Karl Wirsum: Winsome Works(some) and Hairy Who (and some others)

Karl Wirsum: Winsome Works(some) and Hairy Who (and some others) explore the work of Wirsum and his contemporaries in the charged Chicago art scene that emerged in the 1960s. The exhibitions comprise an important retrospective of Karl Wirsum`s paintings and sculptures, as well as an overview of Chicago Imagism drawn from MMoCA`s permanent collection and an important private collection. The rise to prominence of the Hairy Who and Chicago Imagism began in the late 1960s, when the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago organized a series of milestone exhibitions. These shows introduced audiences to a vibrant generation of young artists. The first exhibition, entitled Hairy Who, presented works by six artists, including Karl Wirsum, and set the tone for what was to come in subsequent presentations at the Center. Although these exhibitions displayed a diversity of styles, a local critic discerned enough common ground to dub the artists the “Chicago Imagists.” Influenced by Pop art–already established earlier in the decade in New York and Los Angeles–Chicago Imagism was nonetheless highly original in expression. It was a fantasy art of brilliant color and underground cartoon-like satires that spoke to the political and social foibles, violence, and whimsy of contemporary life. With none of the deadpan irony and sophistication of New York Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the homegrown art of the Chicagoans was brash and irreverent–thoroughly Midwestern in its straightforwardness, offbeat congeniality, and goofy, punning titles. It was also emblematic of the decade’s youth movement and counterrevolution that championed flower power and a deep questioning of authority.