The Story Behind The Forgotten Nightclub Mural Found In The Loop

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 3, 2016 7:00PM

When the historic Loop building at 209 W. Lake St. was torn down recently, it revealed a hidden mural that some thought looked like a work by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. Really, it was a Kristin Swain original, though the likeness wasn’t an accident.

Swain, a Chicago painter who told Chicagoist she does “mainly murals and decorative finishes,” was commissioned to make the mural in approximately 2002, she said, by nightclub owner Dion Antic. Antic wanted “something in the style of Klimt” for his nightclub in the building, Superlounge.

The way Swain sees it, the women in Klimt paintings usually fall into a binary: they’re either “very stark and matriarchal” or “really flowy, angelic.” (“[Klimt] liked big butts, too, and just exaggerating the female form,” she added.)

In her mural, Swain tried to mimic that Klimt binary, with stoic, clothed women on one side of the mural, and the women on the other side “more free” and nude.

"It's all about women," she said.

Swain further explained that most women in the mural are goddesses. That includes the woman lying on her right side in the gallery's first image, and the one in the gallery's second image with a cloud of red hair.

Two virgins, Swain added, are "guarding the goddesses." You can see them in the gallery's fourth image; they're wearing white, covering their eyes, and bookending a row of standing goddesses.

The dragons—one of which you can see in the gallery's fifth image—are a second layer of protection, guarding the virgins.

It's an unusual choice of imagery for a nightclub, but Antic was on board after Swain showed him "a rough sketch," she said.

Next, she got to work with her team of two helpers: Margaret Robinson, her primary collaborator, and Rob Soller. All together, they finished the project in about a month, Swain estimated.

“We're fast,” she said. “We don't mess around.”

This was in spite of the narrow space at Superlounge, which made it impossible for Swain to project the mural image onto the wall while she and her team worked. That would have been typical for a mural so large, Swain said, but “this was all hand-done on ladders and scaffolding, and all free hand."

The mural, which persists, although slightly faded, today, was made with latex acrylic paint. It’s worth looking at up close, though.

“There is gold leaf in there, as well,” Swain said.