Art Shay

Hear Art Shay in Madison on May 2

Foreground, from left: Billy Cogran, Florence Shay, Art Shay, at Stephen Daiter Gallery opening reception. Photo by Richard Shay. 

 

The University of Wisconsin in Madison has scheduled Art Shay for an artist talk on Wednesday, May 2. Shay will recap highlights of his seven decades as a photographer, shooting those in the hot spotlight and others in the cold shadows. 

The visiting artist talk is at 4:30 p.m. in the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison.

From the Art Shay bio on the Art Department's website:

In 2007, Shay had his first major retrospective of his black and white photographs which ran for six months at the Chicago History Museum: "The Essential Art Shay: Selected Photographs." In 2008, Shay had a solo show “Traces of a bygone America” in Paris at Gallerie Albert Loeb. Also in 2008, The Museum of Contemporary Art - Chicago held an exhibit of photographs titled “Art Shay: Chicago Accent” which included pieces from between 1949 and 1968 of Shay's work while working with Algren of Chicago's "underclass." 

Since the opening in 1976 of Northbrook Court Mall in Northbrook, Illinois, Shay has been chronicling life at the mall. Shay is also working on a project on the life of Smashing Pumpkin's Billy Corgan. Since the end of 2010, Shay has been writing a weekly photography blog "From the Vault of Art Shay" on Chicagoist.com.

In 2010, Chicago's Thomas Master's Gallery featured Shay's first show of exclusively his color photography "Art Shay: True Colors." The Chicago Tribune named this show as one of the best 2010 Chicago gallery shows.

A showing of Shay's black-and-white work at the Stephen Daiter gallery is on view through Feb. 25. Bill Zwecker reports in the final lines of his Sun-Times column that starts with the latest Kardashian news that sales from the gallery started quickly: 

Rocker Billy Corgan was among the first to snap up a precious early Art Shay photograph — “Dorsal Nude, Simone de Beauvoir” — at the recent Daiter Gallery opening of the latest Shay exhibition. 

A Deerfield review report on the Art Shay exhibit, with photos by Richard Shay of the reception, includes Shay's account of how he took that photo:

But one of his favorite on-the-job memories was photographing Simone de Beauvoir, a French existentialist philosopher and feminist, when she visited Chicago to be with noted American author Nelson Ahlgren.

“Nelson was living in a $10-a-month apartment on Wabansia and asked if I could borrow a bath tub for Simone to use, because she wanted to bathe,” Shay said.

Anyone who wants more of that story will have the opportunity in May, in Madison.

'Documented What We Saw' - Shay on Algren

Art Shay in this video interview from the inaugural year of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame talks about his friend Nelson Algren and how the two of them came up with the title for the Algren book on the city they both loved and documented.

Shay tells it this way: "The title was born in my '49 Pontiac." He recalls his own brainstorming: " 'We got to do this as a book, this is a book on Chicago. We need a title. Chicago is sort of a wild city, a historic city, it's a city of dynamite. It's a city on the make.' I said, 'That's the title.' He said, 'right, that's the title.' "

Algren's work, Chicago: City on the Make: Sixtieth Anniversary Edition, was recently republished in a commemorative volume with an introduction by Studs Terkel. Algren was inducted into the hall in 2010 and Shay accepted the award for him. This week, the hall honored the class of 2011: Cyrus Colter, Theodore Dreiser, Harriet Monroe, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg and Ida B. Wells.

Accepting For Nelson Algren, Art Shay

The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame held a ceremony to induct the first group of lions: Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Terkel, Lorraine Hansberry and Nelson Algren.

Friends or relatives accepted on behalf of the writers chosen by judges who set out to honor authors "whose words have best captured the essence of our city."

Although the first six winners were picked posthumously, the Hall of Fame said it expects to also open the list to living writers.

Art Shay, a long-time friend and collaborator of Algren, accepted the award for the writer of "The Man with the Golden Arm" and many other works.  (Above, Art Shay on stage accepting the award at Northeastern Illinois University.)

Ruth Kott, of the University of Chicago Magazine, who wrote about the Nov. 20 Chicago Literary Hall of Fame ceremony, noted that the Hall will be housed in the Cliff Dwellers Club on Michigan Avenue.

Kelly O'Connor McNees, author of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, tweeted:

The hands-down highlight of the night was 88-yr-old Life Magazine photographer Art Shay, accepting for Nelson Algren.

Want to read more details about the Algren-Shay connection? Find our previous blog posts by clicking here: Nelson Algren-Art Shay.

Update Rick Kogan in the Chicago Tribune covered the evening in his piece Chicago Literary Hall of Fame inducts its first class. He included this bit of history:

The idea for this HOF was that of Don Evans, a novelist ("Good Money After Bad" and the editor of the anthology "Cubbie Blues: 100 Years of Waiting Till Next Year.") For the last two years he has been tireless in his passion for this project. He got a lot of local writers to come up with and finally vote for the people inducted, persuaded me to emcee the event and got Marc Smith, founder of the poetry slam movement, to direct it. He sat, tired but pleased, in a box in the theater with his wife, Margaret, and their young son, Dusty.

Kogan also listed a few people who are strong candidates for the class of 2011, including Carl Sandburg and Mike Royko. 

Update 2 Donald G. Evans wrote his own colorful post about the evening, just published on the Huffington Post: First Induction Ceremony Honors Our Greatest Writers. Evans notes that Art Shay was curious about the display of his photos and made it to the stage with a handful of notes.

From Evans:

. . . we knew all time limits were a mockery. 
Nobody seemed to care. Well, maybe they did--some people were hungry, and some were eager for the bar to reopen, and some had kids with sitters. Nobody complained, at least, since we all, I think, knew that this was a special occasion, and that now, as much as ever, our past was not merely a dim fading bulb, but a bright guiding light. 

Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Art Shay -- The Royal Line

Peter Byrne of Swans has a new essay -- about literature, Chicago and about the pulsing currents of urban living that turned the gathering places of down-and-outs into what passes for the city's own Bohemian quarter. As Byrne puts it, in an ode to the work of Nelson Algren: " Artiness has moved in where Algren found space conducive to making art precisely because there was no art around."

Byrne continues with close observations about Art Shay, who worked closely with Algren:

Art Shay in all this is a voice from the past that won't stop talking back to the present. As a photographer his place is secure in the royal line that goes through Bill Brandt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans. But he is not so stolid as Brandt, so lyrical as Cartier-Bresson, or so static as Evans. He is also less sentimental than almost anybody -- including Algren, who had a soft spot for any hooker with a hard luck story.

In the heyday of press photography, Shay was a stalwart of Life, Time, and Sports Illustrated, among others. He has always been willing to give center stage, as at the Rainbo, to his friend Algren. But anyone familiar with Shay's work knows that his photos of the writer are only a small part of his vast production. Shay's world, moreover, has always been wider and more aglow with joie de vivre than the darker planet Algren inhabited.

Click to read the full Byrne essay in Swans Commentary.

Seaman On Shay: 'Striking Photography And Candid Reminiscences'

Donna Seaman brings her wit and wisdom to the radio with passionate discussion on Open Books Radio. Of course, Seaman has a blog, too, and she recently posted her take on Nelson Algren as the underratted champion of the underdog.

As with any analysis of the Algren years, Seaman touoched on the role of Art Shay as Algren pal, photographer and intellectual touchstone.

From Seaman's Open Books Radio post, Remembering a Chicago Writer:

Self-deprecating and ironic, an avid listener and a stalwart witness, Algren was of the underworld, yet separate from it. His balancing act is evocatively captured in Art Shay’s Chicago’s Nelson Algren (2007), a book of striking photographs and candid reminiscences. A buddy of Algren’s, Shay carried a concealed camera on their peregrinations and caught the writer, his brow speared by a widow’s peak, his eyes protected by glasses and bright with sadness, intently watching moments of mayhem, respectful and rueful. Algren stored it all up and wrote it all down in a feverish torrent of compassion and outrage, bemusement and sorrow.

Seaman also writes for the Chicago Tribune (see her review of The Plaque of Doves) and the Los Angeles Times (her review of My Name Is Will) among other publications. She is an associate editor for Booklist.

Algren In Amber: LATimes On Art Shay, Nelson Algren, And A Literary Legacy

Here is one more note on the Algren Live event at the Steppenwolf Theater, from David L. Ulin, the book editor of the Los Angeles Times. Click to read his essay, Nelson Algren's legacy ebbs. Here is an excerpt about the event and about Art Shay's photos:

Arranged in a line across the stage are nine chairs, in which sits an unlikely array of people, beginning with Simon and "Wild at Heart" author Barry Gifford, and featuring novelists Russell Banks and Don DeLillo and actor Willem Dafoe. Together, they're rehearsing a bit of reader's theater called "Nelson Algren Live," which will be performed this night before a packed house, including Harold Augenbraum, executive director of the National Book Foundation, and former Life magazine photographer Art Shay, who took the most iconic shots of the author, black-and-whites of him playing poker or peering through barroom windows, pictures so gritty you can almost feel the dirt rise off the frame.

These photos, as much as anything, are responsible for Algren's image as "the poet of the Chicago slums," yet they also cast him in amber: a midcentury figure, smoking a cigar, eyebrows raised behind round glasses, turning over another card. Sixty years after winning the first National Book Award, for his 1949 novel of addiction, "The Man With the Golden Arm," Algren has become vestigial enough that discussions of a national celebration were scaled back after, as Augenbraum notes in an e-mail, "we concluded that though his writing continued to resonate, the number of his readers and his currency among the general reading public had diminished."

So what, exactly, is Algren's legacy? That's the question the Steppenwolf event means to raise.

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"Algren," The Movie, Coming In 2010

Nelson Algren looked behind the billboards boasting of the American consumer ambition to find the disposesed and disconnected citizens with their own dreams, sleeping in the shadows.

Art Shay's photos of Algren make up a large part of this trailer for Michael Caplan's film "Algren," due from Montrose Pictures in 2010. Here's a link to the trailer for "Algren." There is Algren and Marcel Marceau, Algren and Eleanor Roosevelt, Algren and the streets of Chicago.

You can also see Art Shay, in an interview, remembering their time together and some of the street characters they met and captured in prose and photos.

There is also the voice of Studs Terkel on Algren the outsider and appreciative quotes from Carl Sandburg, Alex Kotlowitz and Ernest Hemingway, and of course, from Algren's lover, Simone de Beauvoir.

Shay Signs Chicago Photo Book At Algren Event

Richard Shay captured his father, Art Shay, signing books at the Steppenwolf Theater event honoring Nelson Algren. Shay's book, "Chicago's Nelson Algren," records in words and photos the long-time collaboration between the two and the street scenes that animated their work.

Click on the book cover in the upper left corner of this blog to purchase your own copy of "Chicago's Nelson Algren."

Art Shay Photos In Algren Tribute

Art Shay showed highlights of his Algren works at a 100th birthday tribute night to the Chicago author. Below, in a photo by Richard Shay, is a sense of the event at the Steppenwolf. Matt Dillon had a calendar conflict, but other notables -- from Dafoe to Kogan to DeLillo -- more than made up for his absence.

The Algren Treasure, The Shay Salute

With one of the most important salutes to the Nelson Algren centennial set for Monday, The Chicago Tribune has just published a review of some posthumously published Algren work, Entrapment and Other Writings,  and a feature by Rick Kogan on some Algren memories. Here's Kogan on Art Shay:

There is no one alive who knew Algren and his work more intimately than photographer/writer Art Shay, whose steady parade of books gild his pal's legend at the same time that they provide firsthand insight. Many years ago Shay told me, "Nelson blew a lot of books that we should have had. But what he wrote is a treasure."

Can't argue that, on any score.

Algren was a gifted pro. Shay himself takes aim at the giftless amateurs in an essay for Swans.com, concluding with a call for a new reality show:

Here's a free suggestion for some network. A great big amateur hour for America's newly unemployed. Title: American Idle.