Tag Archives: Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists

SUELLEN ROCCA

As opposed to the other Pop Art environs of the 1960s and early 1970s, Chicago did not hesitate to get its hands dirty. Variously pugnacious, puerile, scatological, graphic, exotic, comical, and absurd, Chicago Imagist artwork sought a very different version of “popular” from the detached cool of New York (and to a certain extent London and Los Angeles), a notion hip-deep in the street-corner muck of a working class city with crazy dreams and high ideals…

In contrast to their wild subject matter, [the Chicago Imagists] utilized an aesthetic that was often tightly crafted and stunningly beautiful. That tension, between whip-smart expressive sensibility and a pristine finish, became one of the movements hallmarks, and it gave an engine to one of America’s most highly personal enclaves of artistic personalities. — John Corbett*

Suellen Rocca—a pioneer of the Hairy Who school of Chicago Imagists—died last week. She was a longtime curator and educator at Elmhurst College, west of the city.

*John Corbett, “Chicago Imagist Art—Vintage Grit Pop,” in Painthing on the Möve: Chicago Imagists 1966–1973/Albert Oehlen (London: Thomas Dane Gallery; Chicago: Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2011), 7.

Suellen Rocca, from top: Bare Shouldered Beauty, 1965, oil on canvas; Bare Shouldered Beauty and the Pink Creature, 1965, oil on canvas, left panel of two; Dream Fish Two, 1997, graphite and pencil on paper; Da Hairy Who Foyer–For Ya Prince, 1967–1968, screenprint in blue and red on black paper; Neatest Garbage, 1982, graphite and colored pencil on paper; Rocca with Curly Head, 1967, photograph by Bob Kotalik, Chicago Sun-Times, courtesy of Pentimenti Productions; Dancing Curls, 1968, pen and black ink and pastel, over traces of graphite, on wove paper; Don’t, 1981, graphite and colored pencil on paper; Ring Girl, 1965. Images courtesy and © the artist’s estate, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Matthew Marks Gallery.

RETURN OF THE HAIRY WHO

“Neither a movement nor a style, Hairy Who was simply the name six Chicago artists chose when they decided that the best way to find success as individuals was to join forces and exhibit together.

“In 1966, Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum—all recent graduates of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago—began mounting, as the Hairy Who, unconventional displays of bright, bold graphic work at the Hyde Park Art Center. Over a period of four years, they transformed the art landscape of Chicago, injecting their new and unique voices into the city’s rising national and international profile.”*

The first comprehensive Hairy Who exhibition is now on view at the Art Institute.

HAIRY WHO? 1966–1969*

Through January 6.

Art Institute, 111 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago.

From top:

Gladys Nilsson, The Trogens, 1967, Art Institute of Chicago, © Gladys Nilsson.

Art GreenConsider the Options, Examine the Facts, Apply the Logic (originally titled The Undeniable Logician), 1965, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, © Art Green.

Dan Nadel, The Collected Hairy Who Publications, 1966–1969 (New York: Matthew Marks, 2015); image credit: Matthew Marks.

Below: Suellen RoccaBare Shouldered Beauty and the Pink Creature (detail), 1965, Art Institute of Chicago © Suellen Rocca.

WEEKLY WRAP UP | JULY 7-11, 2014

photo

This week we spent a day at the New Museum, announced the book launch for Queer Zines at Pro qm in Berlin, gave you a tour of le Chateau de Vaux-Le-Vicomte just outside of Paris, announced ‘My Atlas’ – an outdoor summer screening series in Los Angeles about women travelers, toured Heimo Zobernig’s new exhibition at Mudam in Luxembourg, announced a screening of the new documentary Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists at 356 Mission in L.A., spent a cloudy Paris day at Martial Raysse at Centre Pompidou, and gave you a sneak peak of Yvonne Rainer: Dances and Films at The Getty.

What a great week!

HAIRY WHO & THE CHICAGO IMAGISTS

Hairy Who Catalog (1969), Washington, D.C. : Corcoran Gallery of Art (image from http://momalibrary.tumblr.com)

Hairy Who Catalog (1969), Washington, D.C. : Corcoran Gallery of Art (image from http://momalibrary.tumblr.com)

This Sunday, July 13, at 356 Mission in Los Angeles, they will be screening the documentary Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists, introduced by Ricky Swallow. The event is free and begins at 8:30PM sharp.

I’ve always loved the colorful, fantastical, and highly stylized work of artists like Jim Nutt and Christina Ramberg. I’m very excited to see this new documentary film, which will give an overview of this art movement based in Chicago in the 1960s. Watch the official trailer here.

Chicago-Style Modern Art With Everything: 
In the mid 1960s, the city of Chicago was an incubator for an iconoclastic group of young artists. Collectively known as the Imagists, they showed in successive waves of exhibitions with monikers that might have been psychedelic rock bands of the era – Hairy Who, Nonplussed Some, False Image, Marriage Chicago Style. Kissing cousins to the contemporaneous international phenomenon of Pop Art, Chicago Imagism took its own weird, wondrous, in-your-face tack. Variously pugnacious, puerile, scatological, graphic, comical, and absurd, it celebrated a very different version of ‘popular’ from the detached cool of New York, London and Los Angeles. Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists is the first film to tell their wild, woolly, utterly irreverent story.

unnamed

The Hairy Who Sideshow (1967, Chicago : Hyde Park Art Center) (image from momalibrary.tumblr.com)

The Hairy Who Sideshow (1967) Chicago : Hyde Park Art Center (image from http://momalibrary.tumblr.com)