere four weeks left at the National Mexican Arts Museum in Pilsen; ending its five-month run.   Varela, a native Chicagoan baptized in activism in high school, captured images that freeze history and drip with intimacy.  The sight of Stokely Carmichael in hot and close quartered conversation with two men in front of a grocery store shows what it means to organize a liberation movement more than words could ever do.  I wish I could say there are scores of such images in the exhibition.  Maybe it’s their limited number that makes them so precious.  Each has its own beauty and power.  Some even tilt toward abstraction when considering Varela’s view of a plantation road.  It’s Ansel Adams meets Stephen King; stark and foreboding.

 

All of Varela’s work is in black and white.  And in much of it, her subjects allow her to get close enough to see and show their souls.  As a 23 year old in 1963 she received an invitation to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) where she helped create a voter literacy program.  One of her mentors was the astonishing Ella Baker; now finally acknowledged as one of the pillars of the civil rights movement.  Two years in, Varela was also SNCC’s only woman staff photographer.

 

By 1968, Ms. Varela also received and accepted an invitation to join the Land Grant Movement in New Mexico whose mission was to restore ancestral lands and cultural practices.  Here too she took her camera to chronicle what liberation looks like from a native American perspective.  The images remain immediate and electric in their depiction of unrelenting resolve and commitment.  They too are represented in this marvelous exhibit.

 

Time to Get Ready: Fotografia Social closes July 30.

 

Very few people would likely think of the word “power” when considering the work of Takasi Murakami.  This is the man whose renown is wrapped up in anime and comic books (manga).  And for creating the marvelous artwork on the cover of Kanye West’s Graduation album showing a teddy bear being blasted out of a canon.  And for sprinkling vibrant color on Louis Vuitton bags.  None of these things are powerful. They’re fun.

 

In the Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibition of the artist work spanning over 30 years and heavily represented with current projects, you get it all.   From his early works that beautifully reflect classical forms in Japanese art, to that mouse head known as Mr. DOB; who looks like Mickey Mouse’s rich and eccentric first cousin and functions as Mr. Murakami’s alter ego.  Always cute and sunny in his earliest iterations, Mr. DOB has evolved into taking on moods and personalities that can verge on the haunting and sinister.  He’s growing up.

 

Mr. Murakami is an artist who believes and persuasively insists that the worlds of fine art and commercialism can exist in the same painting.  Working from that mindset, he creates visions that can stop you in your tracks.  Much of his more current work, incorporating religious and sacred themes, can even inspire quiet awe.  Nothing like the religious art of the Western world, these images resemble fantasy to the American and European eye.  Resplendent with dazzling colors and exquisite craftsmanship, they project power that verges on invincibility and make the grotesque beautiful.

 

Take for example his arhads.  In the Buddhism, arhads resemble priests.  They absorb pain and dispense wisdom.  Over the ages, this depleting process exacts a cost.  A physical one that leaves the arhads, after millennium of service, bizarrely misshapen and spent.  There are hundreds of them.  And you don’t have to look closely to see that each is his own individual.  The 100 Arhads is a work that is now considered one of the high marks of Mr. Murakami career.  Mounted in panels over 6’ tall with elaborate adornment and set in the midst of fantastic imagery, Murakami depicts them in a vista that runs over 30 feet long.  They are like Times Square on a clear summer night.  Bright to the point of brilliant and impossible to absorb in a single glance.  In fact, the closer you look, the more richly you’ll be rewarded.  Sumptuous detail lies in wherever your eye lands.  The paintings writhe with intricacy.

 

Adding to the sense of the incredibly possible, MCA’s Murakami exhibit also includes two extraordinary sculptures.   Symbolizing the start and end of the universe, they stand like massive sentinels.  They are George Lucas meets samurai aggression.  Massive, standing over 9 feet tall, the two statues are known as the Embodiment of “Un” and the Embodiment of “A”.  They are strength incarnate with the heads of demons on the bodies of Hercules. No photographic image can do them justice and it is advisable to view them from behind as well as face on to fully appreciate the power they embody.

 

 

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

THE OCTOPUS EATS ITS OWN LEG

Featuring a never-before-seen monumental masterpiece

June 6 – September 24, 2017

$12 recommended

Despite it being around a couple of years now, Harris Theater’s Mix at Six doesn’t seem to have been fully discovered yet.  If it had, its 1500 seats would have been brimming over like beer suds on a frosted glass Thursday night.

 

In its coupling of Happy Hour to the performing arts, they’ve hit on a clever and fun way to lubricate, feed and culturally enrich the urban beast all at the same time.

 

The performance program varies in each of its six or so offerings through the year.  Thursday night featured advanced dance students from the Chicago Academy of the Arts.  Classed as conservatory bound pre-professional performers, the only expectations were that they’d be very young and very good. More about that in a second.

 

Prior to the show, the Happy Hour portion of the evening verged on raucous since everyone seemed to be in such high spirits.  Revolution Brewing kept the beer following (the first glass was free with your admittance stub).  Cocktails and wine were also available as well as some impressive “grazeables” from a few of the city’s more prominent food trucks.  No worries if you didn’t finish everything by the time the show started.  You can take it in with you.

 

Chicago can claim an assortment of fine stages showcasing dance.  MCA’s small jewel of a stage comes to mind as well as the Auditorium’s expansive beauty.  Comfortable seats, great sight lines and an industrial chic mood make the Harris a standout as well.

 

In an all too brief 60-minute performance, the company of dancers presented six pieces; most of them banging with energy and all of them reflecting the precision, discipline and confidence of seasoned pros.  Exclusively comprising students, the dancers were more diverse than true dance companies.  Radiating youth, a number of them stood out because of the sheer extravagance of their natural gifts.  Evan Boersma consistently drew the eye with a grace that didn’t seem possible and an elasticity that resembled flowing water.  Sasha Bass – Ulmer seemed confined in her solo intended as a tribute to the great Chicago pioneer for women’s suffrage and civil rights, Ida B. Wells.  We had to settle for mere elegance and beauty.

 

Closing with a piece called Thunder and accompanied live by Chicago street performers, the Bucket Boys, dancers and musicians meshed into a single entity that throbbed with  extraordinary sound and captivating visuals.  Who knew plastic buckets could rise to orchestral drama and that artists so young could match that drama so beautifully in dance.  The standing ovation that followed?  Heartfelt and vigorous.