It's not often that art openings in Chicago turn into sprawling celebrations of sheer joy. But last week's opening-night party for "The Wonder -- Portraits of a Remembered City," the beautiful new show of drawing-collages by Tony Fitzpatrick, was one of those special nights when art-world caution and decorum seemed to fall away. There was no stinkin' wine and cheese at this shindig. People scarfed down juicy Italian beef sandwiches and nearly injured each other with bone-crushing handshakes and bear hugs. Twin rivers of cold beer and good will flowed, tributaries to an ocean of feeling for one of Chicago's finest, most authentic and least pretentious artists on one of the greatest nights of his working life.
By now the word about Artropolis, the sprawling art expo at the Merchandise Mart last weekend, is that it was too big for its own good -- too many shows, too many exhibitors, too much sheer acreage.
An immigrant's rude reception Kevin Nance: On the morning of March 2, 1908, a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe named Lazarus Averbuch presented himself at the Lincoln Park home of George Shippy, Chicago's chief of police. He was turned away -- it was too early for the chief to be disturbed -- but returned, as invited by the housekeeper, at 9 a.m. Just inside the doorway, Averbuch tried to hand Shippy a letter. The chief, convinced that this swarthy, foreign-looking young man was an anarchist assassin, shot him dead.
Judging from a lot of eavesdropping and testimony from my own feet, the most lasting impression of Artropolis, the constellation of art fairs that ended Monday at the Merchandise Mart, is that it was big. Maybe too big.
He lapsed from the Catholic Church long ago, but Tony Fitzpatrick still carries a holy card in his wallet. It memorializes his father, James Raymond Fitzpatrick: Born April 23, 1925. At rest Sept. 17, 1988. Mass and Christian burial at St. Pius X Catholic Church. The card shows St. Theresa, holding a crucifix and some flowers.
Artropolis, the giant art expo starting today and continuing through Monday at the Merchandise Mart, attracts thousands of collectors from around the world to Chicago -- a fact not lost on galleries, auction houses and other art-related businesses hoping to capitalize on this annual influx of art-buying power.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Crashing the Artropolis party
The primary storyline of last year's Artropolis -- the annual collection of art fairs at the Merchandise Mart -- was the resuscitation of the event's showcase fair, Art Chicago, which had been on life support after years of decline under a previous owner.
Chicago-based Latin-American art dealer Aldo Castillo has been trying for a decade to be accepted as an exhibitor at Art Chicago, and the answer has always been no way, no how.
For all the efforts of the Library of Congress and its rotating laureate program, America hasn't had a single poet who was truly a household name since Robert Frost died in 1963. Maya Angelou has come the closest, but she's better known for her memoirs, especially I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, than for any of her poetry collections. Robert Lowell, arguably Frost's successor as a kind of "national" versifier, was still largely a creature of literary and academic circles. Today, Billy Collins probably has the American poetry world's largest readership, but it's a small world indeed.
It's been a little less than comfortable, these past few years, to be working in the newspaper industry in an era when the industry itself -- its ethical troubles, its political intrigues and especially its much-publicized economic challenges as readers and advertisers drift away to the Internet -- is so much in the news.
Jon Wos was born with 13 broken bones, along with others that had already fractured and mended themselves while he was still in his mother's womb. His skeletal structure was so fragile -- a symptom of osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic condition that leaves sufferers with deformed and/or brittle bones -- that much of his life has been spent in hospitals under the care of orthopaedic surgeons.
Britney Spears is back in court this week. It's a full-time job just keeping up with the antics of Britney Spears these days. Let us do it for you. Here's the latest ...
