If you're a cool fella like me, you like museums. You especially like museums on Tuesdays, when Illinois residents get into museums for free, all year round. So if indeed you're as popular as I, and you find yourself bored and laying on your belly without plans one of these coming Tuesdays, I implore you to give The Museum of Contemporary Arts a look through. Or to check it out any other the day of the week, but to especially check it out now.
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) has always been a hub dedicated to celebrating the different and the experimental of art created in modern times. They've recently (as of 08/19/17) began their planned three-part exhibition We Are Here, in celebration of their 50th anniversary (HBD, MCA). It's a pretty nifty idea, their We Are Here exhibit- three of the museum's curators dug deep into their 50 year-strong archives of media (paintings, videos, sculptures, etc.), to find the pieces whose relevance and meaning are even more pertinent and resonant today than they were at the times of their creation.
If I knew a heck of a lot more about art and had more time/resources to study some of the pieces in the exhibit and then noodle about their cultural relevance then v. now, I would. That would make an interesting read I think (at least to dweebs like me) BUT. Instead, I'm going to give you a handy list of some of the pieces I found the most interesting to my eyeballs, and let you do the pondering of yourself!
Also: enjoy my own incredibly powerful photograph abilities; I snapped these pics myself. Can’t be sued for fair-use if they're your own cruddy photos! Enjoy!
1. "Six Women," Marisol Escobar
Created in 1968, the first piece to enter the MCA. Apparently, the heads Marisol made from plaster were based on her own face. Maybe it represents like, six different aspects, or ‘faces’, of her own personality? Either way the shoes down below are a nice touch.
2. "Robot," Siobhan Hapaska
The plaque reads “At once familiar and unnerving”, and that definitely fits. This piece was created in 2001, which is kind of wild, considering the picture’s subject matter- people’s love affair with technology has done nothing but grow stronger and more symbiotic over the last 15 years.
3. "Untitled," Roberto Matta Echaurren
A piece from 1946, it apparently depicts the “convergent world” of “imagined technological environments that would adapt themselves to people”. Though it’s done in an ambiguous way, it’s an interesting topic, especially since a lot in the picture looks organic, non-mechanical. Chilean artist Matta, born in 1911, lived until 2002. I wonder what he thought of the world around him, towards the end.
4. "Study for Portrait," Francis Bacon
Now this one is unnerving, which is probably what caught my attention about it. That face there is the stuff of fever-nightmares. Created in 1949, it depicts a man in suit and tie, in a transparent box, screaming out in anger or boredom or madness or all three. If the idea of a man, a businessman presumably, stuck in a box and wanting nothing more than to scream out was scary to Bacon in 1949, one can only imagine the horror of that idea today.
5. "The Fish," Jonaths de Andrade
A video which runs 30-some minutes in length, and depicts the life and daily activities of a fisherman who holds and comforts his captured prey through death. Created only in 2016, its message is one that would feel resonant today or any day.