Michael Workman

The scandal surrounding German expressionist painter Joerg Immendorf, a close friend of Chancellor Gerhard Schröeder, is both humorous and instructive. Commissioned with much fanfare to paint the "official" portrait of the chancellor, Immendorf was caught naked in his suite at Dusseldorf's prestigious Steigenberger hotel throwing a party stocked with nine prostitutes and upwards of twenty-two grams of cocaine (reportedly, he was dimed out by a tenth prostitute he'd neglected to invite.) Which would explain the massive sculpture of a human nose that he donated to the city of St. Petersburg. Embarrassing? You bet. Could such a thing ever happen in Chicago? Well, Daley's no Chancellor Schröeder, but a number of upcoming exhibits will showcase artists' experiences with incarceration and the law.

Chicago remembered

While comics, circus paraphernalia and tattoo designs are all acknowledged influences in the work of Chicago printmaker and poet Tony Fitzpatrick, his artistic terrain also includes his own experience of life in Chicago. "The Remembered City" at the DePaul University Art Museum in the Lincoln Park neighborhood exhibits work by Fitzpatrick in which the city's influence looms large. A born Chicagoan, Fitzpatrick is acclaimed for a panoply of reasons, not the least of which is his biography. His 1988 series, "Bad Blood: Portraits of Murderers," for instance, attracted the attention of director Jonathan Demme, who gave the artist a role in his film "Married to the Mob." Fitzpatrick has lived some hard knocks as well, including time in prison for grand theft auto; both sides of the equation inform his work.

Though the artist's vegetable-salad technique varies little, this selection of prints include rough-hewn stylistic touches that reflect his working-class experience of the city. The Chicago Stockyards make an appearance, as does an assortment of recognizable urban milieus: high-rise apartment buildings, garbage-strewn sidewalks, shadowy drug dealers and their physically degenerated victims. At the core of an oeuvre that threatens to be overwhelmed by such cramped visions are moments of exquisite escapism and obvious delight at excavating the source of wide-ranging observations and experiences in his own troubled hometown.

Personal (in)security

An activist artist who divides his time between Manhattan and Puerto Rico, Arnold Mesches brings his "FBI Files" show to the Glass Curtain Gallery in the South Loop neighborhood. Organized by the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York, the work remains faithful to Mesches' practice of incorporating personal and family history into his paintings. This time, however, the history is one unearthed from secondary sources.

After the theft from his studio of paintings based on the infamous Rosenberg Trials, Mesches began to suspect the political activities that inform his artistic practice had spurred Secret Service intervention. Years later, through Freedom of Information Act requests, he obtained files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation archives. The intelligence that the FBI kept on Mesches' is a thorough accounting of the artist's "activities in protests, personal life, and work between 1945 and 1972" weighing in at a hefty 760 pages.

Taking that case file as his inspiration for the series, Mesches has produced four paintings and approximately forty collages that incorporate actual pages from the file. The finished images are brazen and confrontational, the occasional snippet of a Mad magazine cover contrasted against an image of Marilyn Monroe. Mesches gently signals the schizoid, dissent-frightened popular culture for whom police cart off protesters and FBI agents spy on visual artists. Unlike Fitzpatrick, Mesches has never actually been brought up on any charges, though patrons will certainly find his work (ahem) arresting.

On the outside

"Icons and Intimates" at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in the River West neighborhood moves down the self-taught bandwidth firmly into the realm of Art Brut. Incarcerated in mental-health facilities such as the now-famous Haus der Künstler (House of Artists) in the town of Gugging near Vienna, the artists whose work make up this portraiture exhibit crafted their images in attempts at treatment for mental illness. Other artists participating in "Icons and Intimates," such as the inexplicable Henry Darger and folk artist Howard Finster, were self-taught or visionary artists whose work defies category.

Running concurrent with this exhibition, the Center will also host "The Intuit Show of Folk and Outsider Art," a sale of "folk and outsider art, Americana, antiques, and ethnographic art" presented by upwards of forty galleries from around the country.

Tony Fitzpatrick shows at DePaul University Art Gallery, 2350 North Kenmore, (312)325-7506, through November 26. Arnold Mesches shows at Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 South Wabash, (312)344-6650, through October 31. "Icons and Intimates" shows at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, 756 North Milwaukee, (312)243-9088, through November 29.

(2003-09-10)

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