{"id":9820,"date":"2019-01-02T22:26:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T03:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=9820"},"modified":"2019-01-02T22:26:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-03T03:26:57","slug":"hairy-who","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/01\/02\/hairy-who\/","title":{"rendered":"Hairy Who: Chicago\u2019s Sordid, Goofball, Raucous, Grotesque \u201860s Pop Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the mid 1960s, Jim Falconer and Jim Nutt\u2014recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who\u2019d met working at Chicago\u2019s Allan Frumkin Gallery (which exhibited H.C. Westermann and Peter Saul, among others)\u2014came up with the idea to propose a group exhibition of new Chicago pop art to the Hyde Park Art Center on the city\u2019s South Side.<\/p>\n

\"Art<\/a>
Art by Jim Nutt (above) and Karl Wirsum (in case) in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Chicago art scene \u201cwas beset with challenges to access, exposure and growth,\u201d Robert Cozzolino writes in the 2018 book \u201cArt In Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now.\u201d Don Baum, the exhibition chairman at the Hyde Park center, had been part of a group of young artists in the late 1940s and \u201850s, who felt excluded by the Art Institute, so in response they organized \u201cExhibition Momentum,\u201d their own series of exhibitions from 1948 to \u201957. Since Baum began managing exhibitions at the center in 1956, he had developed a reputation for showcasing emerging artists in group exhibitions and creating a nurturing scene around the center. He agreed to give Nutt, Falconer and their friends Art Green, Gladys Nilsson and Suellen Rocca a show in February 1966\u2014and suggested they add Karl Wirsum.<\/p>\n

\"Karl<\/a>
Karl Winsum’s “Show Girls” series drawings from 1969 in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These young White artists, all in their 20s, were inventing a new flavor of pop art that came to be known as Chicago Imagism. It was inspired by comics and commercial advertising as well as old dolls, tin toys and other treasures they discovered at the Maxwell Street Market, a giant outdoor flea market\/junk extravaganza on the city\u2019s South Side, and art from Oceana, Africa, Asia and Native America that they studied at Chicago\u2019s Field Museum of Natural History\u2014which Wirsum dubbed \u201cthe Louvre of Chicago art\u201d\u2014and the University of Chicago\u2019s Oriental Institute. It was more Hippie than the Pop Art that came out of New York earlier in the decade. But the primary difference between what Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and other New Yorkers made and what these Chicago artists were producing was that the New Yorkers pretty closely copied their pop sources, while the Chicagoans digested comics and neon signs to invent their own pop language.<\/p>\n

\"Suellen<\/a>
Suellen Rocca, “Bare Shouldered Beauty and the Pink Creature,” 1965.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cOne sees [comics and advertising] as art in themselves, not something to be blown up to make art, but as something parallel to your own work,\u201d Chicago Imagist painter Roger Brown said in a 1978 Art In America magazine interview. \u201cThese things are already art: so if you can make art as good, you\u2019re really lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that 1966 Hyde Park exhibition, the six artists called themselves \u201cThe Hairy Who.\u201d The name was reportedly arrived at when Wirsum wandered into a group discussion of the conservative radio art critic Harry Bouras and asked, \u201cHarry who?\u201d Also, they loved puns.<\/p>\n

That first Hairy Who show was a sensation. The art was humorous, sordid, goofball, raucous, grotesque, psychedelic, sexual, mischievous, violent. \u201cA barbaric yelp on canvas,\u201d Chicago Sun-Times critic Harold Haydon wrote at the time.<\/p>\n

\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum, “Hairy Who,” 1966.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can see many of these original pieces in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d<\/a> at the Art Institute of Chicago from Sept. 26, 2018, to Jan. 6, 2019. One part of the exhibit assembles art from their groundbreaking exhibitions from 1966 to \u201968 at the Hyde Park Art Center, at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1968, and at New York\u2019s School of Visual Arts and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1969. The second part of the exhibition highlights the group\u2019s posters, comic book catalogues, drawings and ephemera.<\/p>\n

The Art Institute exhibitions are a sort of time machine, often displaying artworks in groupings that match or echo the \u201860s exhibitions. The shows also evoke the way the Hairy Who hung their art on walls covered with cheap floral-print linoleum and alongside display cases featuring tin toys, candy packages and other pop culture ephemera that inspired them.<\/p>\n

\"Metal<\/a>
Metal lawn chairs painted by Jim Nutt and Karl Wirsum with paintings by (from left) Wirsum, Art Green, Nutt and Suellen Rocca in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Hairy Who were part of the larger Chicago Imagism phenomenon\u2014including Roger Brown, Philip Hanson, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg, Barbara Rossi and Ray Yoshida. The museum acknowledges this larger context with \u201cI’ll Show You! Posters and Promos from Chicago’s Famous Artists,\u201d<\/a> a small selection of posters, prints and photos by Chicago Imagists in the museum\u2019s Ryerson Library from Sept. 4, 2018, to Jan. 7, 2019.<\/p>\n

These were White artists mainly residing on the city\u2019s North Side showing in Hyde Park, a White bohemian enclave around the University of Chicago, in the predominantly Black South Side. As the Hairy Who were debuting, Black South Side artists, almost entirely excluded from Chicago\u2019s White art world, were painting \u201cThe Wall of Respect,\u201d<\/a> a mural of Black heroes that within a few years would spark Black Power murals all across the country. Some of the muralists would form AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), which made psychedelic Black Power art in bright \u201ccoolade\u201d colors to address racist America\u2019s attacks on Blacks, while also presenting positive images in support of Black families and the African American community.<\/p>\n

\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Nutt, “Wowidow,” 1968.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In contrast, the Hairy Who\u2019s concerns seemed mainly internal, focused on messily imperfect human bodies, and adding perhaps some sort of questioning of the sordidness of consumer culture, even as they reveled in it.<\/p>\n

\"Art<\/a>
Art Green, “Consider the Options, Examine the Facts, Apply the Logic (originally titled The Undeniable Logician),” 1965.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Art Green has said his 1965 surrealist cartoony painting \u201cConsider the Options, Examine the Facts, Apply the Logic\u201d was inspired by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara seated in his office. But also inspired by his conflicted relationship with his own father. In the painting, an anonymous man with a mask-like face sits in an exploding building between smoking chimneys and he says \u201cNo!\u201d \u201cAs my work developed during the Hairy Who years,\u201d Green said, \u201cI found other ways to explore the terrain between rationality and irrationality, order and chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Falconer, however, would cofound the Chicago branch of Artists Against the War in Vietnam. Paschke would address the Vietnam War in his canvases. Ramberg\u2019s paintings could seem a feminist critique of the strictures of traditional feminine deportment. And Brown addressed politics, homosexuality, and the apocalypse.<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Falconer\u2019s 1966 painting \u201cMorbid Sunshine by a Miner Artist\u201d (center) and paintings by Karl Wirsum in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Art<\/a>
Art by Jim Nutt (above) and Karl Wirsum (in case) in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"Jim<\/a><\/p>\n

Jim Nutt, “Now! Hairy Who Makes You Smell Good,” 1968.<\/p>\n

\"Karl<\/a>
Karl Wirsum, “Youdue,” c. 1966.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Falconer. Untitled, 1968.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Nutt. Untitled, 1966.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Gladys<\/a>
Gladys Nilsson, “The Trogens,” 1967.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Karl<\/a>
Karl Wirsum, \u201cScreamin\u2019 Jay Hawkins,\u201d 1968.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Vintage<\/a>
Vintage toys collected by Karl Winsum in \u201cHairy Who? 1966\u20131969\u201d at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jim<\/a>
Jim Nutt, “Miss E. Knows,” 1967.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the mid 1960s, Jim Falconer and Jim Nutt\u2014recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who\u2019d met working at Chicago\u2019s Allan Frumkin Gallery (which exhibited H.C. Westermann and Peter Saul, among others)\u2014came up with the idea to propose a group exhibition of new Chicago pop art to the Hyde Park Art […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[495,499,198,498,497],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9820"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9848,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9820\/revisions\/9848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}