Dan Nadel, Hairy Who? 1966-1969, Artforum, February 2019, P. 164-167 REVIEWS
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ARTFORUM H A L E s GLADYS NILSSON Dan Nadel, Hairy Who? 1966-1969, Artforum, February 2019, p. 164-167 REVIEWS FOCUS 166 Dan Nadel OIi "Hall)' Who? 1966-1969 " 11:18 Barry SChwabskyon Raout de Keyser 169 Dvdu l<ekeon the 12th Shangh ai Blennale NEW YORK PARIS zoe Lescaze on Liu vu,kav11ge 186 UllianOevieson Lucla L.a&una Ania Szremski on Amar Kanwar Mart1 Hoberman on Alaln Bublex Jeff Gibson on Paulina OloW5ka BERLIN 172 Colby Chamberialn on Lorraine O'Grady 187 MartinHerberton SteveBlshop OavtdFrankelon lyleAshtonHarrl5 Jurriaan Benschopon Louise Bonnet 173 MlchaelWilsonon HelenMlrra Chloe Wyma on Leonor Finl HAMBURG R11chelChumeron HeddaS1erne JensAsthoffon UllaYonBrandenburg Mira DayalonM11rcelStorr ZURICH 176 Donald Kuspit on ltya Bolotowsky Adam Jasper on Raphaela Vogel Barry Schwabsky on Gregor Hildebrandt 2ackHatfieldon"AnnaAtklns ROME Refracted: Contemporary Works " Francesca Pola on Elger Esser Sasha Frere-Jones on Aur.i Satz TURIN.ITALY Matthew Weinstein on Allen Frame Giorglo\lerzottlon F,ancescoVeuoll WASHINGTON, DC VIENNA 179 TinaR1versRyan011 TrevorPaglen Yuki Higashinoon CHICAGO Wende1ienvanO1denborgh C.C. McKee on Ebony G. Patterson PRAGUE BrienT. Leahy on Robertlostull er 192 Noemi Smolik on Jakub Jansa LISBON 181 Kaira M. cabanas on AlexandreMeloon JuanArauJo ·co ntesting Modernity : ATHENS lnlormallsm In Venezuela, 1955-1975" 193 Cathr)TI Drakeontlle 6thAthensB lennele EL PASO,TEXAS BEIJING 1s2 Che!seaweatherson 194 F!OrlB He on Zhan, Pelll "AfterPosada : Revolutlon · YuanFucaon ZhaoYao LOS ANGELES TOKYO 183 SuzanneHudsonon Sert1Gernsbecher 195 Paige K. Bradley on Lee Kil Aney Campbell on Mary Reid KalleyandP!ltflCkKelley OUBAI GollcanDamifkaz1k on Ana Mazzei TORONTO Dan Adler on Shannon Boo! ABIOJAN, IVORY COAST 196 Mars Haberman on Ouatlera Watts LONDON Sherman Sam on Lucy Dodd SAO PAULO EJisaSchaarot1Flom1Tan Camila Belchior on Clarissa Tossln CHRISTCHURCH. NEW ZEALANO Anthony Bynon Marie Shannon London, 7 Bethnal Green Road, El 6LA. + 44 (0)20 7033 1938 New York, 547 West 20th Street, NY 10011. + 1 646 590 0776 www.halesgallery.com f '# l!!I @halesgallery H A L E S farleft:GfadysNllsson, Bi,tandLJlll•™n�,111, 1967,acryliconPle,.,ilas. 24x18",Lell:Karl WlrSum,BaH/JtHG/rl, 196-4,acryl.k:oneanvas 39>:31".Rigr,t: SvellenROCC3,Foo! Smitl/$,ca.1966,oHon canwa,aJtist'sframe, 19%>:15½". was now an exhibiting entity called "Hairy Who": in by Pop and Minimalism and offering permission to invent Chicago (1967 and 1968), San Francisco (1968), New imagery and ro mine the psychological and vernacular. scale, festooned with glyphs of dancing couples, palm Chicago and Washington, DC, exhibitions were known undoing. A more successful approach would have been TO trees, hats, and other objects of midcentury desire. Thanks York (1969), and Washingron,DC (1969), each including The comic-book catalogues found their way into the for their arrisr-determined hang_� and immersive environ save the forensics for the catalogue and make the best "Hairy Who? 10 his preoccupation with soft-serve cones, urban spaces, ments: linoleum-covered walls, furniture,cases filledwith new and previously exhibited artworks, and accompanied hands of young people from Dallas to Ann Arbor to Nova possible installation of the works from all six shows. This artifacts, and or her odds and ends. Bur the 2018-19 by its own self-published "comic book" containing images Scotia, birthing oddball zincs and underground comics and scaffolding, Art Green emerges as the metaphysical would have privileged the artwork over a series of long 1966-1969" reconstructions fell flat-neither faithful to the feel of the ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO made specially for publication. along the way. architect of the group,and the one with the deepest roots ago exhibitions and resulted in a stronger case for the In the ensuing years, much of this history got muddied. Little seen since these exhibitions and even more in hisrorical Surrealism and contemporary Pop--from original nor a logical extrapolation-especially when individual artists. Dan Nadel Giorgio de Chirico's buildings toJames llosenquist's ice compared to the photographs in the catalogue. You can't The drawing-and-print section suffered from a differ The exhibiting group was often called a collective (it was rarely examined in any depth,the artwork itself retains cream. Nilsson's lilting fantasias on l'lexi and paper, go home again, t·specially when home was a series of ent kind confusion. Falconer, Green, and Rocca are rep not) or thought to be made up of psychedelic kooks its raw power in part because of an equal concern for always on the verge of collapse, arc self-contained narra funky spaces customized by the artists a half century {emphatically nor), and Hairy Who itself was sometimes resented solely with Hairy Who-eraworks, while a wider surface, material,and image. The renewed interest in it tive worlds, while Falconer's rubber-hose figurepaintings, ago. To attempt half measures is pointless. referred to as a 1novement (no again). The group was array of objects and ephemera from the '60s TO roday by drawings, and collages evince the most direct connection This is nor a prohlem unique to "Hairy Who?" It is Nilsson, Nutt, and Wirsum was exhibited without any often lumped in with the 1967 -Funk"' exhibition at the to both Saul and whrn was then known as tribal art. inherem ro rhe recent focus on the exhibition as a medium explicit nttion.ile.And while the exhibition stretched TO University Art Museum at the University of California, The Hairy Who exhibitions were Though there were impresarios and a couple of critics in unro itself and the urge to show muscumgoers how art the present, it did not expand in any other way. One would Berkeley, and was later brought under the unfortunate influential less for their form as Chicago at the time (including the lare Whitney Halstead, works were firstor most crucially exhibited. This is an hardly have known that the very same museum that con "Chicago lmagist" umbrella,an interpretation-limiting THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS: In 1966, friends and recent who reviewed some of the exhibitions for rhis magazine, essentially generous gesture, offering as much context as tained this retrospective also incubated the contributing (but marketing-efficient) term rhar persists today despite exhibitions than for the artworks and the late Dennis Adrian, whose essays offer the most possible in order to best demonstrate the artist's intentions School of the Arr Institute of Chicago graduates Jim artists. All of them attended the School of the Art Institute having been lefr mostly unexplored, exclusions and all, compelling commentary on the city's art in rhe '60s and and/or how something might have been experienced in its Falconer andJim Nutt approached Don Baum, director of they put on display. and walked through the museum to attend classes, and all since its coinage in 1972. '70s), there was not a thoroughgoing exchange of ideas, first presentation. But this approach is better in book or film the Hyde Park Art Center, abour mounting a series of small of rhem credit that a.s a formative experience. The AIC's Essentially, the Hairy Who was relegated to a sidebar, and the artists themselves tended to speak obliquely, form, where a nert;:Ssarily verbal Story can be told in full. As collection of global art lives in the DNA of the Hairy Who. group exhibitions featuring young artists. The first of never quite existing on its own terms. The Art lnstitutc's today is arguably related to both the surge in emotive refusing TO offer either theory or explanation for the Claire Bishop noted in the ,\farch 2014 issue of Art/orum, But rather than recognize and explore this relationshi these, "Hairy Who," comprising works by Falconer,Nutt, p- recent project, organized by Thea Liberty Nichols,Mark graphic and figuralpainting by young(ish) artists and the work. Toss that in with the general historical confusion, "A dynamic exhibition history needs to present the show rather than offer layers of meaning using rhe museum's Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Suellen Rocca, and, at Ba urn's Pascale,and Ann Goldstein,was a much-needed "just the critical equivalent of "vourhing" for the work by older and the task for any ambitious curator or historian is under discussion as a complex node of competing and own collection-the curators sealed the Hairy Who's work suggestion, Karl Wirsum, opened later 1hat year. Swiftly facts M examination of the exhibitions, its aim to provide established painters, including Amy Sillman and Kerry pretty clear. And it's here rhar rhe Arr Institute stumbled. contradictory forces while a/so paying close arrenrion to off in the very museum that played a decisive role in its embraced by local and national critics, the exhibition a baseline data set, a springboard for further scholarship. James Marshall. Wirsum emerges as the most complex the exhibition as a medium.� Importantly, the Hairy Who creation. The catalogue partly remedies these omissions announced an open, nondogmatic mode of artmaking, The original shows were summarized in three galleries, and inscrutable of the group. In 1966, his advanced THE PRIMARY PROBLEM was the installation strategy, exhibitions were inAuential less for their form as exhibitions with a strong essay by Richard Hull exploring the Hairy materially polymorphous and engaged with,but not lim with a fourth room functioning as a catchall for additional sensibility clearly influenced those of his more inchoate specifically the effort to summarize each of the original than for the artworks they put on display. The same can \X/l1o'sconnections to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ited to, bodily distortions, wordplay, all-out fantasy, paintings and a sculpture. The drawing and print galleries peers. Wirsum's ecstatic faces and figuresare seamlessly exhibitions. From the start, these synopses were hobbled: be said for numerous venerated shows.