preview
the exhibition here
Adam
Baumgold Gallery presents the exhibition "Made in Chicago
ca. 1970" from October 17 through November 30, 2002. The
exhibition examines paintings, drawings, sculptures, constructions
and prints executed around 1970 by a highly original, idiosyncratic
group of Chicago artists known as "Imagists." The artists
included
in the exhibition are Roger Brown, Art Green, Philip Hanson, Ellen
Lanyon, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg,
Suellen Rocca, Barbara Rossi, Peter Saul, H.C. Westermann, Karl
Wirsum, Joseph Yoakum, and Ray Yoshida. These artists created
an iconic, pictorial vocabulary that was culled from the vernacular-
"comics and cheap ads heightened through distortion, high keyed
color and slick or scruffy surfaces."
The
Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1967, staged its
first Chicago artist exhibition in its basement titled "Don Baum
Says
Chicago Needs Famous Artists." Responding to the changing
political and social climate of the late 60's, and influenced by
Surrealism, German Expressionism, the eccentric sculptures of H.C.
Westermann and the drawings of visionary outsider artist Joseph
Yoakum, the "Imagists" created artworks that were quite
different
from the cooler, more impersonal Pop art of the 60's and also the
abstraction and minimalism that was prevalent in 1970. "Made
in
Chicago" focuses on this group of artists emerging from the School
of the Art Institute of Chicago in the late 60's. The earliest works
were shown at the Hyde Park Art Center under the collective name
of "The Hairy Who," whose members were Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum,
Art Green, Suellen Rocca, Gladys Nilsson and James Falconer.
These artists were followed by the younger group of Roger Brown,
Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Phil Hanson and Barbara Rossi.
Together with SAIC teacher and fellow artist Ray Yoshida, they
examined self taught art, "Trash Treasures," and the holdings
of
The Art Institute of Chicago and The Field Museum, to produce a
body of work that carried on the ancient tradition of the
grotesque, containing irony and wit.
Included
in the exhibition is Jim Nutt's "A Feeble Trap," 1971, an
imaginary portrait in which line erupts and distends the form, at
once comic and absurd, yet still recognizable, Roger Brown's "The
Other Side of Wichita," 1974, is an American landscape painting
where space and pattern integrate and, as in a comic strip, the
unreality of the pictorial space becomes real through repetition.
Karl Wirsum's "Cardbroad (Magnet Hands)," 1970, depicts
a card-
board puppet whose symmetry reveals a concoction of conscious
puns, idealized movie posters, Japanese block print silhouettes and
stylized motifs from the Inca culture.
The
gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00-5:30 P.M.
