Margot McMahon says her father called himself an innocent bystander, but if this exhibition of graphite and watercolor pictures is any guide, I’d call him an engaged, active witness. Comprising some 40 pieces that portray protests, court scenes, political gatherings, as well as portraits and cityscapes with historic significance, the work dates from the 1940s to the early 2000s. If there’s a through line, it is a palpable sense of being there.
Franklin McMahon was a POW in the waning months of World War II, and his daughter believes that experience shaped his worldview. The earliest pieces show the gates of Auschwitz, the Berlin Wall under construction, and a decimated building in Hiroshima. Subsequent pictures depict the Emmett Till trial, Martin Luther King Jr. on Madison Street in Chicago, Shirley Chisholm giving a campaign speech, protestors against Nixon, and street demonstrations against the Iraq War. These subjects and dozens of others are always from the perspective of the man in the crowd rather than the hero on stage. McMahon would park himself on the sidewalk and draw what he saw before his eyes as it happened. Then he would take the large sheets of paper home to his studio and add watercolor. Some pieces still bear his handwritten notes on what color to use and where.
Scarred by war, McMahon devoted his entire working life—he passed away in 2012—to championing righteous causes with his pencils and brushes. Talking about the country’s recent history, Margot laments that the lessons her father worked so hard to impart through his art weren’t heeded. He reminds us that an artist’s greatest responsibility is to bear witness.
“Resist!: A Visual History of Protest”Through 2/12: Wed-Sun noon-4 PM, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, 2320 W. Chicago, uima-chicago.org, admission donation-based
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Artist Franklin McMahon, who documented the American civil rights movement and American politics, is dead at 90.