Most people are familiar with pop artists like Andy Warhol, but seldom few know about their Midwestern counterparts, the Chicago Imagists.
The Imagists, who had a strange career through the '60s and beyond, are being honored with an exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. For Richard Axsom, curator at MMoCA, this is long overdue.
"In contemporary art, you're seeing a return to, or an interest on the part of some artists, [in the Imagists] who are being offered as important," he said.
For many, the Imagists will likely shock. The art is brash, stark in color and line and sometimes discomforting in its depiction of people and objects.
"It's such an incredibly, vibrantly colorful art," Axsom said. "Also, it's just full of energy, and I would say youthful energy."
Comprising artists who had all studied at the Art Institute in Chicago, who organized themselves under names such as "The Hairy Who," "False Image" and "Non Plussed Some," the Imagists approached art from dazzlingly new angles, often disturbing and frightening angles.
"This is not polite art," Axsom said, "and let me tell you, it can be risqué, bawdy and irreverent."
The subject matter is diverse, but the Imagists all exhibited an outlook rooted in reality expanded into the world of dreams. One painting, "Regulatory Body" by Art Green, depicts an ice cream cone splitting apart to reveal rainbow tires, capped with a Pay Day bar opening like a yawning beast.
"It's something you'd encounter in a dream--a nightmare--but certainly not in real life," Axsom said.
In addition to the bizarre nature of their art, one third of the Imagists were women, artists such as Christina Ramberg and Gladys Nilsson.
"That makes no sense to you folks, but back in the sixties, a woman?" Axsom said. He added, "[The Imagists were] all together, there's no sense of ‘Let the girls have the back gallery.'"
And by the '70s the Imagists had found fame representing the U.S. in Sao Paolo Art Biennial.
"Now tell me that's not a success story," Axsom said. 20-somethings... putting up their funky stuff and six years later, they're representing the United States."
What is truly interesting is they accomplished this without support from the New Yok art scene. Indeed, New York art critics, including those of The New York Times greeted the Imagists with hostility.
"[John Russell] reviewed a show of their work, and the title of his review was ‘Man the Barricades,'" Axsom said.
But just as remarkable as the Imagists is the story behind the exhibit. Bill McClain, an emeritus professor of molecular biology at UW-Madison, donated over 100 pieces of Imagist art to MMoCA. He recounted stories of the requests he received for Imagist art over the years.
"I had a number of requests from Europe and Japan and all around the United States on multiple occasions to borrow one to six works at a time," he said.
He also stressed the magnitude of the collection.
"It's the foremost collection of the Chicago Imagists that's in a public collection-there's no better collection in the world."
McClain, who has also donated art to the Chazen Museum of Art, the Kinsey Institute for Sexual Research, and the L.D. Fargo Public Library in his town of Lake Mills, Wis., among others, donated his collection for the sake of keeping it together.
"I didn't collect the pieces to make money, I collected them... first because I enjoyed them, and then I realized that a larger audience should really have the opportunity to see them."
McClain also gave the art to MMoCA for the sake of education.
"The Madisonian people, and the people around the state don't know anything about, or much about the Imagists," he said. "Why not create a real new destination point for art enthusiasts to come to Madison?"
In addition, the art McClain donated will have a long life with the museum outside of this exhibit.
"There was a request that the individual work be shown at least once every 10 years," he said. "That was for the benefit of the artists."
McClain spoke pleasurably about the design and set up of the exhibit.
"It's outstanding. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago probably wouldn't have done it any better."
The exhibit's set-up is another reason to check it out. Taking advantage of the large space, visitors are greeted with a large orange wall explaining in brief the Imagists, with a few pieces by Ray Yoshida, a teacher at the Art Institute, and an influence upon the Imagists. The rest of the exhibit is divided into two sections: sea-green colored walls which denote their work in the mid-'60s up to the 1973 Sao Paolo Art Biennial, and yellow walls for post-Sao Paolo work up to the present day.
For Axsom, there is a pleasant irony in the choice of colors.
"The actual color names are so in keeping with the exhibition. Art Green ... is delighted to have his painting hung on a ‘Marmalade' wall," he said. "And Karl Wirsum was delighted to have his painting on a ‘Banana' wall."
McClain was happy with the choice of colors as well.
"It actually puts [the art] in your face, and that is what the whole movement is about, putting art in your face."
The Chicago Imagists is free at MMoCA and will run through Jan. 15, 2011.
