ART INSTITUTE’S CHRISTINA RAMBERG RETROSPECTIVE ARRIVES NEARLY 30 YEARS AFTER HER UNTIMELY DEATH
Fractured and fetishized. Cropped and contained. Patterned and precise. Christina Ramberg’s figurative images share all those qualities and more, a coolly elegant, slyly provocative and enduringly contemporary body of work that continues to influence other artists today.
Although she is internationally known and much respected by other artists, the Chicago artist nonetheless remains underappreciated.
That’s where “Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective,” a stunning, much-deserved exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago comes in. In preparation for more than three years, it is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to her work.
The clear-eyed survey contains more than 100 paintings, quilts, drawings and other objects — about two-thirds of all the work she created in a life that was tragically shortened by an 1989 diagnosis of Pick’s disease or frontotemporal dementia (the same illness that has befallen actor Bruce Willis and former talk show host Wendy Williams). The illness curtailed her artistic output and ultimately led to her death in 1995 at age 49.
Ramberg, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts degrees from the School of the Art Institute in 1968 and ’73 respectively, lived her entire adult life in Chicago. And, as evidenced by a display of dozens of her snapshot slides, the city’s social, artistic and architectural milieus helped define who she was as an artist.
While at the SAIC, she studied with Ray Yoshida, one of the 14 members of the famed Chicago Imagists, a loose-knit, free-wheeling association of artists who ignored the prevailing artistic winds and drew inspiration from other sources including surrealism and comic books.
Ramberg became part of that group when, still a student, she was featured in “False Image,” one in a series of group shows from 1966 to ’73 at the Hyde Park Art Center that thrust these independentminded artists into the spotlight.
The word “Imagist,” though, is hardly mentioned in the exhibition or the accompanying 253-page catalog. According to the show’s two organizers — Thea Liberty Nichols, associate research curator of modern and contemporary art, and Mark Pascale, curator of prints and drawings — that was by design.
“She is an Imagist,” Nichols said. “She has always been associated with the Imagists. But for us in thinking about this solo retrospective, we really wanted to look at Ramberg as an artist unto herself.”
Unlike some artists who need time to find their creative footing, Ramberg established her artistic voice in her earliest student works, dealing with fashion, pattern and the fetishization of the human form.
Indeed, the 1972 work “Waiting Lady,” featured at the show’s entry and on the frontispiece of the catalog sets the tone for the entire offering — a sideways view of sexualized, lingerie-clad female figure in a slightly crouched, bentforward pose with the hands, feet and face cropped out.
Although Ramberg never considered herself a feminist, her works have a decidedly feminist bent, with the artist sometimes seeking to supplant or subvert the so-called male gaze. Indeed, a group of works, including “Untitled” (1972),” were included as illustrations in the decidedly male realm of Playboy magazine.
Drawing in part from the graphic look of comics, which she collected in scrapbooks (one of which is on display), the artist’s acrylic paintings on smooth Masonite have a crisp, matte look. Each is executed in exacting fashion right down to the detailed wood patterns on her artist-crafted frames, with the artist giving herself decidedly precise painting instructions in pages of drawings like “Untitled” (1980).
According to Nichols, Ramberg went so far as to carefully sand out any paint strokes that made their way into her paintings. That did not change until a final group of works (painted on canvas and not Masonite), like “Untitled No. 123” (1986), that are a little shocking with their decidedly painterly look.
In most of the early works, the colors are muted and more or less monochromatic grays, blacks, beiges, but brighter colors burst forth in later semi-abstracted works like “Black ‘N Blue Jacket” (1981), with their layered, colliding and sectionalized garments, doll-like forms and parts of human anatomy.
After it closes at the Art Institute, this retrospective will be shown in Los Angeles and Philadelphia — bringing Ramberg well-deserved attention beyond her hometown.
About 10 additional works by her also will be featured in “Four Chicago Artists,” a show that will run May 11-Aug. 26 in the museum’s prints and drawings galleries, which Pascale sees as a parallel offering to this retrospective.