The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection

The Figure and the Chicago Imagists Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection Curated by Suellen Rocca September 8, 2018 - January 20, 2019

Ray Yoshida Arbitrary Approach, 1983 Acrylic on canvas Elmhurst College Art Collection

The Figure and the Chicago Imagists is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy with presenting partner, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. The Figure and the Chicago Imagists is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

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Acknowledgments John McKinnon, Executive Director Elmhurst Art Museum Sparking the creativity of our community has always been a key goal of the Elmhurst Art Museum. We have done so historically with our partners and often with direct inspirations from artists. This exhibition is no exception.

Through incredible collaborations, namely Elmhurst College and Art Design Chicago, we are proudly exhibiting, and working directly with, some of the most significant Midwestern artists from the last 50 years. The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection curated by Suellen Rocca shows a number of highly inventive expressions of the human form by artists that transformed the larger cultural landscape.

Hosting this exhibition at the Elmhurst Art Museum is fitting in a number of ways. The Elmhurst Art Museum was founded over twenty years ago by a group of artists, enthusiasts, and community members led by the artist and educator Eleanor King Hookham (also known as “El King”). She dreamed of an arts complex that would serve as a community anchor, and the doors were ceremonious opened in September 1997 with togetherness, collaboration, and much praise.

From the beginning our community partners have been integral to our success, such as our numerous collaborations with Elmhurst College. They have generously lent works to numerous exhibitions in the past, including the notable 2017 exhibition Kings & Queens: Pinball, Imagists and Chicago curated

by Dan Nadel. I am glad to continue this partnership with the College, through the generosity of the President Troy VanAken, Director of the A.C. Buehler Library Susan Sword-Steffens, Senior Director of Communications and External Relations Desiree Chen, and Curator and Director of Exhibitions Suellen Rocca—one of the original members of the Hairy Who collective.

The incredible art collection of Elmhurst College is always free and publicly available at the A.C. Buehler Library. This resource used by students, faculty and the greater Chicagoland community is a significant part of Elmhurst’s museum campus. The College’s strong holdings are an extraordinary asset of Elmhurst that also allow for a wider cultural exchange. Many pieces from the collection regularly travel the world to retrospective and thematic exhibitions at major museums (see map on pages 11-12).

As detailed in the enclosed essay by Thea Liberty Nichols, the voice of the artist is particularly strong within the College’s collection and its oversight including artist-curators Ted Halkin, Sandra Jorgensen, and Suellen Rocca—all of which have left lasting legacies on the larger Chicagoland art scene.

It is a joy to have collegial and friendly collaborations with Suellen in Elmhurst through this exhibition and more. She is a legendary artist, curator, educator, and leader in Chicagoland’s creative community who has generously lent much of her time giving first-person accounts of formative moments in Chicago’s cultural history.

This exhibition and accompanying brochure are part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy, with presenting partner The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, led

by Kim Coventry. Many thanks to the Terra Foundation, led by Elizabeth Glassman, for their wide efforts across the Chicagoland area, as well as their generous support of this exhibition.

We are most grateful for the vision and encouragement of the Terra Foundation Board. The devoted teams of the Terra Foundation and Art Design Chicago have created many new opportunities for distinctive Chicago-based work. For this we recognize the hard work of Jenny Siegenthaler, Eva Silverman, Anne Cullen, and others.

At the Elmhurst Art Museum, the entire museum has been involved in this collaboration, including our Board and committee members. Earlier this year, our Sustaining Fellows membership group honored Suellen Rocca at our 2018 fundraiser. The staff coordinated all aspects of the exhibition, from educational initiatives to its installation and even graphic advertisements. The show could not have been possible without everyone's goodwill and dedication.

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Ed Paschke Nouvelle, 1983 Oil, crayon, and pencil on paper Elmhurst College Art Collection

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Introduction Suellen Rocca, Artist, Curator and Director of Exhibitions Elmhurst College I want to thank the Elmhurst Art Museum for hosting the exhibition The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection. It has been a most satisfying experience to curate this exhibition of works from the College’s art collection in the beautiful museum galleries. These works normally ‘live’ in the A.C. Buehler Library on the Elmhurst College campus where they are surrounded by students earnestly studying for exams or writing papers, a unique venue for this world-class collection. The library has been the home of the collection from its beginning in 1971 when it was discovered that Federal Title I Funds were available to purchase original works of art for a new college or university building. The library not only provides access to the art collection for our students but is open to the public and is where we regularly welcome local, national and international visitors.

The Elmhurst College collection includes an extraordinary collection of works by the Chicago Imagists. In my role both as curator and as a participating Chicago Imagist artist I enjoy a special relationship with the collection. I am one of the six members of a highly inventive group of artists known as the ’Hairy Who’.* The EC collection includes wonderful works by each of these six artists, as well as, works by many, many other outstanding artists also known as Imagists. As curator I have the great privilege to exhibit this special collection and to engage students and the public in conversation about the works.

The thirty-two works in the EAM exhibition represent about a fifth of the total works in the Elmhurst College Art Collection. I selected the pieces in this exhibit to display the highly inventive range of Imagist work based on the figure with specific emphasis on the way these artists used humor in their work.

The programming connected to this exhibition includes a symposium on December 16, The Figure, Humor and the Chicago Imagists. This day-long symposium, funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art, Art Design Chicago Initiative takes place both on the Elmhurst College campus and at the Elmhurst Art Museum. This partnership is another meaningful example of the close relationship of these two institutions and of how they create a rich visual arts community in the heart of Elmhurst, Illinois. *The six members of the ’Hairy Who’ are Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca and Karl Wirsum. The’ Hairy Who’ had six exhibitions 1996-69.

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Ed Paschke Cobmaster, 1975 Oil on canvas Elmhurst College Art Collection

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Collected Collective: Artist Curators and the Chicago Imagists1 Thea Liberty Nichols “It is no accident that these highly talented artists, bursting with originality and creativity, emerged in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s. Existing outside the artistic mainstream and in an atmosphere that fostered unique sensibilities, they were encouraged to develop and express their personal visions. The result is a highly original and authentic movement that marked an important moment in the development of the art of the 20th century.”

-Suellen Rocca, Curator and Director of Exhibitions It was the winter of 1966 when six young, recent art school graduates opened their first group show on the Southside of Chicago. Named after an inside joke, they called themselves the Hairy Who, and their chiefly figurative work was packed full of similarly cheeky content, belying its painstaking craftsmanship.

Artist turned curator Don Baum—then Exhibition Chairman at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) where they exhibited—supported the excitement and activity fomenting around them. They were also influenced by teachers they had shared at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, who taught them to develop their own “unique sensibilities.” By profoundly assimilating their pop cultural and vernacular source material, they converted the stuff of mass media into intimate idiosyncrasies.2 Against all odds, they garnered local, and eventually national, success. They inspired subsequent generations of artists, the first waves of whom followed in their footsteps at HPAC by mounting similarly self-named, self-organized gonzo group shows such as the Nonplussed Some and the False Image.3 And as the tumultuous 1960s drew to a close, these artists and their inventive exhibition groups were formally and publicly rounded up and labeled Chicago Imagism.4 Defined by their bright, bold, graphic work, a group galvanized which would usher in a sea change for art in Chicago. Chicago Imagism would go on to exert influence over “the development of the art of the 20th century” in ways that are still coming to light.

By the early 1970s, another artist turned curator named Ted Halkin, who also taught at Elmhurst College (EC), used the occasion of their newly constructed A.C. Buehler Library to justify the purchase of original artworks to adorn it. Through a combination of gifted and federal funds, he acquired works as they were being made from artists now readily defined as Chicago Imagists.5 His inaugural ten selections would go on 1 The phrase “collected collective” is adapted from commentary made by Art Green, part of the Hairy Who (along with Jim Falconer, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum), The Art Institute of Chicago, September 28, 2017.

2 Although it varied from artist to artist, art historian Whitney Halstead and studio art instructor Ray Yoshida were indispensible to their artistic maturation.

3 The 1968 Nonplussed Some presentation at HPAC included Sarah Canright, Ed Flood, Robert Guinan, Ed Paschke, and Richard Wetzel; the 1969 presentation added Baum and omitted Guinan. The 1968 and 1969 False Image presentations at HPAC included Roger Brown, Eleanor Dube, Philip Hanson, and Christina Ramberg.

4 Baum’s 1969 exhibition Don Baum Says Chicago Needs Famous Artists, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) gathered all of the exhibition groups who had shown at HPAC together for the first time, but it was the 1972 publication of artist and critic Franz Schulze’s Fantastic Images— in conjunction with an additional exhibition at the MCA entitled Chicago Imagist Art— that cemented the term Chicago Imagism in the popular imagination.

5 Residual gift monies from Mr. and Mrs. Albert C. Buehler were used alongside federal funding supplied through Title I of the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963. Halkin worked in concert with Latham Baskerville, his co-Chair of the Art Department, and Melvin George, Library Director, to purchase works directly from the Chicago Imagist dealer of note, Phyllis Kind Gallery.

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Gladys Nilsson In Vertical Shade, 1984 Watercolor on paper Elmhurst College Art Collection

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to form the backbone of EC’s collection, and included Jim Nutt’s Toot Toot Woo Woo, alongside works currently on view in the present exhibition, such as Gladys Nilsson’s More Fowl Beasts and Ray Yoshida’s Untitled.

From 1973 to the mid-1990s, artist-curator Sandra Jorgensen expanded the collection’s holdings through a state-backed matching grants program supported by the Illinois Arts Council (IAC). Year after dutiful year, Jorgensen appealed to the Council, slowly amassing equally iconic works by now celebrated Imagists, finding a “partner in purchase”—as the program was called—in Don Baum himself, a consultant for the IAC and by then a well-established champion of these artists.6 Since 2006, the collection has been under the stewardship of Suellen Rocca—artist, educator, and Curator and Director of Exhibitions at EC. It’s newly digitized and searchable web platform; it’s robust calendar of national and international loans; and it’s growth, through grants, donations and gifts made directly by artists, have all led to her recognition by Elmhurst Art Museum (EAM) for outstanding service earlier this year.7 The collection currently boasts over 150 works, and is widely recognized as the premiere repository of Chicago Imagist artwork held by a local, public collection.

The Figure and the Chicago Imagists: Selections from the Elmhurst College Art Collection, currently on view at EAM, re-examines the centrality of the body to Imagist art. It features over thirty works, created from midcentury to present, and includes works on paper, paintings, photographs and sculptural objects. Although each artist’s techniques, compositions and concerns vary widely, it is the persistence of figuration—the central tenant of Imagism—that serves as a through-line.

The exhibition’s focus on the figure naturally lends itself to narrative ends, but similar to the inside joke which inspired the Hairy Who’s moniker, many of the works subvert rather then convey a message. Likewise, although Elmhurst College’s library prompted the art collection’s formation, it wasn’t designed with the exhibition of art in mind like EAM was. Rocca’s installation leverages EAM’s impressive interior to foster new conversations amongst works—Ed Paschke’s psychedelic patterning on and around his titular Cobmaster reverberates through Roger Brown’s anthropomorphic landscapes.

Frank Trankina’s still life, elements of which appear collaged together, riffs off of Mary Lou Zelany’s literally collaged painting, which seamlessly blends disparate imagery and media. Whereas Margaret Wharton and Christina Ramberg iterate fragmented, abstracted and anonymous bodies; Karl Wirsum’s portraits and Barbara Rossi’s portrait busts playfully disrupt rationality and order—both linguistically and visually—in contrast.

As an artist curator herself, Rocca’s playful and optically pleasurable installation bely her profound relationship to these artists and their artworks.

Chicago Imagism’s figurative content drastically diverged from the Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual art being produced by these artists’ contemporaries on either coast. Thanks to the dedicated network of nurturing artist-curators—and the responsive, open-minded institutions they oversaw—these artists’ exhibition making and art making was supported from the onset, well before they were more broadly recognized and celebrated as Imagists. Despite that, their centrality to the development of the dominant idioms of contemporary art-making has gone underrecognized until recently. At present, they’re having a bit of a renaissance, and The Figure and the Chicago Imagists—in addition to the remainder of Elmhurst College’s “collected collective”—illustrates why.

6 Baum was IAC Visual Arts Consultant from 1970-1982.

7 Interestingly, EAM was also founded by an artist—Eleanor King Hookham (1909-2003)— who worked, along with a group of like-minded artists and community members, to establish the current institution.

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CH ECKLIST All works from the Elmhurst College Art Collection.

Phyllis Bramson Enchantment Looms, 2001 Mixed media, monoprint, and fragments of paper 60 x 48 in.

Jim Nutt Can't You Wait?, 1980–81 Colored pencil on brown paper 9 x 12 in.

Roger Brown See Seven Cities, 1971 Oil on canvas 47 ½ x 59 ¼ in.

Jim Nutt Oh! My Goodness! (No No), 1977 Hard ground etching in brown ink 20 ½ x 20 ½ in.

Roger Brown Sinking, 1977 Etching and aquatint 12 ½ x 19 ⅝ in.

Ed Paschke Cobmaster, 1975 Oil on canvas 74 x 50 in.

Roger Brown Standing Around While All Are Sinking, 1977 Etching and aquatint 15 9/16 x 19 ¾ in.

Ed Paschke Nouvelle, 1983 Oil, crayon, and pencil on paper 40 x 60 in.

Paul LaMantia Shoe Shine, 1971 Marker, ink, pencil and frottage 30 ⅜ x 42 ⅜ in

Kerig Pope The Pharaoh's Playthings, 1957 Pastel and pencil on paper 27 x 22 ½ in.

June Leaf The Ballroom, 1968 Lithograph 25/175 18 ¼ x 21 ¼ in.

Christina Ramberg Double Hesitation,1977 Acrylic on masonite 49 ½ x 35 ½ in.

Gladys Nilsson In Vertical Shade, 1984 Watercolor on paper 59 ½ x 39 ¾ in.

Christina Ramberg Glimpsed, 1975 Acrylic on masonite 47 ½ x 36 ½ in.

Gladys Nilsson More Fowl Beasts, 1970 Watercolor on paper 22 ¼ x 29 ½ in.

Suellen Rocca Piety, 1984 Graphite on paper 22 ¾ x 30 in.

Gift of the artist 2013

Received in 1976 from the estate of Dr. Ralph Klein, Class of 1949

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1978

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1978

Donated by the artist 2011

College purchase

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1984

Buehler-Title 1 original purchase 1971

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1982

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1977

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1976

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1987

Gift of the artist 2011

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1978

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1976

College purchase 1989

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Seymour Rosofsky Man/Woman/House/Boat, 1973 Color lithograph 27 ½ x 20 in.

Margaret Wharton Unified Photo Series, 1979 Photo prints Nine pieces, each 8x 10 in.

Seymour Rosofsky Puppeteer, 1963 Pastel on paper 23 x 29 in.

Karl Wirsum Baker Boy, 2001 Graphite and colored pencil on paper 35 ½ x 29 ½ in.

Barbara Rossi Footprint Picture, 1984 Lithograph 9 ⅞ x 12 ⅞ in.

Karl Wirsum Bucky Cortez Meets Downtown Roberto, 1984 Colored pencil on board 2 pieces each 24 in. high

Barbara Rossi Poor Self Trait #3: Curls, 1970 Aquatint 2 pieces, top 6 ¾ x 4 ¾ in. bottom 10 ¼ x 7 ¾ in.

Karl Wirsum Click, 1971 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 in.

Barbara Rossi Shep Step II, 1973 Acrylic on plexiglass 29 x 23 in.

Karl Wirsum Ice Pick Nick Fisherman, 1979 Acrylic on wood Two pieces each 22" high

Eleanor Spiess-Ferris The Red Shoe, 1983 Watercolor and Prismacolor pencil 20 ½ x 30 in.

Ray Yoshida Arbitrary Approach, 1983 Acrylic on canvas 38 x 49 ⅝ in.

Eleanor Spiess-Ferris Trot I, 1979 Graphite and Prismacolor pencil on paper 18 ½ x 23 in.

Ray Yoshida Untitled, 1971 Felt tip pen on paper 18 ½ x 23 ½ in.

Frank Trankina Faust, 2010 Oil on linen 26 x 20 in.

Mary Lou Zelazny The Highlands, 1999 Acrylic, oil, collage on canvas 71 x 43 in.

Donated by the estate of Seymour Rosofsky 2010

Donated by the estate of Seymour Rosofsky 2010

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1985

Buehler-Title 1 original purchase 1971

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1977

Gift of the artist 2011

Gift of the artist 2012

College purchase 2013

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1980

Donated by Mel Theobald 2005

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1985

Buehler-Title 1 original purchase 1971

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1980

Illinois Arts Council Partners in Purchase Program 1985

Buehler-Title 1 original purchase 1971

College Purchase 2011

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E LM H U R ST COLLEG E ART COLLECTION DOM ESTIC TRAVE L H ISTORY Numerous pieces in the Elmhurst College Art Collection have traveled to retrospective and thematic exhibitions at major museums throughout the United States and Europe. Jim Nutt’s Toot Toot Woo Woo, for example, represented the United States at the 1972 Venice Biennale in Italy and has since served as a pivotal piece in many more exhibitions. “There’s rarely a retrospective of the so-called Imagist artists that doesn’t include Elmhurst,” said the art critic James Yood.

Elmhurst College Art Collection | Domestic Travel History

Seattle, WA

Boston, MA New York, NY

ELMHURST, IL

Washington, DC Cincinnati, OH

Los Angeles, CA

Atlanta, GA

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E LM H U R ST COLLEG E ART COLLECTION I NTE R NATIONAL TRAVE L H ISTORY

Elmhurst College Art Collection | International Travel History Glasgow SCOTTLAND, UK

Belfast IRELAND, UK

Sunderland UK

Hamburg, GERMANY Berlin, GERMANY

London UK

Bonn GERMANY

Milan ITALY

ELMHURST, IL

Venice ITALY

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Paul LaMantia Shoe Shine, 1971 Marker, ink, pencil and frottage Elmhurst College Art Collection

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R E LATE D PU B LIC PROG RAMS All public programs are free with museum admission or current membership unless otherwise indicated.

All programs are part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicago’s art and design legacy with presenting partner, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation.

Family Day: FrankenToyMobile Workshop

Symposium: The Figure, Humor, and the Chicago Imagists

In the spirit of the Chicago Imagists, the Elmhurst Art Museum welcomes you and your family to a hands-on activity challenging you to explore identity and the human figure. The artist group FrankenToyMobile leads a workshop in which children and parents reuse salvaged toy parts—from furry toy bunnies to muscular Hulk arms—to create their own inventive characters.

Sunday, December 16, 2018 | 11-3 PM

Saturday, October 13, 2018 | 1-4 PM

Part of Arts DuPage Month.

Curator Talk: Suellen Rocca

Saturday, November 3 | 1:30pm In the 1960s, Suellen Rocca and five other artists formed the groundbreaking artist collective the Hairy Who, known for their powerfully graphic images, brazen sense of humor, and embrace of popular culture. Join the museum for a special talk by Rocca, Director of Exhibitions at Elmhurst College and curator of The Figure and the Chicago Imagists, in which she offers a first-person account of her experiences as part of Chicago’s art scene in the 1960s.

Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Family Day: Exquisite Corpse

Saturday, November 17, 2018 | 1-4 PM The Elmhurst Art Museum welcomes you and your family to participate in an afternoon of art activities inspired by the Chicago Imagists. Led by the museum’s Teen Art Council, tour the museum’s exhibition The Figure and the Chicago Imagists and draw your own exquisite corpse drawings! Through this collaborative game, participants will draw fantastic and inventive figures with unexpected chance-based distortions.

In partnership with Art Design Chicago and Elmhurst College, this full-day symposium explores works by the Chicago Imagists with specific emphasis on the ways in which they used humor in their depictions of the figure. The symposium features presentations on the topic and the opportunity to view the extraordinary Elmhurst College Imagist Art Collection on view at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

Symposium begins at Illinois Hall at Elmhurst College and later continues at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Full schedule to be announced.

Funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

ELMHURST A R T MUSEUM 150 S Cottage Hill Ave, Elmhurst, IL 60126 630.834.0202 | elmhurstartmuseum.org