Chicago’s Artistic Defiance

This past week, Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago opened at the Smart Museum of Art at The University of Chicago. The exhibit is the first major exhibition to examine the history and impact of the Monster Roster, which has been overlooked despite being one of the most important Midwestern contributions to the development of American art.  United by a shared interest in the figure during a period that is often seen as dominated by abstraction this group of Chicago artists attempted to capture emotional intensity on canvas. The artists’ intense subject matter and approach earned them the nickname “The Monster Roster.”

Chicago has long exhibited a strong individual artistic streak, little influenced by outside fashions and trends in the art world. While artists elsewhere were exploring Impressionism, Fauvism, and Cubism in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, most Chicago artists continued to focus on traditional modes of expression. This defiance to go against prevailing artistic movements continued even after World War II. While Abstraction reigned in New York, Chicago and groups like the Monster Roster, continued to explore the figure, while also accepting and bending into its own personal canon the ideas of Surrealism. This led to Chicago being discounted as the “Second City” in comparison to New York’s own art scene, however, this rebelliousness has allowed the city to nurture a distinctive, often gutsy, art all its own.

Pre World War I, Chicago’s School of the Art Institute (SAIC) began this nonconformist tradition by declining to teach Modernism when many U.S. art schools were embracing it. However, it truly hit its artistic stride after World War II.  Rather than embracing the Abstract Expressionism championed by New York artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, Chicago artists continued to focus on the representational, while also gravitating towards Surrealism. The seed of Surrealism was planted in 1947 with the Art Institute’s 58^th annual exhibition, Abstract and Surrealist American Art, which contained just as many European artists as American, including Surrealists Salvador Dali, Max and Jimmy Ernst, Many Ray, Arshile Gorky, and Yves Tanguy.

The art of two students of the SAIC, Aaron Bohrod and Gertrude Abercrombie, reflect this new tendency toward Surrealism. Early in his career, Bohrod’s work depicted urban Chicago life, as seen in South Side, Chicago, but by the late 1940s, he began to paint distinctively Surrealist trompe l’oeil compositions, such as The Golden Pear.

Bohrod’s South Side, Chicago realized $7,500 in the May 20, 2015 Property from the Collection of Carol H. and Richard M. Levin sale.

The Golden Pear realized $6,000 in the May 20, 2015 Property from the Collection of Carol H. and Richard M. Levin sale.

Bohrod and Abercrombie are just two precursors to the later Chicago Imagists, who emerged in the late 1960s. Former students of the School of the Art Institute, these young artists picked up on the humor and sex of Surrealism, often recasting it in comic strip form. Technically, there were three different groups of Chicago-based artists under the banner of “The Chicago Imagists.” The Monster Roster was first, which included Leon Golub, Nancy, Spero, and H.C. Westermann. The second group was the Hairy Who, which included Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, and Karl Wirsum and the third group, the Chicago Imagists, which included Ed Paschke, Barbara Rossi, and Ray Yoshida. Works such as Wirsum’s Skullpture Y, Nilsson’s Another Look to Somewhere, and Paschke’s Untitled reveal the fantastical, playful, and sometimes grotesque tendencies of these groups.

Karl Wirsum’s, Skullpture Y, greatly outpaced its estimate of 10,000-15,000, selling at $92,500 at the Post War and Contemporary Art sale in May of 2015 at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.

Gladys Nillson’s, Another Look to Somewhere, auctioned for $8,750 in the May 21, 2015 sale at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.

Although no longer able to be uninvolved with prevailing artistic trends, in part due to constant technological connectivity, contemporary Chicago artists continue to create vibrant work that express an individuality unique to the city. Exhibits like the Monster Roster continue to give a glimpse into a nonconformist past which helped shape the “Second City” and ultimately foster opportunities for exploration and originality well into the 21^st century.