You can believe me when I tell you that, by most any definition, Riccardo’s was no dive bar. Located at the corner of Rush and Hubbard streets from 1934 into 1995, this restaurant/saloon, known to many as the “Montmartre of the Midwest,” was a legendary gathering spot for writers, journalists and artists.
In 1947, its owner, renowned bon vivant and artist Ric Riccardo (born Richard Novaretti), commissioned six of his famous artist friends to paint massive 96-by-48-inch oil paintings for the walls behind the restaurant’s palette-shaped bar. And so were created “Drama” by Ivan Albright, “Sculpture” by Malvin Albright, “Painting” by Vincent D’Agostino, “Architecture” by Aaron Bohrod, “Music” by William Schwartz, “Literature” by Rudolph Weisenborn and “Dance” by Riccardo himself. Collectively, these were known as “The Seven Lively Arts.”
Though these paintings were arguably the most famous to ever hang on the walls of a local tavern or restaurant, there has always been a relationship between art and booze. Today, one can find art on the walls of many area taverns and restaurants, such spots as the Old Town Ale House, a gallery of sorts for the portraiture of writer/painter Bruce Elliott, or the eclectic offerings at the Beverly neighborhood’s Horse Thief Hollow.
I bring this up because of what’s happening at a gallery called Art City. It sits at 1400 N. Halsted St. and will be the home, beginning July 10 and running through Aug. 14, for a provocative exhibition titled “Cash Only: An Ode to Dive Bars.”
No question that the definition of “dive bar” has changed over the generations, moving from dangerously down-and-dirty to charmingly unpretentious.
They were initially defined as a “drinking den” or “disreputable place of resort,” born of a time when such places were originally housed in cellars or basements, where patrons could “dive” in without others observing.
There were once, a half-century ago, as many as some 7,000 taverns in Chicago. Now that number flirts with about 1,000. With fewer around, the survivors are far more respectable (and cleaner) than their booze-serving ancestors. The best of these places survive thanks to a delicate alchemy. Some of that is based on booze, but it also has to do with the notion that they present a level playing field for customers, where a cab driver can sit next to and argue baseball with an accountant.
Art City’s promotional material refers to such places as “neon-lit institutions, sticky floors, jukeboxes, photobooths, and neighborhood taverns that have quietly served as Chicago’s unofficial community centers for generations.
“In a city defined by its neighborhoods, dive bars are more than places to grab a drink. They’re cultural landmarks where friendships are forged, stories are exchanged, and local history lives on. At a time when many of these beloved spaces are disappearing and younger generations are searching for authentic offline connection, the exhibition explores why Chicago’s dive bars remain some of the city’s last great gathering places.”
The gallery’s manager, a ceramisist and arts administrator named Alexandra Bishop, is originally from Maine. She’s been here for almost a decade, lives in Andersonville and says that her idea of a dive bar is “a special place that draws in people of all backgrounds. I have been a lover of dive bars for many years, especially as people are spending more and more of their lives in the digital world. There is community in these places.”
She mentions a fondness for Simon’s Tavern and then says that the idea for “Cash Only” was hatched by her and another gallery manager, Katrina Miller, who will have a piece in the exhibition.
“We were thinking of a theme for a show and the more we talked, the more we started to focus on bars, that this would be both interesting and fun,” Bishop says. “We put the word out and, frankly, got fewer submissions than I expected, maybe summer and all, but I’m excited by what we will have.”
They had pitched their idea to Joe Sikora and he was pleased and intrigued.
An Indiana native who has lived here since the early years of the century, he is a painter and has had a profound impact on the local art scene. He founded and runs NEW Gallery, the non-profit umbrella organization for such efforts as the Fine Art Salon and Art City. He has long been a teacher and is one of the most active promoters of new and emerging local artists. He also shares a name with but has never met an actor about whom I have often written. This Joe Sikora opened Art City in 2023 and mentions in passing his affection for taverns and the art on the walls of the Ale House, a few blocks to the east.
Most of you will not recognize the names of the artists who will be represented in the “Cash Only” show. That is one of the elements that makes this show so promising, even though, as of a few days ago, Sikora had yet to select the work of his to include in it, saying, “I have much of my work there, just waiting to pick one.”
There has long been an association between liquor and creativity: “Wine is bottled poetry,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, and all that. It has been writers who get the most attention, thanks to such over-indulgers as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Capote or Dylan Thomas. But visual artists too have such noted drinkers as van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec or Jackson Pollock.
But that is not always the case. As an example, I give you one of those whose work is in “Cash Only.” In a video collaboration between NEW Gallery and Art on Tap Chicago, artist Lexi Alvarado sits in Central Park Bar, a pleasant looking spot at 2924 N. Central Park Ave. in the Avondale neighborhood, and charmingly says, “I’m not really a drinker, which a lot of people find hilarious. It’s not about alcohol to me. It’s about community.”
Source: Chicago Tribune
