"Maquette for Richard J. Daley Center Sculpture," Pablo Picasso, 1964. Simulated and oxidized welded steel, 41.25 x 27.5 x 19 in. Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

Here are a few personal thoughts and observations about the show:

Membership previews for the show began February 16th. By February 17th, some of my art-loving friends had already asked me if I had seen “Picasso” yet. The appetite for shows that offer work by major art historical figures seems undiminished by decades of institutional critique leveled at massive cattle-call museum exhibitions like “Picasso and Chicago“. Theory and practice that seek to point out the problematic relationship between power-player museums, canonized artists, and money certainly have their place within contemporary critical circles. However, the efficacy of such criticism is seriously diminished in the ticket line.

Trading on major art brands like Pablo Picasso is not without its pitfalls. Expectations for blockbuster shows are high. Friends who rushed to see the show in the days after it first opened offered mixed reviews. A student of mine complained that there is too much print. Other students agreed. Within the over 250 pieces in the show, there are several galleries dedicated entirely to Picasso’s graphic work. Which is a great opportunity for viewers to delve deeper into themes of sex, violence, misogyny, and self-loathing more commonly found in printed works like the Shunga-esque The Minotaur (June 24, 1933) and the gruesome The Great Bullfight with Female Bullfighter (September 8, 1934). However, museums can triple their attendance figures during shows and retrospectives of big name artists, particularly those known primarily as painters. “Picasso and Chicago” will undoubtedly be a big draw, one that will attract viewers who expect to see canonical art history on the wall when they see a name like “PICASSO” in bold lettering on museum banners. In practical terms, “Picasso and Chicago” is not textbook Picasso. There’s plenty of Modernist Picasso, such as The Red Armchair (1931). There’s Blue Period Picasso, exemplified by The Old Guitarist (1903). There’s a sprinkling of Cubist and Neo-Classicist Picasso. But the scores of prints – which offer many rich examples of the artist’s unique genius – dilute the density of paintings per square inch and that’s what some viewers are paying for. The double-edged sword of the blockbuster art show is that it generates outsized attendance predicated on outsized expectations.

"The Old Guitarist," Pablo Picasso, 1903. Oil on canvas, 48 3/8 x 32 1/2 in. Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago.

The curatorial framework surrounding “Picasso and Chicago” serves to burnish the city’s image as a major influence on cultural history by over-selling a tenuous relationship to the artist. Even by the show’s own standards, Picasso had little to do with the Windy City. The artist never even visited Chicago or any other American city for that matter.

• Publication material boasts of the “special relationship” between Picasso and Chicago, noting that The Art Institute of Chicago was the first American museum to exhibit the artist’s work. This accomplishment took place in 1913 as part of the International Exhibition of Modern Art, though it’s a landmark easily overlooked because the exhibition began in New York and is more commonly remembered by its nickname: The Armory.

• “Picasso and Chicago” begins and ends with galleries dedicated to the creation of Monument for Richard J. Daley Plaza (1965), a massive steel structure that was the largest sculptural piece Picasso created in his lifetime. That information alone is characterized as significant by the show’s wall text and publication material despite the fact that the work itself appears to have no connection to Chicago’s famed former mayor or the civic functions performed in the Richard J. Daley Center nearby. The sculpture is composed of two symmetrically oriented profiles that combine to look something like a winged horse. It’s a city landmark, to be sure, but mostly because it’s known as “The Picasso” and not because it has any relationship to Daley or its surroundings.

• Bursting between the two galleries dedicated to The Monument for Richard J. Daley Plaza, the real meat of the show is a variety of pieces owned by the museum and private collectors throughout the city. The Daley Plaza angle offers a thin frame for what is otherwise a mini retrospective of works that happen to live in Chicago.

"Villa In Vallauris," Pablo Picasso, February 4. 1951. Oil on panel, 35 x 45.75 in. Courtesy of The Art Institute Chicago

Picasso was a 9 to 5 artist. Strolling through the galleries, I was really struck by the fact that nearly all of the pieces in the show are labeled with the exact date of their completion, not just the year. Nude Under a Pine Tree, a massive composition featuring a monumental Modernist nude in repose, is dated January 20, 1959. Francois, an idealized – and oddly decapitated – portrait of the mother of two of Picasso’s many children, is dated June 19, 1946. The vast majority follows suit. It would be naïve to assume that each piece in the show took the artist only a day to create, though that was sometimes the case. Wall text next to a painting titled Villa in Vallauris (Feb. 4, 1951) reveals that the geometric depiction of Picasso’s house in southeastern France was created in one go. The fact that a show consisting of over 250 pieces represents only a fraction of the artist’s output serves as a reminder of just how prolific Picasso was. Everything that’s known about the artist’s temperament and ambition is backed up by the fact that he lived through his art every day of his life. “Picasso and Chicago” may not be a perfect show, but the opportunity to experience the artist’s work and dedication is inspirational nonetheless.

“Picasso and Chicago” is on view at The Art Institute of Chicago through May 12, 2013.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, date unknown Gelatin silver print, 6 5/8 x 5 3/4 in. All images © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

That’s when he found his new calling. He fell for the technical questions that plague all photographers. To this run of the mill mix of lighting, focal lengths, and shutter speed he added things things that were found in his personality and in the counterculture of the 60’s. It seems like such a cliche to be a beatnik cultural warrior, but he was, and the body of work he produced during the 60s is remarkable.

Starting in 1961, he gave himself a decade to master photography. He had been a member of the Lexington Camera Club for six years by that point and was comfortable with standard photographic issues. Instead of casting a wider net he dug in to a narrower focus: Rolleiflex mid-size monochrome negatives and small prints. After eliminating any question of what camera to use, he was free to care about what would be his subject.

Meatyard, Ambrose Bierce, 1964 Gelatin silver print, 7 x 7 1/4 in.

On weekends, Meatyard would drive around looking for the crumbling ruins in the rural poverty that surrounded Lexington, KY, but not so he could shoot “ruins porn” or look for the personification of rural life like Shelby Lee Adams did in Appalachia. His children, who had grown up with a shutterbug dad were often his models. The images he took of them were not casual shots of kids at play in the backyard but were arresting compositions guided by his counterculture beliefs and framed with serious technical skill.

The Art Institute of Chicago currently has a first-rate exhibition of the images from his peak output. Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks collects together Meatyard’s dense compositions, structures of silver and gray with doll faces hiding in the corners of crumbling architecture. He would allow his children to pose as they wanted to, there are a few repeats in their positions, but it adds to the mystery. His formal compositions and his subject matter seems impenetrable. His photographic explorations, motivated by zen philosophy and jazz improvisations, are a dense network of subconscious associations and uncanny resemblance. The natural, fleeting poses of his children fracture against the ponderous old man masks and oversized hands in which they are posing. Their bodies stand out against the stark and worn naturally lit backgrounds that often contain thick, unlit darkness.

Meatyard, Untitled, date unknown Gelatin silver print, 7 3/8 x 7 3/8 in.

Many of his images violate what we know to be true, but he never intended to photograph what was there. He was uninterested in mere optical facts or creating reassuring images. Instead, he wanted to create anew a universal subject that stood for something. He quotes Ambrose Bierce‘s Devils Dictionary in at least one title “Romance, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are.” His “sympathetic general subject” looks back to the type of images religions around the world used to teach the illiterate: Buddhist Thangkas, Eastern Icons, Catholic Altarpieces, etc. These images of people idealize rather than describe their subjects. Meatyard too does this, consciously forcing the subject into the uncanny valley between living creature and lifeless doll.

Like the religious icon, Meatyard’s figures are telling us something about how to live, who we are, and what we should expect in the future, it’s just impossible to definitively know what they are saying. A combination of “The Child is father of the Man” and “Show me your original face before your mother and father were born” these images challenge the viewer with “unfair arguments with existence.” Do the masks cover up the person, or does the person fill in the mask? Every subject in Meatyard’s photos are challenging the lens of the camera. Actively standing up to any amount of objectifying gaze, deformed but confident, these subjects go eyeball to eyeball with us. Even the youngest and presumably most innocent of these subjects stands facing us, boldly answering the questions his father was asking.

Artist Cy Twombly has created a new series of sculptures, under the humble title Eight Sculptures. These new objects are currently being presented at Gagosian Gallery‘s 980 Madison Ave location in New York City. The exhibition is a companion to a new series of paintings, titled Leaving Paphos Ringed with Waves, on view at Gagoisian’s Athens gallery. In addition to the shows at Gagosian, the acclaimed artist also had two major museum exhibitions on view this fall, Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000-2007‘ that inaugurated the new wing of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Cy Twombly: Sensations of the Moment at Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna.

Eight Sculptures is a continuation of Twombly’s acclaimed formally driven, pedestal-based objects. While the earlier forms were created from accessible materials and objects, generally coated in gesso to create hauntingly white forms, the new sculptures are cast bronze with a white patina creating a very similar effect. Each sculpture references the unearthed fragility of an object of antiquity, while remaining distinctly modern in its formal presentation.

Carter received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1998) and his BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The artist has received many awards, including a fellowship award for visual arts from the Illinois Arts Council in Chicago and an ArtCouncil Grant in San Francisco. Previous exhibitions include System at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Leipzig, Germany and a self-titled exhibition at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York.

Jason Lazarus’s installation grew out of the artist’s fascination with the family snapshot and its durability in our digital era. After amassing a small archive of found photographs, Lazarus became especially compelled by the handwritten texts on the backs of the photos and began arranging the snapshots to create small conversations based on the text, tonality, and spacing of surrounding photos. Importantly, the dates of the photographs comprising the unique installation at the Art Institute range from 1899 to 1996, beginning roughly a decade into the personal snapshot craze initiated by Kodak and continuing up to the threshold of the digital era.

Inspired by another found collection of language, Wolfgang Ploger’s work Make No Mistake about This uses the text of death row inmates’ final statements. Wanting to incorporate these last words into his work without making them readily discernible simply through the act of reading, Ploger handwrote the statements on lengths of film celluloid and projected this flickering calligraphy onto the wall. Ploger also removed the projector’s take-up reels so that as the last statements race and loop throughout the gallery, their speed and scale necessitate that viewers strain to make sense of glimpses of language that might convey error, confession, or apology.

The third work in the exhibition, Zoe Strauss’s site-specific installation Week of the Perfect Game, suggests the idiosyncrasies, exchanges, and moments of one week in Chicago this past July. Traveling south from the Loop to Gary, Indiana, Strauss captured the Chicago atmosphere on a grand national scale, as Barack Obama’s hometown and a finalist city in the bid to host the 2016 Olympics, as well as on a more intimate scale, as the location of an ongoing hotel-workers’ strike and a commemoration of a teen gunned down on its streets. Together Strauss’s photographs provide an open-ended and all-encompassing narrative set against the backdrop of Lake Michigan. The work is one of the museum’s most recent acquisitions.

Jason Lazarus is represented by Andrew Rafacz Gallery. Wolfgang Ploger is represented by Konrad Fischer Galerie.