While in Chicago ...
by Marie J. Kuda
Big Chicks
You may want to plan a stop at Big Chicks, the cutting edge bar owned by former area artist Michelle Fire. Dozens of original art works are on display including photographs by Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, and Giselle Freund. Paintings by local gay and lesbian artists Hollis Sigler, Rob Bondgren, Linda Kramer and James Faulkner hang among works by a number of hets. Fire, who had a one-woman exhibit at Rizzoli Gallery in Water Tower Place and whose work was included in shows at Artemisia Gallery in the 1980s, was a founding member of Chicago’s Art Whores. The interior of the bar is painted to resemble Chez Suzy, the 1920s cafe that Brassai hung out at with Henry Miller when not making photographs of the “secret Paris” subculture that filled his later books. Big Chicks at 5024 N. Sheridan is open 7 days a week, phone: 773-728-5511.
Mark Turbyfill
A substantial body of work by gay artist Mark Turbyfill (1896-1991) is held by the Smart Gallery, 5550 South Greenwood on the University of Chicago Campus. Turbyfill was also a poet and ballet dancer. While still in high school, he approached Margaret Anderson, founder of the avant garde magazine The little review, who was the first to print his poetry. Later, Harriet Monroe of the legendary Poetry magazine would devote an entire issue to his work -- the only time in the magazine’s history. Turbyfill became good friends with Anderson and her partner, Art Institute graduate Jane Heap, visiting them in Paris and corresponding with Anderson until her death. In the 1920s and 1930s, he was principal dancer with the nation’s first ballet company, Allied Artists, and partnered the Chicago legend Ruth Page in her early experimental works. He also was the first ballet teacher of Katherine Dunham, trying to start her off in an all “Negro” ballet company in the 1930s. Dunham’s subsequent success, and status as progenitor of later African-American ballet companies, is well known.
Turbyfill painted watercolors since childhood, but only exhibited his work seriously after he began his friendship with abstract expressionist Mark Tobey. Turbyfill’s first solo exhibit was in 1948; in the 1950s and 60s he had a number of one-man gallery shows. In 1966 his work was included in the Art in the Embassies Program and some is in the permanent collection of American artists at the Smithsonian. Curator Richard Born describes the 90-or-so Turbyfill pieces held in storage at the Smart Museum as modernist works on canvas and paper. Some Klee-like organic abstractions, some in the manner of Miro; others are calligraphic, worked around his poetry; some like works by Mark Tobey, and others “very strange.” Reviewers in the 1950s called one series “Turbyfiligrees” ... “lace-like ... on backgrounds of midnight black ... pure abstractions reverberate to the struggle of sinuous line attempting to hold dots of color into a tense design.” A number of his paintings were on dance subjects; others like “Eratron” on the atom bomb or the “Kinsey report.” Curator Born says given a week’s notice Turbyfill’s work can be seen by appointment. The gallery is closed Sunday and Monday, call 773-702-0200 for hours and/or appointment. The museum catalog can be accessed on their website http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu
Other art of interest
Visitors might also want to visit the Field Museum of Natural History (on Chicago’s new Museum Campus) to check out the Malvina Hoffman (1887-1966) bronze statues originally commissioned for the museum in the 1920s. Hoffman, a one-time student of Rodin, traveled all over the world for five years making ethno/anthropological studies. The one hundred statues that resulted were originally displayed in what the museum called the “Hall of Man” -- I remember the impact of viewing these works in toto as a child. Now, unfortunately, they are dispersed throughout the museum -- most in the open halls outside the second floor galleries -- still an impressive collection. Phone: 312-922-9410.
The Museum of Contemporary Art will be hosting an exhibit of contemporary queer art and running a series of classes concurrent with the exhibition from mid-January through March, 2001. The museum recently moved to new quarters at 220 East Chicago Avenue near the historic Water Tower that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Contact them for more details at phone: 312-280-2660 or http://www.mcachicago.org
kudoschgo@aol.com
... proceed to Caucus business ...