John Wilde - The Early Works catalog by toryfolliard

JOHN WILDE THE EARLY WORKS

JOHN WILDE THE EARLY WORKS Foreword by Tory Folliard Essay by Robert Cozzolino

TORY FOLLIARD GALLERY 233 N. MILWAUKEE ST. MILWAUKEE, WI 53202 ∙ (414) 273-7311 G a l l e r y H o u r s : Tu e s d a y - F r i d a y 1 1 - 5 ∙ S a t u r d a y 1 1 - 4

toryfolliard.com ∙ info@toryfolliard.com

John Wilde in his studio, 1946

Foreword I am pleased to present John Wilde: The Early Works, an exhibition of drawings and paintings by John Wilde from the 1940s and 1950s. The foundation for this exhibition is a trove of remarkable drawings found posthumously in Wilde’s studio where they were rarely seen. We are fortunate to have connected many of his early drawings to previously unknown paintings.

By the early 1990s I gathered up enough nerve to ask John to exhibit in my gallery. John’s response was “Do you think anyone in Milwaukee will buy my work?” I thought what an odd question coming from such a distinguished artist who had already achieved national recognition, but I assured him that I was willing to take a chance that they would. And fortunately, they did. John sent marvelous figurative and still-life paintings to the gallery. Our relationship lasted until his death in 2006, upon which I had the pleasure of continuing to represent his legacy through his widow, Shirley Wilde, who passed away in 2015.

In the midst of planning The Early Works, an important discovery took place that serendipitously changed the direction of our exhibition. This past summer the Wilde family discovered a cache of the artist’s paintings from the early 1940s that had been hidden from view in the artist’s home. This exciting find of ambitious works by John Wilde provides us with clues to his early development as an artist. Boldly painted and highly personal, these works reveal Wilde’s early artistic tendencies and iconography. Seventy five years later, I am delighted to include these paintings in this important exhibition.

John Wilde’s art remains fresh and relevant today. His skill as a master draftsman and superb painter continues to mesmerize. With this exhibition I hope many will rediscover John Wilde’s extraordinary work and a new generation will discover it for the first time. I would like to extend a special thank you to the Wilde family, especially to Rob Grilley and Jonathan Wilde who have been instrumental in our efforts to organize the works from the John and Shirley Wilde Estates. I also wish to thank Robert Cozzolino, curator, art historian and friend of John Wilde, who has shared his knowledge and expertise in the catalog’s beautifully written and insightful essay.

John Wilde first came to my attention in the late 1980s after seeing his work in Wisconsin museums and again while visiting galleries in New York. I was thoroughly intrigued. His work was exquisite and a bit strange. His stilllifes were more than just beautiful - there was something inexplicable going on below the surface, and I loved them!

Tory Folliard

opposite: The Game of Balls (detail), 1949, Oil on panel, 8 1/4 x 9 3/4 in.

Myself before the war: John Wilde’s Early Work

realization through a pervasive blood red color that stains the sky, soil, and affects the overall environment. A closer look at the female figure reveals dozens of lesions and holes in her flesh. Her metallic blue flesh seems devoid of life. In the painting a ghostly figure emerges from a hole in the ground as a predatory bird lands on its head. All three works depict trees growing from the heads of the most prominent figures; the lion in the study and painting and the large military official’s profile in The U.S. is at war with Japan. While the meaning of this motif is unclear, at the very least it marks the figures as carrying an unnatural burden.

ithin weeks of the December 7th 1941 attack that pulled the United States into World War II, John Wilde made a painting called Invasion by Land, Sea, and Air (1942; plate 16).1 It evolved from a direct preparatory drawing (1941; plate 15) and another work inscribed The U.S. is at war with Japan (1941; plate 13), which he painted later as part of his “work reconsidered” series in the 1980s.2 Although born from Wilde’s anxiety about the war, these compositions buzz along playfully as though animated by the lost and scattered characters from a dissembled childhood picture book. A lion stands in the foreground of the painting and its study, its expression hushed and contemplative rather than menacing or fierce. At left, in the deep distance, an enormous woman rises at the horizon, a long streamer of fabric dancing around her in the wind. Rocks are strewn about the arid landscape. Only a few spare trees sprout from the ground. Rock formations in the study suggest the cliffs and bluffs of Wisconsin’s Driftless Area or Paleozoic Plateau, which inspired Wilde and his good friends Marshall Glasier (1902-1988) and Sylvia Fein (b. 1919).

These subtle shifts from the preparatory drawing give the painting a sense of emergency that has more in common with the tone of The U.S. is at war with Japan. Its connection to the war is also emphasized in imagery that edges toward violence. A warplane dives upward in the sky and the ground is strewn with an absurd assortment of items, including anthropomorphic pottery, a disembodied foot in a high-heeled shoe, a bowler hat, calipers, and an umbrella stand. In the distance, a man wearing a top hat extends his left arm with gun in hand, ready to shoot. As if in response, a birdman flying through the sky (with one bare leg and one in a diamond patterned-stocking) points a gun towards the man as if taking aim.3 The Earth appears in the sky above this irrational landscape, signaling to the viewer that reality has been overturned, and we are out of our element in this new order of things. Another variation in watercolor and ink makes violence explicit (ca. 1942; plate 21). A

Invasion by Land, Sea, and Air and its related drawings may seem more humorous than ominous, but they include details that suggest Wilde’s attitude about the war as his relationship to it changed. When the United States entered the war, Wilde and his friends became aware that their participation in it would be coerced through war work or a draft. The painting conveys that

opposite: The U.S. is at war with Japan (detail), 1941, Graphite on paper, 11 x 14 in.

large yellow beast with Wilde’s features stands guard next to the reclining body of a woman that has been cut open with a massive dagger resting upright in a chalice nearby. As Wilde’s initial responses to the war, they foreshadow the darker and more personal investigations to come.

and innocence to the work he did before fall 1942. But that would underestimate the ambition and creative spark in Wilde’s early work. Wilde’s prewar work reveals a driven young artist striving to find his voice. The war may have helped him find it, but all of the elements were in place before his army experience challenged him in ways he could not anticipate. Wilde’s early work is little known even among those who are familiar with the artist. It is in part because Wilde had strong feelings about where his mature work began – during his “illegal confinement” as he referred to his time in the army.

If the war had compelled Wilde to create a parallel world in the wake of Pearl Harbor, he was sending dispatches firmly from within it the following year. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1941 but received an educational deferment while he completed his final undergraduate year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. By the fall of 1942 he was at Camp Livingston in Louisiana receiving basic infantry training. Eventually Wilde was transferred to the medical corps where he did field rescue training drills and prepared to serve as a front line first aid medic. As he and his division waited instructions for deployment he was assigned to do venereal disease inspections and then was transferred to a unit designing propaganda. Officials recognized his artistic background and shifted him to the air force where he designed and painted camouflage and instructed pilots on the subject. By 1944 he was reassigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor of the CIA, and was stationed in Washington D.C. where he made strategic maps for army intelligence. In 1946 he was discharged from the army and returned to Madison.

While in the army he developed an enormous arsenal of imagery and broadened his stylistic range. A 275-page sketchbook he filled with drawings and writing generated material for imagery that he returned to well into his eighties.4 For instance, the nude woman depicted from behind that Wilde drew on a stream-ofconsciousness letter (1943; plate 22) that he likely sent home to his first wife, Helen Ashman (1919-1966) originated in his sketchbook and reappeared in the 1987-88 painting With Friends (Chazen Museum of Art, figure 1).5 Like many of the bodies (often Wilde himself) in the sketchbook and in his contemporary war drawings, she is simultaneously charmed and broken, magical and tragic. She sits on a large rubber ball, her right arm detached and lying across her lap. A dagger pierces her forehead and exits out the back of her skull. The accompanying text rambles densely as a convoluted prophesy and is part of Wilde’s imaginative investigation at the time of the meaning of decay and physical abnormalities. He related it to the state of the world that would invite and sustain the bloodbath of war. As he wrote in an illustrated wartime letter to Fein, “I sent to you a choice of fetal monsters to remind you that worse is still to come. They do perfectly for me what I try

Wilde’s war experience marked a turning point in his life. Although he spent the entire duration of his service on American soil, it is clear from the shift in his work – its intensity and focus, proliferation of imagery and deepening of psychological themes – that everything changed. These changes can give a comparative sweetness

figure 1 JOHN WILDE (American, 1919-2006), With Friends, 1987-1988, Oil on canvas mounted on wood panel, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Elvehjem Museum of Art Membership Fund purchase, 1991.14

another to provide feedback, argue, criticize, and reinforce their work. Madison in this period was a fertile place for a young artist and Wilde found like-minded friends that led him to new ideas that validated his impulses.

to do for myself; understand decay and rot and natural error and horror that in the end my own head will begin to ooze and rot, but my eyes will last to the last so that I can see it happen.”6 Wilde’s intense formative years enabled him to be receptive and sensitive to the environment that generated his psychologically complex and neurotically dense subject matter in 1943-46. His training and friendships pushed him to attempt a curious mix of American folk art, Dada, and Surrealist imagery as an undergraduate in 193842. Revisiting that work reveals much about Wilde’s talent and interests at the very start of his career. It also provides a look at how modernist ideas permeated the Midwest and what young artists did with them. Wilde was part of a rich intellectual community that included artists, musicians, philosophers, physicists, and writers. They exchanged ideas fluidly and relied on one

Wilde was born and raised in Milwaukee and from boyhood demonstrated a great love of drawing. “There wasn’t any outward reason for it, nor any particular encouragement,” he noted.7 Wilde’s older brother Robert was friends with their neighbor Karl Priebe (1914-1976) and eventually John and Karl became close. During high school Wilde had a teacher who brought his class to visit the studio of Santos Zingale (1908–1999) and Alfred Sessler (1901–1963) and realized for the first time that art could be a profession. Soon afterward he began an informal apprenticeship with Milwaukee painter Paul Clemens (1911–1992) that he modestly joked

was little more than sweeping up the studio. Wilde mixed paints and prepared panels for Clemens and at night he attended life classes led by the older artist. By the time he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, Wilde had already exhibited in professional exhibitions and had learned a great deal about materials and technique.

Fein and Wilde developed a lifelong friendship out of this experience and met other peers whose influence permeated their lives. Wilde met his first wife Helen during this time while she was studying art and design. She was his muse, model and link to sanity during the war. Priebe was five years their senior and working as an artist in Milwaukee but visited them in Madison. Dudley Huppler (1917-1988) an English major and writer, was irreverent, had charisma and witticisms for days and adored sexual innuendo and pushing boundaries. For a time he and Priebe were lovers. He became inspired to make art in the midst of his artist friends and considered himself the chronicler and critic of the group. Wilde, Glasier, and Priebe all made portraits of him. They reveal a chameleon like personality, surprising and unpredictable. Two early portraits of Huppler show him as a stern and serious artist (although he had not yet started to paint), staring unnervingly with one open eye (1941; plates 9-10). In the painting, Wilde has given Huppler a prominent right breast, suggesting hyper-sexuality (which Huppler unabashedly admitted) and fluid interchangeable identities, even hermaphroditism.

At the university, Wilde studied with art historian James Watrous (1908-1999) and in his class met fellow artist Sylvia Fein. Watrous taught a methods class that functioned as a traditional techniques laboratory. Fein and Wilde had intensive training in materials (including drawing methods ranging from metalpoints to ink washes) and hand-mixed painting recipes that Watrous sourced from medieval and renaissance treatises. Watrous combined art history lectures with studio assignments that applied close looking and experimental chemistry. This grounding gave Wilde a love of craft, fine-tuned his eye for drawing, and exposed him to a broad range of art history. Fein, who found Watrous’s training critical to her development, observed Wilde shine in this environment. She recalled that her classmates considered John, the star in the sky at which we pointed our brushes. He quietly smoked and painted—hardly moving—and what paintings! … Where did his ideas come from in that dirty old environment of the studio? … It was apparent from the beginning that something extraordinary was taking place. This just wasn’t talent and training. There was a supernatural happening, rare, exquisite, fierce, very consistent and stable and constantly generating and cranking out [work] with no apparent struggle or missteps.8

They circled around Marshall Glasier, an older artist who had returned to Madison after time spent in the merchant marines and in New York where he studied at the Art Students League with George Grosz (1893-1959). He became especially important to Fein and Wilde.9 Glasier cultivated a bohemian persona and had a bold, gregarious personality although he was also extremely sensitive, self-conscious and his ego easily bruised. Throughout his life he thrived on the relationships he built with much younger artists. As a teacher at the Art Students League and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia he transformed the way generations of his students saw the world

through drawing.10 Already in Madison in this period he assumed the role of teacher – of art, of the art world, and how to live as an artist. He hosted drawing sessions at his studio in which the artists and hired models posed (often nude). These events frequently morphed into parties and a broad range of colorful members of the community participated from across the spectrum of the humanities at the university. Wilde emphasized that, Glasier…was a terrific influence as a person, but closer to a role model than a mentor. He was a terrific, strong personality who not only affected me but also professors… local personalities...he had a great library, record collection, and somehow I was allowed into the milieu (not many students were). When I first met him (and I can’t remember when or how) I was 19 or so, he was 37 or 38. For what it’s worth, besides Priebe [and] Clemens…he was probably the most influential person in my life.11

Untitled (man with one eye closed) (detail), 1941, Mixed media on masonite, 24 1/4 x 18 1/4 in.

Wisconsin Union Art Committee and learned how to mount exhibitions, arrange publicity, and saw a wide range of art first-hand. Wilde began exhibiting his own work in the annual Salon of Art group exhibition at the student union in Madison and met nationally known artists and critics who came to town to serve on the jury for these exhibitions.

Wilde appreciated access to Glasier’s extensive library and his subscriptions to the American Surrealist journals View and VVV. Glasier’s book collection gave Wilde an early grounding in the history of Dada and Surrealism, fin-de-siècle symbolist writing, and access to contemporary art. Literature provided Wilde with much inspiration for narrative works; among his favorite writers were MarieHenri Beyle (Stendhal), Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Jean Genet, Comte de Lautréamont and Aldo Leopold. Wilde’s drawing Interior Scene for Drama: Lorca (1942; plate 17) was one of many works of the period that employ the theater device of successive sequential walls and openings.12 With Fein he also served on the

Music played an important role in Wilde’s circle. Glasier, for instance, was close with the members of the renowned Pro Arte Quartet as well as the visionary composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) and each gave concerts at the Glasier home, which Wilde attended. Priebe was an intimate of Billie Holiday (1915-1959) and painted her portrait many times. In 1940 Wilde accompanied Priebe on a car trip to Washington D.C. and New York where he saw Holiday perform at the Village Vanguard and met her. Priebe introduced Wilde to Gertrude

Abercrombie (1909-1977) in Chicago and through her met many of the leading blues and jazz musicians of the 1940s and 1950s. They corresponded and saw one another after the war but Abercrombie’s presence loomed large over the circle before the war, a personality and talent that rivaled Glasier’s for color and breadth of experience. While all of this helped stimulate Wilde’s art the community included activists, philosophers, and eccentrics who complemented the group with their dedication to progressive politics, and prior experience as members of the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.13 It was a complex mix of influences and ideas for an artist barely in his twenties. He described his trajectory as an undergraduate in this way, at first very much the liberate[d] student; lots of drinking, screwing, horsing around, classes and believe it or not studying (was it just chemicals and hormones? Whatever. I found university courses stimulating and absorbing after the drudgery of high school). After about ’40, after meeting and befriending, among others. Helen, [Arnold] Dadian, Sylvia F, Glasier, Huppler, Watrous, etc. ART becomes central. Oh, fun still happens, but it is always focused: we talked ART, drank ART, did ART, loved ART and, as a group felt very superior and rather exclusive, began to participate in exhibitions, local and national. Also we felt radical, advanced, liberal, liberated. All of this established my natural inclination toward and for the odd, the other, the neglected, the unacceptable, the quirky. All of this led to criticism and raised

Myself with Long Hair (detail), 1940, Graphite, 20 x 16 in.

eye-brows from the “other”, and I believe I, and others of our group, not only ignored but cherished and embraced criticism.14

may have converged in this bold early selfportrait ranging from 19th-century itinerant American portraitists to the wide-eyed stare and format of John Graham’s work. Wilde’s incorporation of collaged reproductions adjacent to painted facsimiles reveals his early love of artists such as William Michael Harnett and John Frederick Peto. Later, in works such as Interior with Currants (1957; plate 32), Wilde would demonstrate a tour-de-force control over texture, space, and light as his still-lifes became more elaborate and precise. Wilde’s penchant for close observation and his supernatural devotion to nature originated in still-lifes of this period, even though they lack the degree of finish that came in the late 1940s. He wrote in 1950, I find that I am continually devoted to the object—the fallen leaf here, the fruit there, the marsh grass here, the grape there—into endless continuation. There is no end to the supply of things that might be

accomplished—there is no end to the stimulus I find in these objects or to my adoration of their divinity. In fact I want little more than to record, through the facet of my oftmiraculous sensitivity, the actuality of these things.15 Other collage-based works from this period reveal Wilde’s absorption of lessons from Dada and the early work of Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí, whose paint, sand, and collage beach scenes of 1928 bear similarities to Wilde’s early still-lifes. In 1946 when Wilde had returned to Madison he enrolled in graduate school and wrote his thesis on Max Ernst. He had spent a great deal of time thinking about the disruption to narrative that collage could provoke. StillLife with a Joker (1940; plate 3) combines a painted beach scene with collaged newsprint and playing card. The pasted papers read as objects in the extreme foreground while tiny figures in

During this period Wilde made one of the largest self-portraits of his career. Myself as a Reader (1941; plate 2) was based in part on Myself with Long Hair (1940; plate 1), an imaginary conceit as Wilde never had long tresses. The drawing is in homage to Albrecht Dürer’s 1500 frontal self-portrait at the age of 28 (Alte Pinakothek, Munich) in which he brings to mind the image of Christ. Wilde’s image also has connections to the Romantic image of the wild unconventional artist, living on the fringes of decorum and society. In the painting Wilde retained this general pose but replaced the landscape with a trompe l’oeil wall, close cropped his hair, and placed a book respectably in his hand. Several sources Still Life with a Joker, 1940, Gouache, pen, wash, and collage on paper board, 11 1/2 x 23 1/2 in.

the distance provide a scale shift that allows for perspective. Floating letters and trompe l’oeil pins coexist as signs and tangible objects against the backdrop of paper stripped from the daily news. Wilde would later make paintings that combined floating letters, crisply defined objects, and a deep landscape, entirely painted and seamlessly presented as an integral part of the illusory scene (see for instance Wildeview, 1985-86).

was all black and dry – and then the bright red blood came in spurts like a spilt bottle – and it flowed in little rivulets over the sand. And the man was pale and he smiled sheepishly. He had made, a mistake – oh, yes a rotten mistake. It was a lovely symbol – such a funny thing.19

An ambitious 1940 painting (plate 6) for which Wilde made an elaborate study (plate 5) is among the first in which he combined eros and death. A shapely and stylish woman stretches out on a picnic blanket, resting her head on her right hand. Her companion – a nattily dressed skeleton – smiles behind her seated against a ramshackle wooden fence. Wilde would increasingly use the human body in all of its beauty, sensuality and capacity for dysfunction and rot to address the dilemma of existence – pleasure and pain, abundance and loss. He summarized his philosophy in a 1993 interview: “‘All art from sex’ is a quote from Marilyn Monroe. And I said, ‘That’s a great truth except you gotta add awareness of death.’ That makes the whole works, the whole ball of wax.”16

In larger independent drawings Wilde’s heightened emotional state and internal struggles resulted in an aggressively cathartic but controlled intensity that often surprised him. He reflected, “I felt such a need to get things out that my ability to render transcended my technical expertise at the moment; I actually believe that it rose to meet my needs.”20 An example of this is his Portrait of HDPRAW (1944; Chazen Museum of Art, figure 2) which is a gorgeous half-length pencil portrait of Helen looking directly at the viewer while decay eats a hole in her chest. Hair neatly bound up, arms and hands arranged with composure, sheer dress clinging to and exposing her breasts, she betrays an elegance that clashes with her rotting flesh. In the drawing Wilde’s careful observation of flesh—the smooth curves and gentle evocation of its surface—accentuates the horror provoked by the dark abyss spreading in Helen. A tidy column of text that borders the portrait purports to explain the image and reveal the interconnectedness of Wilde’s war-induced neurosis and physical reality, sex and death. It reads, My love is infected by my madness. Literally, it eats at her heart and I weep, for I be the cause of her coming illness. My madness is irresistible. It shan’t …it be a dictate by my situation…This drawing shows how mental infection in reality works. The first lesion is usually visible on the chest between the breasts. It is

I Kill the Wickedest of Dog (detail), ca. 1944, Ink on paper, 10 1/4 x 12 1/2 in.

drawings (sent to friends through the closelymonitored mail) and sketchbook to suggest he was unfit for service. Wilde allowed all of his feelings, racing thoughts, and unfiltered visions to pour out. I Kill the Wickedest of Dog (ca. 1944; plate 24) is closely related to images in his sketchbook that correlate dogs and wolves to his “captors” or military authorities. Here he is forthright about his will to destroy them and free himself and presumably the world from their devious plans. Love After Murder II (1944; plate 25), which is among the earliest versions of a theme Wilde repeated throughout his career, has its roots in 1920s German Neue Sachlichkeit lustmord imagery showing brutal rapes and murders culled from the newspapers. In Wilde’s hands during the war it becomes a horrific allegory for what he imagined the military authorities experienced in World War II – a salacious spark of excitement

Once Wilde began his time in the army and the possibility that he might be shipped overseas and made to kill or be killed hit him hard, these themes took prominence in his work. His wartime sketchbook became crucial as he worked through the emotional and physical torment of his “confinement.” He said, “The sketchbook was an attempt to keep me sane—to get everything out. It worked.”17 Its contents trace his fragile psychological state, charting his anxiety and physical symptoms of his unhappiness. Being in the army made Wilde feel he was complicit with the atrocities of war and it often seems like he was gathering/producing evidence in his stand-alone

figure 2 JOHN WILDE (American, 1919 - 2006), Portrait of HDPRAW, 1943, Graphite and wash, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gift of the Artist, 1972.2

over the permission to participate in the most base and immoral behavior that the conflict allowed. Despite having spent his service on the home front, Wilde witnessed gory accidents in basic training and wrote home about finding a dead soldier in the woods during one of his excursions to gather camouflage materials.18 He described one incident to Glasier, A fellow shooting by me accidentally shot his foot off – it was beautiful – his shoe was ripped open and it

to shape his vision. The major themes of his work – nature, “divine objects,” self-portraiture, courting the irrational, sexuality, and beauty – were all present as he departed Madison for the army. The technique is raw compared to the incremental refinements he made to his style in the second half of the 1940s. But all of the elements of his vision are there. Wilde’s willingness, even compulsion to contemplate these issues throughout his life is evident in a journal entry from the 1960s. In reflecting on contemporary events, Wilde brought their significance to bear on his everyday experience of the land, of his self, his studio practice, his family. He wrote, I continually sense the tentativeness of all things—the brooding everpresence of disaster and death— each day and every day and every moment. … There is hardly a moment’s letdown from rigid fear—an appalling anticipation. … It is easy to call this a neurosis and I suppose it is … but I prefer to consider it simply a sharpening (an excruciating sharpening) of an ever present sensibility or hyperawareness of reality (growth and death). … Under the circumstances I am appreciative of every day.21

a small pimple and is picked for it is unattractive. It heals partially, but alas, another develops. Relative to the neurasthenic development this is the first collapse. The lesion grows to the dismay of the lovely. Soon it is large and ungainly, horrifying in fact. Hypochondria is the counterpart. The actuality of the horror is discovered and the pretty is in bed with I -- madly for she knows I am as her. This is love then, truly -- unknown to most others. Hence you see this is a picture of real love, mad, diseased and in alliance with my dear friend death. In death is love, in love is horror; teach your little children that and then it will be fine, for people then shan’t any longer vomit on the sidewalk, but they shall always vomit in a pot or in the face of a lady. This lady shall be like a bird and shall pee on you with that white bird pee. Vomiting shall thence be rewarded by bird pee; an accomplishment! Accomplishment is achieved through love, mad, diseased and in alliance with my dear friend death, again. Intelligence is madness. Madness is hate. Hate is love. Love is poop!

PLATES

Robert Cozzolino Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings Minneapolis Institute of Art

Although the war pushed Wilde to explore these issues with an unprecedented intensity the basic building blocks were present in his work of 1940-42. The female bust in Invasion by Land, Sea, and Air endures a proliferation of holes in a body sick from its surroundings. It is the tentative precursor to what followed in his war years. In these early works, Wilde synthesized an enormous inventory of visual sources and began

plate 1 Myself with Long Hair, 1940, Graphite on paper, 20 3/4 x 18 in. 18

plate 2 Myself as a Reader, 1941, Oil on panel with collage, 32 x 29 in. 19

plate 3 Still Life with a Joker, 1940, Gouache, pen, wash, and collage on paper board, 11 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. plate 4 Untitled (still life with playbill, vase, shell, and dead bird), ca. 1940-1942, Mixed media on masonite, 20 1/2 x 25 in.

plate 6 Untitled (reclining woman with skeleton), 1940, Mixed media on masonite, 22 3/4 x 35 1/2 in.

plate 5 Untitled (design for reclining woman with skeleton), ca. 1940, Pencil on paper mounted on paper, 12 1/2 x 15 1/2 in.

plate 8 My Great Dog, ca. 1941-1942, Mixed media on masonite, 9 3/4 x 11 3/4 in.

plate 7 The Great Dog, 1941, Pencil on paper, 12 x 14 in.

plate 9 Untitled (design for man with one eye closed), ca. 1940-1941, Pencil on paper, 18 x 13 in.

plate 10 Untitled (man with one eye closed), 1941, Mixed media on masonite, 24 1/4 x 18 1/4 in.

plate 11 Untitled (sketch for a painting), Pencil on paper, 18 x 12 in.

plate 12 Portrait of a Lady, 1941, Mixed media on masonite, 25 x 20 1/2 in. Jonathan Wilde 29

plate 13 The U.S. is at war with Japan, 1941, Graphite on paper, 11 x 14 in.

plate 14 Untitled (woman on scaffolding), ca. 1940-1942, Mixed media on masonite, 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 in. 30

plate 16 Invasion by Land, Sea, and Air, 1942, Oil on panel, 9 x 13 in. Private Collection

plate 15 Untitled (design for Invasion by Land, Sea, and Air), 1942, Graphite on paper, 11 3/4 x 13 3/4 in.

plate 18 Fruit Landscape, 1942, Oil on panel, 4 x 7 1/2 in. Jonathan Wilde

plate 17 Interior Scene for Drama: Lorca, 1942, Pencil on paper mounted on paper, 15 3/4 x 20 1/4 in.

plate 19 Study for a Landscape, 1942, Graphite on paper, 12 x 18 in.

plate 20 Newtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s World of Vacuum, ca. 1942, Graphite on paper, 13 3/4 x 10 in.

plate 21 Untitled (woman slit open with beast, man, and air ships), ca. 1942, Ink and watercolor on illustration board, 9 3/4 x 11 1/4 in.

plate 22 A Violent Image of Love, W.I.C.1943, Pencil on paper, 22 x 11 1/4 in.

plate 23 The Pictoral Thesis of Animal Love - HRAW with the wolves, ca. 1944, Brown ink on paper, 11 1/4 x 12 in.

plate 24 I Kill the Wickedest of Dog, ca. 1944, Ink on paper, 10 1/4 x 12 1/2 in.

plate 25 Love After Murder II, 1944, Ink and pencil on paper, 14 x 16 1/2 in.

plate 26 Untitled (skull study), 1945, Pencil on fabric backed paper, 10 1/4 x 11 in.

plate 27 The House, 1947, Ink on paper, 10 x 13 3/4 in.

plate 28 Untitled (apple with berries on black), 1949, Oil on panel, 5 x 6 1/2 in. Jonathan Wilde

plate 29 Further Gropings. Natural History, 1950, Pen and ink on illustration board, 8 1/4 x 10 3/4 in. plate 30 The Game of Balls, 1949, Oil on panel, 8 1/4 x 9 3/4 in.

plate 31 Still Life with Summer Squash, 1950, Oil on panel, 10 7/8 x 15 7/8 in. plate 32 Interior with Currants, 1957, Oil on wood, 10 x 12 in. Tory Folliard Gallery

JOHN WILDE CHRONOLOGY Compiled by Robert Cozzolino

Fall: Receives basic training with the infantry at Camp Livingston in Louisiana. Begins notebook which he fills with drawing and writing inspired by his military experience.

Transferred to the medical corps; participates in field rescue drills, receives training for front line aid station casualty duties. He is also trained to perform quick inspections to identify soldiers suffering from venereal diseases. Makes drawings for venereal disease prevention propaganda.

1943

Transferred to the air force where he designs and paints camouflage and instructs pilots on the subject.

June: Marries Helen Ashman.

1919 1925-37

Born December 12 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Mathilda and Emil Wilde, a housewife and a dentist. John is the youngest of three sons; Leslie, born 1909 and Robert, born 1914. The Wildes live a few doors apart from the Priebe family. Karl and Robert, the same age, are playmates.

1938-42

Attends University of Wisconsin, Madison where he majors in art. He takes many courses in the humanities and later cites experiences with Frederick Burkhardt, Harold Taylor, and Eliseo Vivas in philosophy, and John Kienitz and James Watrous as especially influential on his thinking.

1938/39

Meets fellow art students Helen Ashman and Sylvia Fein. Shortly afterward, meets Marshall Glasier. With Ashman and Fein frequents Glasier’s salon and informal drawing sessions. Through Glasier, he learns about the art world and has access to a large collection of art books and contemporary periodicals.

1939-41

Joins the University of Wisconsin Union Art Committee through which he helps schedule, install, and publicize exhibitions. He also meets the nationally-known figures from the art world who serve as jurors for the annual Salon of Art.

Writes his master’s thesis in art history: “A Survey of the Development of Surrealism in Painting and Its Chief Innovations with Especial Emphasis on the Life and Work of Max Ernst.”

1940

Takes a car trip to New York with his mother, brother and Priebe, stopping first in D.C. While in New York, sees Billie Holliday perform at the Village Vanguard and is introduced to her afterwards by Priebe.

Attends public schools in Milwaukee. Towards the end of his high school years he has an apprenticeship with painter Paul Clemens with whom he has lessons in drawing and learns studio practices. Visits the studios of other Milwaukee artists, including Alfred Sessler and Santos Zingale.

1944 Transferred to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor of the CIA and is stationed in Washington D.C. Makes two- and three- dimensional strategic maps for army intelligence 1945

Wins prize for Exhibiting the Weapon at the Twelfth Wisconsin Salon of Art, Wisconsin Memorial Union, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

1946

Discharged from the army. Does graduate work in art history and art at University of Wisconsin, Madison.

1947

Wins award for drawing, Study for Head of Sick Child, in First Biennial Exhibition of Paintings and Prints, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Abandons art history to concentrate on his studies in studio art.

1941 Conscripted into the US army but is granted a waiver while he completes his senior year.

1948 Graduates from the University of Wisconsin, Madison with a master’s degree from the education department, as there is no formal art degree. His thesis exhibition consists largely of drawings done during the war and paintings made since. Joins faculty of University of Wisconsin, Madison. Teaches drawing for most of his career. Has summers free to paint and generally follows a pattern of teaching many classes one full semester and teaching one graduate seminar the second in order to concentrate on his own work.

1942

Awarded The Joseph E. Davies Purchase Prize for Portrait of Helen, a painting in the Seventh Salon of Art, Wisconsin Memorial Union, the University of Wisconsin, Madison

Spring: Graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Son, Jonathan is born

Wins prize at the Wisconsin State Centennial Exhibition of Contemporary Wisconsin Art at the Layton Art Gallery for Myself with Revolver.

1971 Suffers a heart attack. After a recovery period and physical therapy resumes painting and drawing.

1950s

Writes a series of guest articles of art criticism for the Wisconsin State Journal.

1951

Daughter, Phoebe is born.

Begins collaborations with Walter Hamady and the Perishable Press, Limited, Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin. Between 1971 and 2001 collaborates on nine hand-made books with the press.

1982

Retires from teaching and becomes professor emeritus.

Elected fellow of Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters.

Wins award for Still Life with a Basket of Currants, at 5th Old Northwest Territory Art Exhibit, Illinois State Fairgrounds, Springfield, Illinois. 1952

May: Buys and moves into nineteenth-century house in Evansville, Wisconsin where he sets up a studio.

Realism and Realities: The Other Side of American Painting, 1940–1960, Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, N.J.

Commissioned by Mademoiselle to illustrate a new diet, featured on the cover of their June issue.

1987

Awarded a prize for Still Life with Diana, in the 38th Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Inc. Exhibition of Wisconsin Art at the Milwaukee Art Institute.

1993 Elected Associate of the National Academy of Design; the following year he is elected full Academician (NA).

1954 Commissioned by the De Beers jewelry company to make a painting (On the Wings of Love) for use in advertising campaigns.

1998 Commissioned with Warrington Colescott to make a poster in honor of the Wisconsin State Sesquicentennial.

1958 Awarded the Lambert Prize, 153rd Annual Exhibition of American Painting and Sculpture, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

1999-2000 Wildeworld: The Art of John Wilde, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison.

1959

Commissioned to illustrate covers for The Progressive, September and October issues.

2005

1960-62

Serves as chairman of the Art Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

1962

Acquires fifteen acres of land in Cooksville, near Evansville, Wisconsin and builds a new home and studio. Also establishes a private arboretum there.

Illustrates cover of The Progressive, December issue.

2006 Dies on March 9th at home, unincorporated Cooksville, WI. Things of Nature and the Nature of Things, John Wilde in the McClain Collection, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin – Madison 2010 Narcissus in the Studio: Artists’ Portraits and Self-Portraits, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

1964

Wins the Childe Hassam Award, National Academy of Design, NY. Receives it again in 1968 and 1980.

The Magic of John Wilde, Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison

1966

Helen Wilde dies, December 21.

2013 Collection Focus – John Wilde at RAM, Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI

1969

August: Marries Shirley Gene Miller.

2015

Shirley Wilde dies on January 23.

Wilde’s Wildes – A Very Private Collection, Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI

Named Alfred Sessler Professor of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Lady and the Shoeshine Boy awarded purchase prize in the 34th Annual Mid-Year Show, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio. 52

Awarded purchase prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York.

Surrealism U.S.A., National Academy of Design, New York

SELECTED MUSEUM AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Albrecht Museum of Art - St. Joseph, MO Arkansas Arts Center - Little Rock, AR Art Institute of Chicago - Chicago, IL Bergstrom Art Museum - Neenah, WI Butler Institute of American Art - Youngstown, OH Carnegie Museum of Art - Pittsburgh, PA Chase Manhattan Bank - New York, NY Chazen Museum of Art (formerly Elvehjem) - Madison, WI Columbus Museum of Art - Columbus, GA De Beers Museum - Johannesburg, South Africa Detroit Institute of Arts - Detroit, MI Haggerty Museum of Art - Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI Kalamazoo Institute of Arts - Kalamazoo, MI Kohler Art Library, University of Wisconsin - Madison, WI Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (formerly Madison Art Center) - Madison, WI Marine National Bank - Milwaukee, WI Miller Art Center - Sturgeon Bay, WI Miller Brewing Company - Milwaukee, WI Milwaukee Art Museum - Milwaukee, WI Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Milwaukee, WI Minnesota Museum of American Art - St. Paul, MN Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, MN Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – Chicago, IL Museum of Wisconsin Art - West Bend, WI National Academy of Design - New York, NY New Orleans Museum of Art - New Orleans, LA Northwestern Mutual Life - Milwaukee, WI Old Jailhouse Foundation Museum - Albany, TX

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts - Philadelphia, PA Portland Art Museum, Gordon Gilkey Center - Portland, OR Racine Art Museum – Racine, WI Rahr-West Museum of Art - Manitowoc, WI Robert Hull Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont - Burlington, VT Sara Roby Foundation - New York, NY Santa Barbara Museum of Art - Santa Barbara, CA Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, NE Smithsonian American Art Museum - Washington, DC State University of New York - Stony Brook, NY University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, NC Wadsworth Atheneum - Hartford, CT Walker Art Center - Minneapolis, MN Washington Federal Bank - Miami, FL The West Publishing Collection - St. Paul, MN Whitney Museum of American Art - New York, NY Worcester Art Museum - Worcester, MA Yale University Art Gallery - New Haven, CT Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University - New Brunswick, NJ

NOTES This painting is reproduced in black and white in Lee Nordness, ed. Art USA Now, Volume II (Lucerne: C. J. Bucher, 1962), 342. The painting was exhibited in the Tenth Wisconsin Salon of Art, Wisconsin Memorial Union, The University of Wisconsin, Madison, November 4–29, 1943. Dudley Huppler noted that at the opening “All the time, every minute, somebody is standing before it getting mad and talking loud.” According to his sister Eliza there were “15 soldiers (she counted) crowded in front of the small painting discussing the price – and one said he did feel it was $800 worth of imagination.” Dudley Huppler to Sylvia Fein, December 12, 1943. Sylvia Fein papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1

Wilde revisited earlier compositions at many points in his life. Often these were drawings that had not been developed into paintings; other times he made new versions of imagery that had been meaningful to him. Several decades might pass between an initial idea and its translation into paint.

John Wilde, correspondence with author, November 15, 2002.

Wilde made a painting based on this drawing in 1985. See Work Reconsidered, Scene II #6, 1943 in Robert Cozzolino, “Surrealism, Wisconsin-Style,” in Bats, Babes & Broccoli (Chicago: Mongerson Gallery, 2016), 10.

John Wilde, conversation with the artist, see Cozzolino, “’Myself During the War.’”

John Wilde, correspondence with author, November 15, 2002.

This figure could be a proxy for Wilde. He often depicted himself as a harlequin in his early work. He is the birdman that appears in the 1950 painting The Dream. See Russell Panczenko, et al. Wildeworld: The Art of John Wilde (New York: Hudson Hills Press and Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1999), 87.

For more on this see Robert Cozzolino, “‘Myself During the War’: John Wilde’s World War II Sketchbook.” Elvehjem Museum of Art Bulletin (1999-2001): 41-54.

Sketchbook, ca. 1949–52; entry dated May 29, 1950. John Wilde papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Tina Yapelli, “Interview with the Artist,” in John Wilde: Eros and Thanatos (Madison Art Center, 1993), 14. 16

John Wilde, conversation with the artist, see Cozzolino, “’Myself During the War.’”

Helen Ashman to Sylvia Fein, February 23, 1943. Sylvia Fein papers.

For this and other examples see Cozzolino, “’Myself During the War,’” 50.

John Wilde to Sylvia Fein, April 18, 1943. Sylvia Fein papers.

John Wilde to Marshall Glasier, November 15, 1942. Marshall Glasier papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

20 7

John Wilde, conversation with the artist, see Cozzolino, “’Myself During the War.’”

Russell Panczenko, “Interview with John Wilde,” in Wildeworld: The Art of John Wilde, 22. John Wilde, What His Mother’s Son Hath Wrought: Twenty-Four Representative Paintings with Excerpts from Notebooks Kept Off and On Between the Years Nineteen Forty Through Nineteen Eighty-Eight (Mount Horeb: Perishable Press, 1988), n.p. [opposite plate 9].

21 8

Sylvia Fein, interview with author, March-May, 2002.

For more on the group and their relationship to the national art world see Robert Cozzolino, With Friends: Six Magic Realists 1940-1965 (Elvehjem [Chazen] Museum of Art, 2005).

Glasier took over Grosz’s classes when the older artist (Glasier’s friend and mentor) returned to Germany in 1957. Grosz never returned to the U.S., having died on the trip. Glasier continued to teach there until his death and for a period also taught in Philadelphia (1964-1978). 10

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

JOHN WILDE THE EARLY WORKS November 19 – December 31, 2016

Cover: Myself as a Reader (detail), 1941, Oil on panel with collage, 32 x 29 in.

All artwork in this exhibition courtesy of Shirley Wilde Trust unless otherwise noted.

TORY FOLLIARD GALLERY 233. N. MILWAUKEE ST. MILWAUKEE, WI 53202 (414) 273-7311 w w w. t o r y f o l l i a r d . c o m