Making the case for contemporary art

“Contemporary art, unlike modernism, is not a style,” said Giampaolo Bianconi, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, as we passed a Claes Oldenburg light switch sculpture. “It simply means things that are happening right now, in the present.”

We were in an empty gallery on a recent Tuesday. The Art Institute is closed to the public on Tuesdays, but I was there on a singular mission: to better understand contemporary art.

I’d gone to the museum with my wife, younger son and his fiance. We naturally headed straight to the Impressionists — the museum practically funnels visitors there, through the entrance doors, up the stairs, toward Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grand Jatte.”

Only the young lady announced she didn’t care for this pointillist nonsense. And off the happy couple went, headed for the Dutch masters. My wife and I were left behind, blinking.

We met up later in the modern wing, for drumbeat denunciations of the what-kind-of-garbage-is-this? variety. I mustered the best defense I could, then realized reinforcements were needed.

Bianconi and I paused to admire Alma Thomas’s abstract “Starry Night and the Astronauts.”

“The artists we’re looking at here have asked themselves in a sense the same question your future daughter-in-law was asking...” said Bianconi.

“‘...why should I care? I don’t understand this.’” continued Emily Fry, executive director of interpretation. “So it’s our goal to create these ways for people to feel a sense of connection.”

Being aghast at what’s on the walls of the Art Institute is a fine Chicago tradition dating back to 1913, when it hosted New York’s Armory Show of avant garde artists, making the Art Institute the first museum in America to show works by Picasso.

Shock and dismay are sometimes exactly what the artist intended.

“In many ways, the artist is wanting to provoke these questions,” said Fry. “To provoke a sense of wonderment.”

Or disgust. Or goofiness.

“These are fascinating, enigmatic works of art,” said Bianconi, referring to the Oldenburg light switches. “The first thing you notice about them is they’re extremely recognizable objects drawn from our daily life.”

We ended up at an entrance to the contemporary floor, where several phrases were painted, large, on the wall.

“This is a piece that we recently installed, a text work by Lawrence Weiner, a conceptual artist,” said Bianconi. “This one reads, ‘Made fragile at this time on this place to a point of no return.’ It’s also something that’s very apt for your experience of looking at art. I don’t want to over-interpret it. But art can take you to a particular place, a feeling of fragility, vulnerability, a physical sensation through color and form that you might not arrive at through another means.”

On my previous visit, this particular artwork was singled out for special scorn, as mere words painted on a wall.

“This is a font the artist designed,” said Bianconi. “Its scale has specifically been formatted for this space. Another thing for contemporary art; you might look at thing that it doesn’t involve any skill, but actually there’s a lot of thought.”

All art, back to the oldest paleolithic stone Venus, is in a sense contemporary art.

“When you go look at impressionism, you’re also seeing them in the contemporary moment,” said Bianconi. “Even historic artworks are contemporary because we encounter them right now. They mean something else now than they did in the past.”

So today’s ridiculous modern oddity can be tomorrow’s revered old master.

“The Art Institute has been on the forefront of contemporary space since our start,” said Bianconi. “At some point the things we were gathering in our traditional galleries were our contemporary art. There’s no other museum in the United States that has contemporary art as much part of its DNA as the Art Institute. Trustees visited Monet in Giverny and bought works as he was making them.”

That’s why I feel obligated to make the case for contemporary art. The past, culled and curated as it must be, always offers a more attractive artistic face, worn smooth by familiarity and the caress of time. The temptation is to wander back into history and dwell there, ignoring the ugly and chaotic present. But rejecting our own time closes you off to a world of experience, a world we all happen to live in. And who would want to let a loved one do that?