Exhibit of the week: destroy the picture: painting the void, 1949–1962

_Museum of Contemporary Art,_ _Chicago_ _Through_ _June 2_ A major art movement passed by almost undetected half a century ago, said KYLE MACMILLAN in the _CHICAGO SUN-TIMES_. Shortly after

World War II, a variety of artists working in different countries “tried to redefine the very nature of painting by slicing, singeing, and puncturing surfaces and sometimes doing away with

paint altogether.” Some of those artists, including Yves Klein and Robert Rauschenberg, are better known for different work; others, like Japan’s Shozo Shimamoto and Spain’s Manolo Millares,

are nearly forgotten today. Yet all in some way explored the relationship between destruction and creation. This exhibit, “the most comprehensive look yet at this surprisingly widespread

yet little-known phenomenon,” makes coherent, definitive connections among the works of 26 artists from Europe, Asia, and the United States. It forces viewers to “rethink and expand the

story of 20th-century art.” SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE SIGN UP FOR THE

WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a

weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. The curators want us to believe that all these artists were responding to the Second World War, said

SAM WORLEY in the _CHICAGO READER_, and many of the works clearly do offer commentary on the destruction the artists witnessed. Gustav Metzger’s _South Bank Demonstration_, a 1961

installation in which he used acid to corrode sheets of nylon, was undoubtedly informed by his childhood in Nazi Germany and his parents’ death at Buchenwald. A trip to Hiroshima inspired

Klein’s “haunting, ethereal” fire paintings, created by searing dampened cardboard with a blowtorch. Yet not all the artists experienced the war firsthand, said LAUREN WEINBERG in _TIME OUT

CHICAGO_. The museum’s attempt to present all the works as products of that one conflict comes off, unfortunately, as a gross oversimplification. Still, it’s instructive to see such a

diverse crop of artists working toward similar ends. “Many of the works commingle fear and hope,” said AMY CAVANAUGH in _CHICAGOIST.COM_. American sculptor Lee Bontecou is represented by

four untitled works that “leap out from the wall.” Composed of steel, wire, and fabric, they look like sections of a futuristic machine that’s fallen to earth, and each has a menacingly dark

gaping hole at its center. Another featured artist, France’s Niki de Saint Phalle, created her signature works by firing a shotgun at bags of paint. She may have summed up better than

anyone else what she and her far-flung compatriots were trying to accomplish. When she pulled the trigger, she said, it was “as though one were witnessing a birth and death in the same

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