William Conger was born on May 29, 1937 in Dixon, Illinois. His family moved to the Chicago area for better economic opportunity, and as a child William often visited the city’s renowned Art Institute. Additional early art exposure included abstract pioneer Arthur Dove's Roof Tops. Conger's father worked at the Chicago headquarters of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Britannica having such an impressive in-house art collection that the actual original Dove painting hung in his office.
Albuquerque and Abstraction
Conger initially attended Chicago’s School of the Art Institute, yet later opted to study at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. One of Conger’s mentors in New Mexico was Transcendentalist Painting Group founder Raymond Jonson, who asserted a more geometric, sharper-edged style of abstraction. Another ally arrived in the form of Visiting Artist Elaine Fried de Kooning. Elaine was the wife of painter Willem de Kooning and a vibrant abstract artist in her own right — particularly her uniquely intuitive portrait work.
Through Elaine, Conger was part of the 1960 show 14 Albuquerque Painters held in Manhattan, and she further encouraged Conger to move to New York following graduation. While intrigued by the prospect, Conger followed a personal and financial gravitational pull that led him back to Chicago instead.
Determined not to compromise his art by becoming an illustrator, Conger opted to do copywriting work. He rented a storefront studio and painted at night and on weekends, yet still felt a strong desire to pursue art full-time. Fortunately, his wife-to-be Kathy supported his hopes and encouraged him to return to school and earn an MFA from the University of Chicago in 1966.
Academic and Artistic
With MFA in hand, Conger began an academic career that would last for decades. He held professorships at DePaul and Northwestern universities, and later became Professor Emeritus of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern. The duality of Conger’s career as both artist and educator mirrors the interplay between abstract and classic form in his paintings. There is abstraction, but there are also complex, cohesive shapes and rich levels of color, along with the contrast of an expansiveness that manages to remain tightly controlled.
Chicago Work
While Conger’s art is not purely regional and includes such universal themes as dance and motion (Cuba, Kabuki), the circus (Ringmaster, Lion Act), or grief and loss (Flossy’s Night), a love for his native city resonates in many paintings. Works such as Haymarket evoke Chicago’s chaotic labor history, while the spectacular City on the Make takes its name from Chicago author Nelson Algren’s essay of the same title.
Additionally, To the East Were Moving Waters is another fascinating fusion of Algren’s words about the vast city rising from Lake Michigan combined with architect Mies van der Rohe’s towers of glass and steel. As Algren wrote — To the east were the moving waters as far as the eye could follow — a line which drew Conger into visualizing a work that expressed man’s reaction to those moving waters, and his desire to build upon them.
Into the 21st Century
William Conger’s 2009 retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center chronicled a fifty-year career, with more recent paintings such as Bandit and the Parkway Series leading the way toward future visions. His work can be found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Oregon’s Portland Museum, and the Wichita Art Museum – to name a few.
Conger paints daily at a Chicago studio flanked by train tracks, the sound of passing rail cars reminiscent of Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem about the City of Big Shoulders, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler, still Planning…Building, breaking, rebuilding…and always inspiring.
Sources
- Artist Interview, April 2009
- William Conger Paintings, 1958-2008 -- Chicago Cultural Center Exhibit Catalog
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