Arts Roundup: Without You I'm Nothing
By Laura M. Browning in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 18, 2010 3:40PM
Vincent van Gogh. Dutch, 1853-1890. Avenue of Pollard Birches and Poplars, March 1884. Reed pen and iron-gall ink on tan laid paper. Richard and Mary L. Gray Collection.
Our relationship with art might not quite be symbiotic, but we sure do like it. Here are three exhibits we think you can't (or shouldn't) live without:
Museum of Contemporary Art
Without You I’m Nothing: Art and Its Audience
Art has become increasingly participatory in the last four decades. Viewing contemporary art places demands on its audience: you have to walk around it, question it, or otherwise engage with it. The MCA has selected works from their permanent collection that form this symbiotic viewer-and-viewed relationship.
Without You I’m Nothing opens November 20 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Avenue. General admission is $12 for adults and is free on Tuesdays.
Art Institute of Chicago
Gray Collection: Seven Centuries of Art
Skip over the boring title and go straight to the heart of this exhibit: Van Gogh drawings. Cezanne drawings. Kandinsky watercolors. Miro, Picasso, David Hockney. There are more than one-hundred pieces on exhibit, so go when you have some time to enjoy it.
Seven Centuries of Art runs through January 2, 2011, at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue. Admission is $16 for Chicago residents and free on Thursdays from 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Tony Wight Gallery
Sex, Death and God
Photographer Ken Fandell, who also teaches at the School of the Art Institute, produces large-format photographs—enormous skyscapes, an endless carpet of bougainvilla petals, a banana-turned-celestial body. He digitally stitches images together, merging dozens or hundreds of skies into a single, fantastical cloudscape.
Sex, Death and God opens November 19 at Tony Wight Gallery, 845 West Washington Boulevard.
RIP Kathryn Hixson, art critic and longtime teacher at the School of the Art Institute.