The Great (Art) Migration

Driven by need or opportunity, people have been packing up and leaving long established digs to find brighter futures elsewhere for millennia.  Most of these odysseys have gone completely unheralded; occurring quietly and in virtual obscurity.  Thanks to an imaginative and multi-focused exhibition currently on show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, we see the results of one very extraordinary relocation by a special group of people; artists.

West by Midwest is a visual record of the artists who picked up stakes all over the Midwest and headed west to California for the chance to breathe life into their artistic dreams.

Route 66, that hallowed remnant connecting Chicago to Los Angeles in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s functioned as a yellow brick road carrying all kinds of dreamers, including artists, to California’s golden promise of a new life.  Later, Dwight Eisenhower’s massive interstate highway system introduced in the mid-50’s simply made resettlement all the more feasible.

For artists, with the city’s art scene still in its infancy, Los Angeles in the 50’s became the destination of chose.  Early arrivals like Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams left their native Oklahoma City to find others like themselves along LA’s La Cienega Boulevard looking for the freedom to redefine what art could be.  It wasn’t long before works that were beautiful, intriguing, challenging and innovative began exploding in concentrated enclaves around LA.   An extensive array of the work created by those early colonizers is on display in the MCA exhibit as well as the art of much more recent inventive migrants to the coast.

Not only is the show’s chronological span impressive, its breadth of coverage is gratifyingly inclusive. Highlighting the collaborative support artists extended to one another by opening shared studio space, sponsoring neighborhood workshops and spoon feeding much needed encouragement to one another, narrative accompanying the artwork paint a picture of a community that sustained itself.

It was in this nourishing climate that all types of art began to develop and flourish.  Women artists like the exciting Judy Chicago found a haven where they could thrive and do art unfettered by expectations or conceptual restrictions.   As encompassing as it was encouraging, a panoply of artists, including black, Latin and artists who explored the margins of society through photography could be found among those making up this diaspora of the imagination.

Perhaps in a bid to showcase the exhibit’s reach, the pieces assembled in the show, many of them from the museum’s archival vaults, boasted a broad and handsome range.  Elegance as expressed in the art of Charles White or Judithe Hernandez is displayed just a few feet from the arresting, thought provoking and, to some, confrontational art created by David Hammons.  Steps from Hammons,  another wall holds the culturally surreal photography of Senga Negundi.

Humor, feminist consciousness, and the meticulous reimagining of the common place as seen in Amanda Ross – Ho’s five-foot-high backpack, Cradle of Filth; inspired by one she found on the street, all find expression in the exhibit that took well over a year to assemble, document and finally mount.  By including art work from a host of disciplines, painting, sculpture, photography and video; West by Midwest is ultimately a fascinating homage to the fruits of self-actualization and one that will delight to the end of its run late January next year.

West by Midwest

Nov 17, 2018 – Jan 27, 2019

Museum of Contemporary Art

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL  60611

312-280-2660