The Collected Hairy Who Publications 1966-1969
August 28, 2015 by Matthew Klassen 
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.
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