Art in Chicago: Resisting Regionalism, Transforming Modernism

Chicago is known as a center of innovation in architecture, literature and music, but Art in Chicago is the first broad overview of its twentieth-century fine art. It focuses on three distinct but overlapping generations of Modernists between 1913 and 1985--not just postwar artists such as Leon Golub and June Leaf, or later stars like Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt and the 1960s Hairy Who--not any one clique, but the links between them. Through the decades, Chicago's art world has had a predilection for variety and the authenticity of personal vision, which it consistently privileges over the emulation of trends or established styles. Art in Chicago places this penchant within the context of the larger culture of Modernism, and examines both a cradle of artistic excellence and the issue of "regionalism" in Modern art and criticism. With illustrations of historically important paintings, some reproduced for the first time.