Deconstructing cultural norms: Gladys Nilsson’s Smart Dressing (left) and Karl Wirsum’s Stork Reality.
In the media-saturated world of the 1960s, Pop, Op and other forms of abstract imagery ruled the art world. The works of Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns and others boasted a cool austerity, steering away from the human form and taking an arm’s-length abstract stance.
Halfway across the country, a group of Chicago artists, many affiliated with the Art Institute of Chicago, embraced a different aesthetic. Advertising, comic books and other forms of commercial art blended with the broad collections of the Art Institute and ethnographic displays at the Field Museum of Natural History in their influence on paintings and drawings of the human figure.
The Chicago Imagists, as they came to be called, found art a very personal medium, embracing the human body in its many — and often grotesque — forms. The Imagists were not just making an Artistic Statement; they just wanted to have fun.
On Aug. 11, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art opened an intimate exhibition in its Henry Street Gallery showcasing 17 objects from its own Chicago Imagists collection of 184 pieces. Eye Deal: Abstract Bodies of the Chicago Imagists, which runs through June 9, stresses the group’s use of the human form as a way to lampoon the often absurd definition of beauty reflected in advertising and other mass media imagery, according to curator Mel Becker Solomon.
“Chicago was the center of figural art during a time when drawing the body was considered passé,” Solomon says. “But this group concentrated on exposing the ugly realities of the body.”
The MMoCA exhibition highlights work of artists Sarah Canright, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson and others. The imagery, rife with violence, sexual innuendo and social commentary, does its best to deconstruct cultural norms and lay bare the imperfections of the human form.
In “Vertical Amnesia” (1980), Christina Ramberg creates the suggestion of a person as an empty garment, combining textures of fabric, wood grain, paper and skin to reinforce the notion that everything consists of matter.
Jim Nutt’s etching, “Oh Dat Sally” (1967-68), features a painful grooming ritual in which the subject wields a sharp blade to remove her physical imperfections, including hands, feet, lips and eyes, lampooning beauty ads of the day.
The works make a strident and often humorous statement against current conventions.
“All of the artists were looking at the collection and realizing you don’t have to subscribe to what art historians and critics say,” Solomon says. “You can paint what makes you happiest and pleases your eye.
“I think there is something really lovely about that.”