Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

The boyfriend and I both have several pieces by Chicago artist Naomi Martinez. Her new website just went live so please browse around if you can.

Her work often has a fanciful, urban-adventurous quality. They capture city life at magical times.

She says she’s inspired by Japanese animation, and I think you can see that. In both the European and Japanese traditions though, magical creature are connected with nature. They appear in art and illustrations of woodland scenes. Sometimes they are the physical manifestations of nature’s souls. (fairies, Princess Mononoke, etc.)

In her art, Martinez’s monsters are urban creatures. They accompany urban girls. The pair often appear in natural settings with trees, flowers, and rolling hills, but these patches of nature are still urban ones. Fences and background buildings say it to be so.

These paintings seem to tell about unwritten folktales. Whereas Hansel and Gretel, Peter of Peter and the Wolf, and even Hester Prynne left society and entered the wild forests to meet their adventures, Martinez’s girl and monster find those elements within today’s sprawling cities.

There’s a quiet and a stillness within the scenes that make them feel a world apart. There’s an isolation that reflects what many of us want when we enter our imaginations. The artworks show that within the noise and aggressive energies of urban life, there are moments and glimmers of fancy and magic. You just have to be open to them.

Tags: Art by M
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The Museum of Contemporary Art is hosting a Jeff Koons exhibition until September 21. On one of their free Tuesdays, I went to take a look at the collection.

Jeff Koons is a pretty big name in modern art. I expected to revel in his work. Instead, I found most of them empty and cold. “Hanging Heart,” which greets visitors at the entrances of the two large galleries, was one of the few I liked. In general, I enjoyed his inflatable series, in which metal is made to look like balloons, the most. The ones containing the lobster floatation devices though, they would have been more interesting to me if actual plastic pool floaties were used rather than the highly technical constructions.

That was part of the disconnect I felt with his work. They display amazing technical prowess, but I wondered “to what end?” Some of it was the pop sensibility of “look what can be art” but then he uses such precise artistic technique to create that “kitsch.” For me though, the idea of the work wasn’t strong enough to warrant such effort.

Also, he did not physically create all of the work. Scores of artists employ assistants, but there’s something old fashioned in me that wants the artist to be more involved than just being the idea guy. If all this technique is the result of his aides, then even that contradiction in presentation is not all that interesting.

It’s said that Koons is a love-him or hate-him kind of artist. Although I wouldn’t say that I hate his work, I’m going to be on the negative side for now. I don’t think he’s as clever or his ideas are as big as he himself seems to think. Am I missing the boat, bronzed or otherwise?

Tags: Art, Chicago by M
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It may not seem readily obvious, but Chicago is a great town for public art. We may not always understand them (the Picasso, the Bean) but we sure become proud of them.

There is a square in front of the NBC building on Michigan Avenue. Outdoor art regularly rotate through that space. I was walking down Michigan the other day and was really excited to get closer to this figure. As I approached, I couldn’t tell if it was stone or metal. It just looked really cool. I read the plaque. “King Lear,” it said, “by J. Seward Johnson” Nothing about the medium.

It feels geometric, gothic, and kind of Japanese. I studied it up close and finally felt it. Plastic! Huh.

I knocked lightly. Yup. Hollow. That makes this a copy, but I think it also makes this even cooler, don’t you think?

Tags: Art, Chicago by M
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