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Formal Perversity in Chicago Art

By William Conger

No one talks about regionalism in contemporary art anymore.  Nowadays new art is either international or it isn’t art.  That conclusion is suggested by curatorial jet setting, the plethora of international art fairs, and the money obsessed art world. It’s facilitated by globalization in all of its forms. The art world is flat and regionalism is dead. Coincidentally, modernism has always favored mainstream discourse enabling the inevitable next step while marginalizing disruptive ideas and practices that are not good-naturedly ironic and therefore fundamentally supportive of the status quo.  Truly disruptive critiques are unwelcome provincialisms.

Chicago style regionalism, with its full-bodied blend of surreal narratives, formalist obsessions, and cranky pathos, attained a grudging degree of mainstream acceptance through the Imagists and their circle in the 1970s. Even the long neglected abstractionists earned some credibility when Donald Kuspit, for example, linked them to what he called the “Madness of Art in Chicago” by which he meant a type of irrational narrative abstraction.  Soon, however, a new generation of Chicago artists together with new curatorial advocates eschewed the city’s regionalist imagists and abstractionists as being overly idiosyncratic and provincial. They turned to Duchamp and international conceptualism. They favored art for ideas, not for aesthetics.

I don’t know if New York critic Saul Ostrow coined the term “Perverse Formalism” but he’s aptly applied it to marginalized postwar European artists like Manzoni (who canned his own excrement) and Fontana (who slit his monochrome paintings).  Rather than being incidental to modernism or being “anecdotal glyphs” as Ostrow summarizes their critics, these artists, he says, offered something expansive, not reductive, to modernism; in short, a “perverse formalism”.

Ostrow’s Perverse Formalism also applies to Chicago style art in a more inclusive way than any other term.  So I borrow it here.  It evokes a type of deliberate misconduct or willful disobedience, extremist interest in bodily function and taboo erotica, a hyper-alertness to physicality.   Chicago Style art is not metaphysical or transcendent.  It is all flesh and blood under duress (to paraphrase critic James Yood).  I think this perversity, as intentional disobedience toward mainstream modernism, is evident in all the best Chicago art of all styles and genres. It extends through the generations of Chicago artists from the 1920s to the present. Chicago artists are modernism’s antagonists.

Some observers like to describe current Chicago scene as divided between artists who are deeply committed to a sense of place and other artists who are committed to a broad internationalist post-aesthetic mainstream. The current division is a deja-vu experience for those who recall the bogus distinction between imagists and abstractionists a generation ago. As early as 1971, some years before anyone invented a conflict, the city’s most ardent critic, Dennis Adrian, wrote that Chicago abstract and imagist artists were united by shared interest in “complex organic form.”  The new division is also bogus art-politics. Superficial quibbles notwithstanding; Chicago art is united by allegiance to formal perversity. By this I mean —taking a cue from Ostrow —an art of deliberate misconduct or deviant critiquing of mainstream modernism. Formal perversity in art opens debate and broadens discourse respecting what art is and whether it can exist.  It does not aim to further art but to taunt its continuing false prohibitions, whatever they may be.

Jeanne Dunning, a Chicago based conceptual artist of international status does intellectually demanding art that may seem very far removed from the accessible, gritty hometown painting/collage/poems by equally renowned artist Tony Fitzpatrick.  But the underlying formal perversity — the Chicago Style disobedience that permeates and joins their art — reveals the extraordinary transformative threat they pose to homogenized mainstream modernism.

In 2006 Dunning created a performance/installation titled Tomato Piece.  She gathered people of both sexes into a makeshift arena (as the pure white cube of art?) and invited them to pummel each other with hundreds of ripe tomatoes. Here was a seemingly lighthearted opportunity for sexually charged, playful gender warfare. In fact was an excitingly taboo event of hedonist excess unmasking the fearful metaphor of a bloody random massacre in the formal arena of high art. Dunning’s work exposes the compulsion for chaos, for the formless, that is the scarcely recognized secret essential to new art.

In 2006 Tony Fitzpatrick completed his second volume of The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City.  He made a series of small painted collages, each one incorporating Chicago ephemera: matchbook covers, old tickets, pinup ads, and the like, circled around his tightly outlined street-smart images nudes, dogs, birds, and donkeys and enlivened more by flowers, circles, musical notation, abstract patterns, and his poems. Fitzpatrick’s burlesque urban dramas entice vicarious transgression and promise artificial freedom. For Fitzpatrick the city’s natural state is defiant. Fractious perversity is the best opposition to a grid of flat mediocrity and stasis.

Dunning’s and Fitzpatrick’s art is representative of sincere and internationally influential regionalism because it complicates the discourses and practices of new art.  Their art’s disruptive content that is deeply rooted in a longstanding, richly amplified Chicago Style of formal perversity.

To learn more about William Conger and his art start by visiting WilliamConger.com.

Editorial Note: Since this interview, the Rempis Percussion Quartet has released a fourth CD: “The Disappointment of Parsley” on NotTwo Records. You can also see the group play live in Chicago at the end of January.

What inspired The Rempis Percussion Quartet to come together and make this music?

Dave Rempis: I think it’s a combination of things. First, the personalities of the band: the musical personalities as well as just the regular personalities work out really well and I’d heard Tim [Daisy] and Frank [Rosaly] play together once or twice. I think hearing them play together; I think they’re really complementary musicians in their approach to the same instrument [percussion]. It seemed like it would work really well having two people not getting in each other’s way. We could create an ensemble sound.

I think what I’ve been hearing for a long time … I studied a lot of ethnomusicology in college and I was in Ghana for a year at the university there studying percussion and ethnomusicology. Since being there, especially with all the percussion ensemble-type music they have there, it’s something I think I’ve been hearing for a long time and this seemed like a way of sort of recreating that, but with improvising musicians whose focus is improvisation.

Do you think audiences are more accepting of contemporary improvised music that has a strong groove?

DR: I think that’s a tough question because I think any of this music when it’s done well and honestly, I think is really convincing. I think audiences pick up on that in a live concert setting, maybe not on CD, but in a live concert I think people can really pick up on the energy and the interaction and I’ve seen audiences unfamiliar with this kind of music who were blown away by concerts that frankly were extremely abstract and perhaps noisy - things you wouldn’t normally expect them to be into – but they had amazing reactions to the music just because of the energy of it. That said, I think some of the rhythmic focus that we have does make it more accessible to somebody who’s completely unfamiliar with the music.

I think the rhythmic aspect of what we’re doing certainly comes out of the jazz tradition. It certainly comes out of other perhaps particularly American traditions, whether it’s the blues or soul or plenty of other musical traditions that come out of the States. I think in a way perhaps that’s what distinguishes a lot of American musicians working in this genre from some European musicians working in a similar arena: we have a more explicit focus on playing rhythms explicitly.

What did you mean when you described the music as “long-form structured improvisation?”

DR: A lot of what we do ends up being pieces that range from 12 minutes to 30 minutes, which for the most part is longer than your average pop tune, longer than your average jazz track, and it’s longer than what’s going to get played on the radio. In that sense, it’s obviously longer form. I think what I meant by structured improvisation is that I think what we do and are going for is maintaining some sort of structural integrity or basically creating spontaneous compositions, more or less, that have some kind of clear through-line or some kind of clear arrangement decisions that happen and reference elements from earlier in the piece. It’s something that has a certain structural integrity to it and isn’t just a sprawling stream-of-consciousness thing, which is the way some people work and it’s a totally valid way of working. I think we just have a different focus.

How do you think recording “Hunter-Gatherers” live influenced the music?

DR: I think that’s actually a really important thing with this group. Our first record was a limited release live recording, the second one was a studio one, and I’m really glad to be back doing another live recording because for the most part I feel like totally free improvised music is really a live art form. It’s not something that necessarily done that well in the studio. There are certainly things you can do in the studio, there are things you can try, there’s perhaps more opportunity for exploration but I feel like frequently the energy just doesn’t get as high in the studio as it does in a live performance setting.

How do you make the choice between different horns (alto, tenor and baritone) in an improvisation context?

DR: That’s actually a really good question because it’s really easy to sit down and play one for a while and put it down, play the next one, put it down, and it’s really something I’d like to think I try to avoid. Then again, if you drag your baritone to a gig, I live up three flights of stairs, just dragging those three horns up and down all those stairs, you kind of feel; “Well, I ought to play them, at least for a little while.” Overall, I think it has [horn selection] more to do with what you’re hearing musically. As far as what voice I’m working with, what’s happening, where it fits into the music, basically.

Could you talk about Umbrella Music: What it is, what your goals are and how you feel it’s going so far?

DR: Umbrella is kind of a loose coalition of presenters working at different venues in town. We’ve been working together informally since 2002/2003. We try to make sure if a musician comes to town and he can’t play one of our venues, we can recommend him to the other venues. Or try to get people multiple gigs when they come to town. I think basically the goal for the group is to try and create a joint marketing opportunity for all these different venues and by doing that hopefully reaching a wider audience of people for all these venues. Also to create better performance situations, meaning there are more people there, people get paid better, they’re playing to a larger audience. I think that’s the main goal of the group.

How do you balance playing in so many different contexts?

DR: I think it’s helpful, actually. I think it’s helpful in the sense that it kind of draws different sides out of you as a musician when you’re playing in all these different contexts. I think it’s a healthy thing to do. If you substituted one member out of this band, it would be a different band. I feel like each different line-up you play in, it just inherently draws different things out of you as a musician: it makes you explore different things. I don’t even know if it’s a matter of trying to balance anything, it’s an opportunity to explore more of your own personality.

“Hunter-Gatherers” by The Rempis Percussion Quartet is available from 482 Music (http://www.482Music.com).

Sitting during my lunch listening to the first Rempis Percussion Quartet CD has reminded me to repost tonight an interview I did for that album with Dave Rempis. My mind, however, has been wandering to the art world. Namely, which galleries of interest might have a November opening coming up.

It just so happens that one of my favorite galleries, Corbett vs. Dempsey almost does. Their Margo Hoff exhibition opens in November but “opens” in December. On a completely irrelevant side note, I was most impressed to receive the post card correctly addressed (without my asking) to my new abode. C vs. D runs a smooth operation (or rather John Corbett and Jim Dempsey do).

I have to admit that Margo Hoff is a new artist to me. But that’s one thing I like about a quality gallery. It’s easy to take a chance on their judgement. In other words, I’ll be at the December 4th opening and urge you to attend, too.

There’s also a side exhibition by Sam Prekop which I’m quite curious about.

Lastly, a question. Did anyone see Klang! last night at the Hungry Brain? If you did, first, I’m jealous, and second, please send me a quick comment/review here.

Collage of Photos from the Chicago Human Rhythm Project (click them for slide show)

First of all, congratulations on the Chicago Human Rhythm Project’s (CHRP) 20th anniversary. How has the audience and environment for tap changed over that time?

Thank you for the well wishes. It has been quite a ride.The audience continues to grow and is more sophisticated as CHRP has presented extraordinary tap and percussive arts virtuosos for 20 years. They’ve seen and heard the best of every imaginable type of rhythm maker from sand dancers and body drummers to neo-Taiko drummers and hard core rhythm tappers. Audiences have a better understanding of tap as a form of percussion as well as dance. We are foot drummers and as such, composers as well as choreographers. I would also say that our audiences are getting younger as there are more and more young people studying tap again and realizing that they can tap to their own music … not just to swing jazz from the golden age of tap. At the same time, tap has a very long way to go before it achieves equal footing … no pun intended … among other dance and established cultural institutions. In Chicago.

For example, there are at least three theaters dedicated primarily to presenting contemporary dance … the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Dance Center of Columbia College and the Ruth Page Dance Center. In the entire United States of America, there isn’t a single theater dedicated to presenting American tap dance as its primary focus. The same can be said of academia. Most college and university dance programs are dominated by ballet and modern dance while tap is the “once every fourth semester” dance form seldom taught beyond a basic level. It’s a travesty that a great American art form has been kept out of universities. This is changing, but very slowly. As a matter of fact, with support from the MacArthur Foundation’s International Connections Fund, we are working with the Beijing Contemporary Music Academy to create a unified syllabus for teaching beginning through advanced tap for Chinese universities.

Does CHRP have its own style of tap? If so, how would you characterize it? 

CHRP is a presenter. I sometimes say “CHRP is the Ravinia of Rhythm …” so part of our mission is to present as diverse of an array of tap and rhythm as possible within the contexts of tradition, innovation and excellence. CHRP does have a resident performing and teaching ensemble, BAM!, that has a growing repertory of dances including very traditional, post-modern and contemporary works. Within the history of tap, most people think of the great mainstream soloists … Fred Astaire, Bill Robinson, Shirley Temple, Gregory Hines, but very few people know anything about tap repertory companies that would be analogous to Hubbard Street or Giordano Jazz Dance. So even to say that we have a tap repertory company is a new concept for most of the general public.

Tap is often associated with jazz. Is that true for CHRP and if so, how?

The evolution of tap predates jazz music by more than 150 years. Tap is often associated with early jazz and swing jazz of the 1930’s and 40’s. Rhythm tappers influenced the evolution of jazz and some dance historians claim that tap dancers helped to create bebop. A gross over-simplification can be helpful to understand two basic genres of tap - European based and African based. Although Irish dancing is without a doubt a form of foot drumming, European-based tap evolved in a more presentational context - musical theater - Rockettes  … .whereas African-based tap evolved into a music-making, syncopation-based, compositional context. After the heyday of tap in the movie musical, tap retreated into jazz clubs and small enclaves of dedicated rhythm tappers. These could be described as being on opposite sides of a circle with every imaginable variation existing between these two examples.

Tap dancers in the 21st century are more likely to identify themselves as percussionists or musicians - who move through space. Despite self-identification, old stereotypes die hard and whenever you utter the word “tap” - iconic images of our past cultural traditions continue to make it difficult to see tap for what it is today.

“Global Rhythms” kicks off your 20th anniversary year. How did “Thanks 4 Giving,” the shared-revenue aspect of the performances, develop? Particularly in these hard times it shows a strong commitment to the community. Is it an essential part of CHRP as a company?

100% of the proceeds from CHRP’s first concerts 20 years ago were donated to an organization called Open Hand/Chicago: a meals on wheels program for people impacted by HIV/AIDS. After several years of donating the proceeds of our single annual performance, CHRP began to grow and needed the revenue to pay its own bills. Many of our other annual programs developed revenue sharing models for the artists who could augment their fee by selling tickets to their own supporters and keeping half of the ticket price. Thanks 4 Giving took us back to our roots as a fundraiser for another organization, but was also designed as an audience development initiative that provided an opportunity for any Chicago-based nonprofit to be a part of a great show at a world class theater.

In terms of its relationship to our mission, it really resonates with many of our ideals. Collaboration, cooperation, sustainability, and most importantly of all, finding common ground. Tap dance’s roots are in Irish and African culture and it’s evolution parallels the development of the United States. The collision of cultures in America threw off many sparks and tap dance was one of the brightest and most positive. It is a cause for celebration of a shared legacy and a reminder of our shared primal instinct to make rhythm … we may all march to a different drummer, as the saying goes, but we all hear a beat. Our performance, education and community outreach programs are designed to highlight this fact and to build lasting relationships and genuine respect between diverse individuals and communities through the shared practice of and appreciation for rhythmic arts - especially TAP!

“Global Rhythms is featuring Step Afrika! Dance company this year. How would you describe stepping in general and Step Afrika! for someone who is new to this style of dance?

To quote Step Afrika! Founder and Executive Director: “Stepping is an art form that uses the body, hands, voice and feet to make music. It started when African-American college students would gather on college campuses - it was their way of expressing love and pride for their respective organizations. If you look at other dance forms, stepping is in a long line of percussive dance like tapping and “hambone.” People try to figure out its origin, but no one can really pinpoint who started it, or which fraternity or sorority did it first. Stepping is also similar to the South African dance “gumboot,” where performers dance with Wellington boots.”

Step Afrika! goes beyond traditional stepping and adds narrative, context and costumes to create a more theatrical experience. But they also perform traditional Zulu dances, contemporary Hip Hop and more. I call it the Anthology of African dance … it’s quite a show.

Besides Step Afrika! What should an audience member expect from the “Global Rhythms” performances?

Each night, there will be special guest artists like the South Shore Drill Team, Trinity Irish Dancers, Alphonsus Academy of Creative Arts and one of today’s hottest rhythm tappers, Jason Janas “warming up ” the audience. CHRP often presents community artists alongside locally, nationally and internationally preeminent artists … we blur the line between the professional elites and community. As a matter of fact, the opening night performance will close with a rousing finale performed by STEP AFRiKA!, our own ensemble BAM! and students from the Sammy Dyer School of the Theater and Dance and Mayfair Academy who all learned a stepping choreography together at our 2009 summer festival Rhythm World. You can hear the rhythm, you can literally feel the vibrations from the rhythm and it’s power is almost irresistable.

Paul Hertz interview from “Structural Elements” show