Chicago Imagists
The Chicago Imagists were a loose circle of representational artists who came out of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and showed at the Hyde Park Art Center from the mid-1960s. The core was the Hairy Who - Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Karl Wirsum, Art Green, Jim Falconer and Suellen Rocca - who mounted six irreverent group shows between 1966 and 1969; nearby figures include Roger Brown, Ed Paschke, Christina Ramberg and their teacher Ray Yoshida. Their work fused comics, tattoos, outsider art, folk traditions and psychedelic patterning into exuberant, often grotesque figuration. Proudly out of step with New York's minimalism and Pop, the Imagists built a fiercely local, personal alternative whose influence runs from lowbrow art to contemporary figurative painting.
Defining characteristics
- Acidic, high-key colors bounded by thick black outlines
- Grotesque or cartoonish distortion of the human face and body
- Dense, jazzy patterning and psychedelic surface decoration
- Vernacular sources: comics, tattoos, outsider art, advertisements
- Wordplay, puns and insider jokes embedded in the images
- A personal, handmade feel set against mass-media cool
Key figures
- Jim Nutt (b. 1938) — Hairy Who painter of intricate, raucous figure paintings and shaped panels
- Gladys Nilsson (b. 1940) — Watercolorist of crowded, tumbling, elastic figurations
- Karl Wirsum (1939-2021) — Hairy Who painter-sculptor of cartoonish, obsessively patterned figures
- Roger Brown (1941-1997) — Painter of stylized, comic-strip-flat American landscapes and city scenes
- Christina Ramberg (1946-1995) — Painter of cropped, corseted, fetishized female torsos
Example works
- The Portable Hairy Who! — Hairy Who (group collaboration) (1966)
Sources
- Chicago Imagists - Wikipedia encyclopedia