The Collected Hairy Who Publications 1966-1969

Info

Hardback, 168 pages
12 x 8.25 inches
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery, 2015

Words

I posted about the What Nerve! exhibition when it opened at the Matthew Marks Gallery in July, prominently featuring works from the Hairy Who and other similar artists. Now the gallery has released all of the outsider collective’s art books in one volume, with the following snippet of the press release shedding more light than I could:

"Much of the Hairy Who’s legacy rests on four self-published books made to accompany their exhibitions. These comic books, as the artists called them, are among the first artist’s books executed in full colour, and they are exemplary models of artistic collaboration. The pages teem with unforgettable characters (including Juan Dollar, Poodle Woman, and Lotte Da) rendered in energetic lines and intense colours. The artists’ formal inventiveness and penchant for wordplay are on full display in these illustrations. Even the group's name is a pun. At one of the first meetings, the younger members were discussing Harry Bouras, a Chicago artist and critic, and they delightedly riffed on Karl Wirsum’s repeated question “Harry who?”

The Collected Hairy Who Publications 1966-1969 gathers these seminal books for the first time in a single hardcover volume, reproducing them at actual size and in full colour. Accompanying them are a scholarly essay by Dan Nadel and an extensive archive of Hairy Who posters, exhibition photographs, and ephemera.”

Head over to the gallery's store to pick up a copy before this limited title is sold out.

—Matthew Marks Gallery

What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present

Info

Matthew Marks Galleries
502, 522 & 526 W 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
July 8 – August 14, 2015

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"Focusing on four groups of artists practicing away from the cultural capitals of New York and Los Angeles, What Nerve! presents an alternative history of American art since the 1960s. As the exhibition’s curator, Dan Nadel, has written, 'When confronted with a system that seems impenetrable, outsiders tend to band together.' 

The Chicago-based Hairy Who exhibited together from 1966 to 1969. Its members were Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum. Funk Art took root in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and 1970s and is represented in the exhibition with works by Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Joan Brown, Roy De Forest, Robert Hudson, Ken Price, Peter Saul, and Peter Voulkos. In Ann Arbor, Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, and Jim Shaw formed Destroy All Monsters as students in the 1970s. Forcefield members Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain, Leif Goldberg, and Ara Peterson, active in Providence from 1996 to 2003, created fictional personas complete with pseudonyms and elaborate garments.

This exhibition reassesses the artists associated with these four groups, providing a new understanding of their influence on contemporary art history. Distinct as their artworks are in style, period, and place, the artists all share a common set of concerns. Inspired by a wide array of influences including folk art, advertising, primitive art, comic books, and fetishism, they all favour figurative imagery that diverges from the predominant artistic style of the time.”

—Matthew Marks Gallery

Peter Cain: More Courage and Less Oil

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02

Images

—01. Published by Matthew Marks Gallery.
—02. Prelude #3, 1990.

Words

I've never really been into cars. I had an Acura with AC and a six CD changer and that was the pinnacle of automotive engineering as far as I was concerned. That's why it's so amazing I've become such a huge fan of Peter Cain, when the bulk of his paintings are of vehicles. Don't expect pages of airbrushed Lambos in front of Miami sunsets in the pages of this book; all you'll find is subtly twisted surrealist takes on the machines, which for whatever reason, I find particularly captivating.

—Available at Matthew Marks Gallery

Roving Signs

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Matthew Marks Gallery
522 West 22nd Street, New York
July 12th – August 16th, 2013

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While looking into some exhibitions to visit on a trip to the West Coast, I stumbled across a fine looking one back home in New York. Roving Signs is a group show curated by Terry Winters, and featuring the work of 11 artists including Donald Judd, Anni Albers, Richard Aldrich, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, and Rachel Harrison. The show opened back in July, but there's still a few days left to take in what is sure to be an excellent and interesting collection of work.

—Matthew Marks Gallery