Michael Cheney is a Metamodern artist. As Metamodern and Postmodern architects (like Helmut Jan and Santiago Calatrava) borrow from styles like Art Deco and modernism, Cheney borrows techniques and styles from the art of the past to create new ideas. This allows him to capture the contemporary world with rich allusions to familiar or classic works. For example, the painting to the right, Michigan Avenue, alludes to Rainy Day in Paris, the famous painting by Caillebotte in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cheney amplified the urban Impressionist style through an almost abstract rendering of the reflections on the wet pavement, and juxtaposed this Impressionist style against the contemporary buses, cars, traffic lights, street lights and signage. The umbrella has been inverted by the “windy” city, and the main character wears the ubiquitous athletic shoe uniform of women commuters.

What Cheney finds particularly interesting is how the “mindless” collage of the elements that make up the city seem to arrange themselves into beautiful scenes of a uniquely Chicago character. Workers, left, is a particularly good example. Cheney finds this location to have more beauty and character than many of the “designed” areas of the city. A beaux arts sculpture, trash can, flags, and striped barricades frame commuters hurrying to work. This absurd modern environment alludes to the work of Edward Hopper and Richard Estes.

Cheney’s paintings begin as a series of drawings. He carefully works out drawings of the individuals that people the paintings, like Study for the Striped Umbrella, below left. She becomes the main figure in the painting, The Striped Umbrella.

Most painters that use the urban landscape for a subject have focused on the isolation of the city. This work, in contrast, is an attempt to capture contemporary genre scenes with all their color and humanity.