One of a great number of things I love about my life in Chicago is having a membership to the Art Institute and access to all the treasures it houses. I love having the ability to hop on a bus, my senior fare making it almost a free ride, and shortly be surrounded by some of the greatest art in the world.
Aside from from displaying it's own vast and impressive holdings it also hosts special exhibitions, some large, some small, the give me the opportunity to experience work I might not otherwise get a chance to see. A number of years ago an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture was exhibited. The front was fairly complete, the back raw and rough, chiseling of the stone just begun. I felt as if I was treated to a complete primer on how the master created his works. Some of the works in these special exhibitions come from private collections; which has always set up a scenario in my head of a dowager inquiring of her maid "Did you dust the Van Gogh? What about the Monet in the 3rd floor guest bath?"; meaning, that unless you are considerably well heeled, I am definitely NOKD to such people, it is, again, a once in a lifetime opportunity to view them. For a period of time the museum had 2 large scale modern works on display, a Rothko and a Basquiat. They were on loan from a man while he completed his house in Florida. After it was finished he took them back. Some people are so selfish.
So, on a day when I had not much to do, I went to see an exhibition of works on paper by Ellsworth Kelly. The Art Institute has one of his works prominently displayed in the hallway of the American Wing. I have never cared for it. I find it trite and pretentious. However, I learned long ago a single work does not give one an understanding of an artist's vision so I decided to give the exhibition a look.
In the first gallery I was immediately impressed with the work I saw from the early part of his career. I was particularly enraptured by a close to life size self portrait of the artist as a young man. The second gallery contained sketches of predominately handsome young men. My Gaydar has never been the best but it suddenly went off. There was a subtle, sensual masculinity about the way the subjects were rendered. Handsome faces, rounded biceps bared by tee shirts with slightly too short sleeves. I took out my phone and googled Mr. Kelly. He was indeed gay, unabashedly so apparently. For several years he lived with fellow artist Robert Indiana. And, as if there were any doubt left regarding the sexual orientation of Mr. Kelly, in the third galley we come to the sketches of a bevy of shirtless, hunky, exceedingly handsome men. I almost felt as if I had been transported to a gay bar circa 1977.
His widower Jack Shears, who he was with for a number of decades, runs the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, which loaned most of the works on display. In 2023, in honor of what would have been Kelly's 100th birthday, the foundation made a number of donations, as well as gifts of works on paper, to several museums. The Art Institute received 25, many of which were on featured in the exhibition.
Before I left the exhibit I texted my longtime friend, who just recently retired from his position of doing installation at the museum, asking if he had seen it. He had and was as impressed as I. He went on to mention that he had once met Kelly when he had visited the Art Institute and described him as "super nice" with "no pretentions". I texted back 'I hate you."
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