2025-02-22_ab (2025 PtT Chicago - Saturday - Edgar Miller Exhibit)
The Edgar Miller Exhibit at the DePaul University Art Museum.
Edgar Miller (1899–1993) arrived in Chicago in 1917 and steadily built a successful career as a multi-hyphenate creative practitioner in the city over the next fifty years. Modernism also emerged during this period, but for all his avant-garde inclinations, Miller and the work he produced often developed in a counter direction. He developed a signature style, but never embraced geometric abstraction or machine age aesthetics, remaining committed to ornate patternmaking and naturalist, often imaginative figurative storytelling. Miller was not against modernism, but he did resist its privileging of the newness and the idea of solitary artistic "genius" by embracing the past and working collaboratively. Working with other practitioners, Miller left an indelible mark on Chicago. Over the past century, however, many of these multifaceted contributions to art and design in Chicago have become hidden in plain sight if not outright forgotten or lost. This exhibition offers a tapestry of what remains, of what is known: architectural and mural fragments, proofs; sketches and photographs of projects realized and unrealized; vestiges of moments past; and bits of ephemera. Together these pieces tell a story of an innovative, resourceful, and idiosyncratic polymath who offers an alternative vision of what modernism meant in Chicago.
2025-02-22_ab (2025 PtT Chicago - Saturday - Edgar Miller Exhibit)
The Edgar Miller Exhibit at the DePaul University Art Museum.
Edgar Miller (1899–1993) arrived in Chicago in 1917 and steadily built a successful career as a multi-hyphenate creative practitioner in the city over the next fifty years. Modernism also emerged during this period, but for all his avant-garde inclinations, Miller and the work he produced often developed in a counter direction. He developed a signature style, but never embraced geometric abstraction or machine age aesthetics, remaining committed to ornate patternmaking and naturalist, often imaginative figurative storytelling. Miller was not against modernism, but he did resist its privileging of the newness and the idea of solitary artistic "genius" by embracing the past and working collaboratively. Working with other practitioners, Miller left an indelible mark on Chicago. Over the past century, however, many of these multifaceted contributions to art and design in Chicago have become hidden in plain sight if not outright forgotten or lost. This exhibition offers a tapestry of what remains, of what is known: architectural and mural fragments, proofs; sketches and photographs of projects realized and unrealized; vestiges of moments past; and bits of ephemera. Together these pieces tell a story of an innovative, resourceful, and idiosyncratic polymath who offers an alternative vision of what modernism meant in Chicago.