When I graduated from Brookline High School in Massachusetts in 1989, my art teacher, Osna Sens, gave me an oversize monograph of Ivan Albright paintings as a present. I was a depressed, lonely kid whose only true outlet was painting and drawing. Perhaps Ms. Sens thought Albright’s ghoulish pictures might strike a chord. I didn’t know then that I would make Chicago my home, but Albright’s lurid, often nightmarish portraits were an early introduction to one of the more unusual artists our city has produced. With “Flesh,” a selection of some 30 paintings from its collection, the Art Institute gives Chicago an opportunity to get reacquainted with Albright. It is the museum’s first exhibition devoted to his work since 1997.
The obsessive meticulousness of Albright’s technique is a hallmark of his work. The underdrawings took him months, while a finished painting might be labored on for more than a decade. “I have noticed visitors getting up close to the paintings to try to see every individual stroke and detail,” Murphy notes. “He is very obviously a ‘new’ Old Master, someone who consciously competed with artists such as El Greco, Rembrandt, and Albrecht Dürer. So his work does not belong to his own time, but for all time.”
Through 8/5: Fri-Wed 10:30 AM-5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM-8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artic.edu, $25, $19 students, seniors, and teens, free 14 and under.
