by Maddie by Maddie Goldstein ART \ IDENTITY by Maddie Goldstein \ IDENTITY ART The designer of today re-establishes the long lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or by caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.

Bruno Munari Beginning in the mid-century, relationship to design. Bruno the fashionable (and profit­ Munari, Andy Warhol, and able) role of the artist as a Damien Hirst have negoti- culture vulture and consumer ated contradictions between critic engaged indelibly with the conventions of visual elements of design practice art, their mass production and the marketability of a strategies, and their branded com­mercial­ self. The multi- selves, all of which are modal implications of the increasingly consumable­­ branded artist have rippled and reproducible. through postmodern and Bruno Munari, a 20th century 1 contemporary design dis­ Milanese artist and designer course and practice. was most famous for his Several artists and designers Useless Machines, painted have distilled this cultural cardboard and glass struc- obsession with the artist as tures strung together with brand, carrying the trope thread and wooden dowels. to its extremes. The branded In form and presentation artist uncovers larger con- Munari’s Useless Machines flicts in the pursuit of success although the former were — the art world’s incestuous regarded with derision and marriage to external market the latter hailed as Modernist forces and its irrevocable masterpieces. The substantive differences While Munari was creating his Useless Machines in between the Useless his Useless Machines he relation to Calder’s mobiles Machines and Calder’s was also designing for the and how to absolve his brief mobiles are both material magazine Tempo, Italy’s first flirtation with Italian fascism. and intangible. Calder’s iron full color weekly that fash- Munari arrived at the con- construction appealed to ioned itself as a proto-fascist clusion that one cannot the nascent industrial Life Magazine. While Munari separate artists from their imagination of the 1930s. the artist marvelled at the art in the same way that one Munari’s Useless impermeability of the con- cannot distinguish design- Machines interpreted structed world, Munari the ers from the world for which the same shapes as designer abetted a burgeon- they are designing, and precarious, their 2 3 ing industrial dictatorship. that these facts are not just suspension in space After the war, Munari distan­ simultaneously true, but impermanent. ced himself from Futurism’s are synonymous with one an- fascist roots and spent ­other. Artists are designers the rest of his career creating and their art interprets their children’s books and writing world. By his own logic, art and design polemics. Munari’s interpretation of his work is also reflective. Munari’s post war work in­- vestigated the fundamental In investigating Munari’s questions of his life up to relationship to art and self, that point: how to understand it’s instructive to invoke INTERPRETATION AMOUNTS TO THE PHILISTINE REFUSAL TO LEAVE THE WORK OF ART ALONE. REAL ART HAS THE CAPACITY TO MAKE US NERVOUS. BY REDUCING THE WORK OF ART TO ITS CONTENT AND THEN INTERPRETING

Susan Sontag’s writing on ultimate consumer good art criticism: THAT,– himself. Celebrity,ONE brand, TAMES THE WORK OF ART. superstar, artist, savant, “In most modern instances, interpreta- Warhol revelled in the tion amounts to the philistine refusal mechanisms of his fame. to leave the work of art alone. Real art INTERPRETATIONBeginning as a commercial MAKES ART MANAGEABLE. has the capacity to make us nervous. artist with a degree in picto- By reducing the work of art to its rial design, Warhol was content and then interpreting that, one intimately familiar with the tames the work of art. Interpretation identity strategies he would makes art manageable, comformable.” eventually exploit. Warhol An artist’s interpretation of mastered images; his artistic his or her own art is thus output toyed with an innate a gesture unto itself, genu- understanding of visual inely experienced and culture and its function as a 4 5 consciously constructed. In fundamental social force. a post-modern context this Warhol’s idea that “everyone often takes the form of will be famous for 15 minutes” an artist’s brand, an echo of comments on a world in a self that the artist has which image reigns supreme cultivated and commodified. and traditional artistic values Warhol’s career revolved like genius and singularity around the production of the are obsolete. As viewers we can not separate Warhol’s Warhol’s soup cans are self from his brand, which in part designed, meaningful evolved into a commercial through their relationships personality over the course to personal and commercial of his career. Warhol’s brand equity to serve an reputation derives from his emotional utility. prolific output and his omni- Warhol embraced the myth- presence as a famous ological apparatuses of figure and celebrity endorser. his identity and total control Warhol’s brand functioned over his articulated brand through a sort of cultural narrative. Warhol was fam- Möbius strip, creating a cul- ously prone to claiming Fig 1. ture that he simultaneously that his assistants created Andy curated, and critiqued. Warhol, many of the works that Campbell’s Soup I: The Soup Can series (Fig. 1) he had actually produced Tomato encapsulates Warhol’s himself. Later in his career (FS II.46), obsession with the detach- Warhol went so far as to face- 1968 ment of mass circulated tiously assert that his brands, questioning the line assistant “actually painted between high art, good [his] pictures,” causing design, and consumer cul- widespread panic among ture. The Soup Can series his buyers until he was functions under the premise eventually forced to recant.1 that while the Campbell’s Warhol concocted so many brand denotes preserved stories about himself that soup, it also connotes in hindsight fact is at times 6 7 nostalgia, middle class, and indiscernible from fiction. The comfort convenience. salience then of the artist’s Immersed in the artistic trad- “signature” in postmodern ition of the still life, Warhol’s art is not as a marker of Soup Can prints reinterpret a authenticity but as a brand common item and create a identifier, a logo behind contingent object, an easily which lies a series of careful fabricated and highly context maneuvers manifesting dependent art piece. as a body of artistic work. Contemporary artists borrow stunt that would become – all approached art’s role in The Baroque Modernists from design’s concern with the literal crown jewel in the design process. grew out of Classical identity creation and reputa- the construction of the Hirst Modernism, a graphic exp- Dada, Futurist, and Con- tion construction to establish brand, now synonymous ression that stressed a structivist artists and the value and constancy of with irreverence and trium- syntactic grammar of design designers explored textual their art. phant vapidity. The skull’s in which typography was visual communication in price tag was indeed part of to be read and imagery was Nearly 50 years after Andy addition to more traditional the work itself. In this confla- to be seen through strictly Warhol’s Factory days, modes of artistic expres- tion of sign and signifier, separate, conventional Damien Hirst trades on his sion.3 Eschewing the Hirst fashioned his work modes.5 Wolfgang Weingart commercial brand more distinctions between the fine through deliberate choices initiated a substantial body effectively than almost any and applied arts that these that effectively capitalized of work with his students in other living artist. Hirst’s artists had inher- on his brand image rather the 1960s that pushed $100 million diamond en- Fig 2. ited, they began than a deeply personal Modernist experiments to crusted skull, For the Love Damien to view functional connection between himself, Hirst, their extremes.6 Expanding of God (Fig. 2) epitomizes For the perception as his viewer, and his art. upon the Swiss concern the significance of symbolic Love of integral to their self God, for structure and composi- relevance to an artist’s The blurring of art and design expressive goals.4 2007 tion, Weingart and his brand identity and the subse- does not occur in a vacuum, Tthe Russian students experimented with quent value assigned to nor is contemporary art’s Constructivists increasingly complex grids their work. Hirst first rose to appropriation of design think- maintained and adventurous typography. fame pickling sharks, cows, ing one sided. The economy their identities as and sheep as the leader of exchange between art The resulting compositions individual artists of the Young British Artists and design is worth consid- abandoned Swiss conven- while also crafting group in the 1990s. By ering. Design provides 8 9 tions in favor of highly the totalitarian the 2007 debut of For the artists with profitable modes formal, painterly works of visual voice of the Love of God, the New York of brand expression, while design (fig. 3). The Baroque Communist Party. Times succinctly assessed fine art equips designers with Modernists discovered The Dada, Futurist, that “having created his visual specificity and through their rebelliousness and Constructivist exploita- brand, [Hirst] found he could efficacy. and irreverence that type tion of the verbal-visual sell almost anything.”2 could be read and seen. The avant-gardes design dichotomy was a radical re- Shifting focus from Swiss The creation of the skull movements of the early 20th jection of the text tradition. semantics introduced new, was contextually significant, century – De Stijl in The The Baroque Modernists in unexplored possibilities hinting at the gluttonous Netherlands, the Bauhaus Basel reinterpreted and for the dynamic integration excesses of the contempo- in Germany, and the subverted visual traditions. of type as image rather rary art world, and a PR Constructivists in Russia THE BAUHAUS STRIVES TO COORDINATE ALL CREATIVE EFFORT, TO ACHIEVE ... THE UNIFICATION OF ALL TRAINING IN ART AND DESIGN. THE ULTIMATE, IF DISTANT, GOAL OF THE BAUHAUS IS THE COLLECTIVE WORK OF ART ... IN WHICH NO BARRIERS

EXIST BETWEEN THE STRUCTURAL thanAND the static partition of A more flexible approach to design’s in art creates new type and image. In his 1923 art is crucial for design. In avenues for meaningful and pedagogical manifesto exploring the boundaries of expressive visual discourse. “The Theory and Organization art and design, I do not DECORATIVE ARTS. of the Bauhaus,” Walter intend to erase the distinc- Gropius wrote that: tions between the two. Rather I suggest that in a “The Bauhaus strives to contemporary context, the coordinate all creative effort, rigid walls separating art to achieve ... the unification from design have become of all training in art and less tenable than ever before. design. The ultimate, if dis- Fig 3. 10 11 The commodification of Dan tant, goal of the Bauhaus contemporary art and the Friedman, is the collective work of Typograflsche ubiquity of the branded art ... in which no barriers Monatsblatter, artist have rendered historical Cover exist between the structural models bifurcating the no. 1, and decorative arts.”7 1971 decorative and applied arts Despite Gropius’s muscular obsolete. As design democ- theorizing, the post-war ratizes and contemporary dissemination of Bauhaus art stratifies, identity creation dogma bastardized his serves as a useful bridge utopian vision of “design between the two. Engaging is one.” art’s role in design and

Between 1966 and 1969, six Chicago artists — Jim Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and Karl Wirsum, all recent graduates of the 12 13 School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) — exhibited together under the name Hairy Who. AT ONCE STRATEGIC, VISCERAL, ONCE STRATEGIC, AT BRANDING PROVOCATIVE, AND FOUR YEARS OF COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE. WHO GALVANIZED THE GROUP’S THEMSELVES AS THE HAIRY Art historian strategy. Unlike New York, Franz Shulze first Chicago wouldn’t develop a christened this structured gallery scene loose coalition of until 1952.9 Excluded from midcentury juried shows at the Art Chicagoan Institute of Chicago, a group Surrealists, of young Chicago artists Expressionists, and designers, nicknamed and Anti- the Monster Roster, formed “WE WERE Modernists the the Momentum group in Chicago Imagists, 1947 to organize their own a categorical shows. Distinguished mem- association under bers of the art and design A COLLECTIVE which many of the Hairy establishment juried Who artists bristled. Momemtum’s exhibitions, including Josef Albers, Avoiding any consideration Mies van de Rohe, and Ad of the Hairy Who’s design of BECAUSE Reinhardt.10 Momentum’s branded material, Shulze exhibiting designers created favored a flattened analysis elaborate catalogues to of the artists’ individual Over the course of the Hairy projecting their visual identity. the Hairy Who’s six exhibi- accompany their shows. Who’s six exhibitions,WE theWANTED The Hairy Who’s “brand” tions, I will examine the Hairy works. Shulze’s linear his- group amassed a remarkable was a self-conscious farce Who’s identity as an act of torical conclusion is thus By 1957, the year of portfolio of self designed pro­- that transformed a cohort of visual myth making that limited, we cannot separate Momentum’s final exhibition, motional materials. Notably unlovable artists into a single, invoked the shifting midcen- the art of Falconer, Green, the group’s shows had TO BE Nilsson, Nutt, Rocca, and proved a successful strategy separate from Modernist marketable commodity. tury distinctions between uniformity and the Pop Art’s art and design and the Wirsum from their roles for the exhibiting young Unlike previous generations self-deference, the Hairy ubiquity of the branded artist as the brand architects of artists and designers of artists, the Hairy Who was Who’s visual brand was a as a cultural subject. the Hairy Who. The sub- who were hungry for recog- COLLECTED.”not a movement grounded foil to the consumer arts stance of the Hairy Who’s nition. The Hairy Who was in specific ideological con- The historical and artistic culture in which it was also visual identity and its in many ways an extension victions or strict formal relevance of the Hairy a participant. 14 15 position within a broader of Momentum and the similarities. As Green has Who’s various projects have design history offers an Monster Roster; the group The result was a cascading, recalled “ we were a collec- been considered extensively alternative context for the named themselves, oozing visual discourse tive because we wanted in academic research. group’s significance. branded their exhibitions, that included the production to be collected.” In this sense, However, the design of the and designed their own The Hairy Who’s relationship of posters, zines, comics, the Hairy Who was para- group’s visual identity has collectables. However the to Chicago’s mid-century exhibition environments, doxically a branded endeavor been largely ignored in the Hairy Who’s insularity, both art scene shaped their and other printed ephemera. and an artistic project: art historical literature. in its fixed membership and unique approach to self pro- The evident time, effort, equally mercurial and mer- Several art historians have its anarchical resentment of motion. Chicago’s galleryless and cost of crafting these cantile, idiosyncratic and attempted to contextualize the artistic elite, contra- postwar arts culture laid branded materials indicates intentional. Through an the Hairy Who within a dicted Momentum’s funda- the foundation for the Hairy that the Hairy Who held a analysis of the designed series of 20th century mental purpose. vested interest in refining and ephemera associated with Chicago art movements.8 Who’s collectivist brand Momentum and the Monster Who is this guy.”11 At first Roster developed the first incredulous then intrigued, 20th century artistic “identity” the artists twisted Harry for Chicago, which afforded into Hairy and discovered the Hairy Who the freedom Hairy Who. Another common to deviate from it years later. rumor involved the name referencing Henry Geldzahler, The group’s visual and ver- the contemporary art critic nacular identity was a and Andy Warhol acolyte.12 pragmatic alignment of the THE HAIRY WHO WAS A BRANDED At other times, the Hairy Who artists’ common goals. insisted that their name Because the Hairy Who materialized out of thin air, members created their art in fully formed.13 The truth of parallel, their branded EXPERIMENT — A VOICE FOR THE SHIFTING the name remains elusive, ephemera served as the only but it speaks volumes that outlet through which they a group of six artists who communicated collectively. exhibited together only six ROLE OF AN ARTIST’S AGENCY IN AN The Hairy Who’s irreverent times over four years manipulation of language promulgated at least three formed the core of their distinct origin stories. The brand identity. ERA DEFINED BY EXPERIMENTATION AND Hairy Who carefully crafted The group’s name Hairy Who a bewildering self-mythology exemplifies how language that became the cornerstone 16 17 became a tool for the artists of their collective identity. CREATIVE PLURALISM to express their collabora- From the moment the Hairy tive ethos. The Hairy Who Who burst onto Chicago’s promoted a series of con- contemporary art scene in flicting stories regarding the 1966, they prioritized an genesis of their nickname. equally vexing visual identity. The moniker’s prevailing The first Hairy Who exhibi- origin story begins with the tion was scheduled to open first meeting of all six artists in February at the Hyde in 1965. While discussing Park Arts Center (HPAC).14 the WFMT radio art critic Located well off the beaten Harry Bouras, Karl Wirsum path on the city’s South Side questioned “Harry Who? during one of the coldest months of the year, the artists and many are unattributed. dripping from the figure’s poster’s large black and were concerned about The poster clearly invokes woolly underarms. The white photograph, sans-serif attracting the attention that a reference to tattoo flash, poster’s sentimental vulgarity type, and centered compo- had initially motivated the common designs dis- strikes at the heart of the sition are unrecognizably them to organize their exhi- played on the walls of tattoo Hairy Who’s visual vernacular. different from the eccentric, bition. The Hairy Who shops, positioning the group illustrative posters created for Contrasting the posters adopted their infamous self at the edge of the accept- the Hairy Who. publicizing the Hairy Who’s promotional strategies out able cultural lexicon. The first exhibition with those Jim Nutt’s poster for his 1974 of necessity; they needed to Hairy Who’s name is shaved designed for the member solo exhibition at the entice people to attend into the back of the figure’s artists’ various Chicago Museum of Con- their exhibition and had to Fig 5. solo shows temporary Art also deviates present a compelling visual Poster for reveals that the from the Hairy Who’s estab- argument for their novel Karl group’s collective lished design identity (Fig. 6). approach to group shows. Wirsum’s solo visual brand While created four years The poster that the artists exhibition, was the result after the group’s dissolution, designed to advertise C.A. of deliberate Nutt’s scenic, theatrical the first Hairy Who exhibition Doctor, 1967 design decision design for his own poster is (Fig. 4) successfully con- making rather still notably different from veyed their decentralized yet than an arbitrary the Hairy Who’s signature co-dependent relationship amalgamation graphic eclecticism. The to one other. of the six artists’ Hairy Who communicated a The poster publicizing the diverse creative radically different visual first Hairy Who exhibition Fig 4. styles. As the message through the design Poster engaged the artists’ egalitar- for Hairy Who gained of their promotional posters ian collectivism and illus- Hairy popularity follow- than they did for their trated the objectives and Who, ing their inaugural own solo shows. The dis- 1966 strategies that characterized group show in tinction between the artists’ their visual identity, which 1966, many of the individual and collective remained remarkably con- individual artists identities is essential to the sistent over the group’s were celebrated Hairy Who’s brand strategy. four active years. The poster with their own showcases the artists as exhibitions in major individuals, together.15 galleries. Karl Wirsum exhibited Re-enacting the Surrealist 18 19 Fig 6. The a series of paint- parlor game exquisite poster ings at Dell corpse, each artist “tattooed” for Jim Nutt’s Gallery in 1967. his or her unique insignia or 1974 The promotional inscription onto the poster’s solo poster (Fig. 5) central figure: a shirtless exhibition for Wirsum’s solo torso pictured from the back show C.A. Doctor that Wirsum had originally hair. HPAC’s address forms differs dramatically drawn. Some of the emblems the literal backbone of from the work are signed, others are the poster and its operating he designed for stylized renderings of the hours emerge from the the first Hairy Who exhibi- contributing artist’s name, exaggerated perspiration tion poster. The solo show

20 21 EXAGGERATED AND PARODIED MID CENTURY CHICAGO’S IDENTITY CREATIVE CRISIS. THE HAIRY WHO WHO HAIRY THE Chicago’s tortured relation- also home to Maholy-Nagy’s their amorphous visual iden- humanoid figure. The bul- exquisite corpse and ship to Modernism in New Bauhaus and Mies van tity. The group’s strategic bous illustration is rendered develop a visceral, almost the midcentury framed the der Rohe’s architecture application of color, type, and in flat color and encased viscous composition Hairy Who’s approach practice. The New Bauhaus, form supported the vulgar in dark outlines. that contradicts rational to their visual identity. The which later became the anti-formalism that the group interpretations of space and While the illustration’s contradictions between Institute of Design, may have projected through their scale.The various ephemera two-dimensionality lacks a postwar Chicago’s pedagogically emphasized messaging. The myriad of designed for the Hairy traditional partition of fore- Modernist design thinking the integration of the artist/ compositional strategies Who II show toy with same ground, middle ground and and its Surrealist arts culture designer into the modern that the Hairy Who derived compositional instability background, the figure’s shaped the structure world, but in practice the from historical and pop and schmaltzy melodrama contorted, undulating limbs and style of the Hairy Who’s work of its students and cultural sources produced a as the exhibition’s poster. imply a precarious depth articulated brand. After faculty read as cooly imper- versatile, explosive visual The group titled the com- to the page. The illustration World War II, an anti-formalist sonal and incuriously aloof.17 language consistent across panion piece to their second occupies the bulk of the neo-surrealism took hold two and three dimensional exhibition The Hairy Who At the Illinois Institute of poster’s available space, among Chicago’s young space. The promotional Sideshow (Fig. 8). The Technology, Mies van der bleeding into the fuzzy frame artists. Joseph Shapiro, the poster designed for the Hairy Sideshow is clearly an ex- Rohe established an that contains the exhibition founding president of the Who II exhibition expanded tension of the compositional architectural style of uncom- details. The shaggy, sten- Museum of Contemporary upon the visual strategies elements introduced in promising clarity, order, cilled, and drop shadowed Art in Chicago described that the group used in their the Hairy Who II poster. The and discipline.18 The conflict type is set horizontally the city’s artistic sensibilities first exhibition poster (Fig. 7). yellow paper, one-color print, between mid-century and vertically and cages the in the 1950s, “We were exquisite corpse illustration, Chicago Modernists and The poster advertizing the illustrated figure. The result- attracted to Ernst, Tanguy, and eclectic typography Surrealists belied a local Hairy Who II show consists ing composition appears Magritte, Delveaux, Matta, echo the same visual scepticism that an imposed of a chaotic and crowded both awkwardly fluid and Klee, and early Chagall… discomfort as the poster. “good design” could defini- two color composition. 22 23 uncomfortably constrained. These works possessed a tively shape a better world. The artists again employed The one color print process In the catalogue cover, power and authority of Neither Modernist nor an exquisite corpse tech- was undoubtedly chosen neither the type nor image, symbol or metaphor Surrealist, the commercial nique to develop the poster’s to reduce printing costs, but the illustration push the that imbued them with a intent of the Hairy Who’s central figure. However, the selected dark red ink page margins as forcefully magical ‘presence.’”16 design work negates the art unlike the poster for the first and yellow paper evoke as they do in the poster. Chicago’s artists and collec- of surreal intuition while it’s Hairy Who exhibition, blood and phlegm, imbuing The typography is also tors were drawn to art that calculated illegibility denies the artists’ individual contri- the poster with a gory positioned more dominantly glorified the absurd and any claim to modernist butions to the second poster corporeality. In this poster, in the composition’s explored distinct visions of rationality. The Hairy Who are less discrete. Each the Hairy Who artists move hierarchy, introducing the self. It proves a paradox developed a series of com- artist created a limb or body beyond their previously exaggerated letterforms that that postwar Chicago was positional idioms to define part for the nebulous, static interpretation of the monopolize the page. The Fig 7. Hairy Who also created to appear as if they’re evad- Poster for the branded lapel pins for attend- ing the question altogether. Hairy ees to wear at the exhibition The Hairy Who’s deliberate Who II opening. The work of syntactic obfuscation exhibition, 1967. each individual artist is more captivated their exhibition immediately recognizable attendees and differenti- on the pins than in the ated the group from other poster or the catalogue young artists. The turbulent, covers, extending the collec- scatological, and comic tive visual brand into three materials that the Hairy Who dimensional space. The designed to advertize their pins physically manifest second exhibition convey the tactile composi- the group’s embrace of their Fig 10. Joke tional elements own marginality. napkins employed in the created for the poster and catalogue. Hairy Who II The Hairy Who honed exhibition their extensive use opening of wordplay and verbal trickery in the branded accessories for the Hairy Who II exhibition. The group, Fig 9. 24 25 with help from Front cover HPAC curator Don for the Baum, created Hairy Who joke napkins reading Sideshow “Knock Knock Who’s There? HAIRY.... Hairy Who II” (Fig. 10).19 Phrased in this way, the group’s moniker echoes the Abbot and Costello bit “Who’s on First?”, forcing those who utter the name 26 27 With their third and final posters, Nutt focused his miniscule. Evolving from the finally in Washington, D.C. show at HPAC in 1968, the composition on a central protuberant nature of the for the their final exhibition Hairy Who began exploring human figure and continued Hairy Who’s earlier designed together also in 1969. new sources of visual to push its typographic material, Nutt refined a The materials produced for allusion and engaging with elements to an increasingly sensuous treatment of shape the Hairy Who’s San more sophisticated compo- illustrative extreme. in his composition. The Francisco, New York, and sitional approaches in hand drawn type inundates D.C. shows in conjunction In contrast to the abstracted, their design. By 1968, the the poster’s remaining with these exhibitions’ grotesque figural rep- Hairy Who had established white space, contributing to varying levels of success, resentations present in the a recognizable visual iden- the composition’s sense illustrate how the group’s group’s earlier design work, tity for themselves grounded of visual urgency. Nutt collective brand became Nutt opted for a stylized in absurd figurism and refines the elusive spatial intractably linked to but definitively recognizable atypical typography. Pivoting conundrums, the production of their work illustration of a woman. Fig 11. away from the exquisite bizarre anatomies, and its commercial value. Nutt continued to use solid Jim Nutt, corpse motifs in their earlier Now! reverberating dark outlines but also Hairy Who As previously demonstrated, promotional materials, colors, and introduced halftone dots, Makes the Hairy Who’s three individual members of the You Smell compositional allowing for a more subtle wildly successful shows at Hairy Who designed the Good, incongruities spacial awareness and a Poster for HPAC were generative and poster and catalogue covers Hairy inherent to the clearer sense of depth. had grown increasingly for the Hairy Who III exhibi- Who III, Hairy Who’s visual Rather than space, scale 1968 specific and complex with tion, thus elevating and identity and brand is the most salient composi- each passing year. Baum expanding the brand’s visual mythology. tional element in the Hairy had encouraged the Hairy vernacular. The Hairy Who Who III poster. The central When the Hairy Who’s intimate involvement also began to draw more female figure spills off the 28 29 Who’s final exhibi- in the production of their explicitly from pop cultural page and dwarfs much of tion at HPAC exhibitions, leaving space for reference imagery sourced the type and the secondary closed in 1968, the group to hone their from advertizing material. illustration in the poster’s the group had risen through collective visual identity. In The poster for the Hairy bottom left hand corner. the ranks to become just three years, the Hairy Who III exhibition exemplifies The incongruous changes in a local Chicago art legend. Who had designed a brand several shifts in the group’s scale are jarring; viewers Between 1968 and 1969, that was so evocative that brand strategy (Fig. 11). are left to wonder if they’re The collective saught recog- their ephemera had become Jim Nutt conceived of and observing a colossal female nition outside of Chicago, fetishized collector’s items.20 designed the Hairy Who III figure or if she’s reasonably first in a May 1968 exhibition Removed from Baum’s poster independently. sized while the rest of in San Francisco, then in a creative coddling, the final Like the group’s previous the poster is comparatively New York show in 1969, and Hairy Who exhibitions tested the strength of the on the page, neither in the type appears similar in style exhibition. The group’s group’s brand and the limits foreground nor the back- to the previous Hairy Who iron grip on their visual iden- of its reach. ground. Compositionally, posters. However, the type tity evaporated, testing how the poster is less sophisti- does not dynamically their brand would translate The Hairy Who’s fourth show cated than Nutt’s poster push at the page edges nor in a less controlled and took place at the Diego for Hairy Who III. The only does it lie comfortably in immersive environment. In Rivera Gallery at the San elements that provide a the white space. Instead the the end, it appears that Francisco Art Institute sense of scale are the type floats awkwardly the Hairy Who’s brand was (SFAI) and was curated by floating hand in the bottom around the two figures. as much on display at the gallery’s director of Fundamentally, SFAI as was the art itself. A exhibitions Philip Linhares.21 Fig 12. the dearth of a review of the exhibition in The show received a tepid Jim Nutt, central visual the San Francisco Chronicle welcome; the work was Poster narrative for seems more concerned a sensation among SFAI’s for Hairy Who the poster under- with the drama of the group’s students, but faculty at the mines the appearance than with the derided it as destructive SFAI, 1968 sensitive treat- spectacle of the art on the and undisciplined.22 The ment of form and walls. In the Chronicle’s Hairy Who weren’t strangers type seen in serial arts and society col- to mixed reviews, but the the previous Hairy umn aptly titled Who’s home court advantage they Who exhibition Who, critic Frances Moffat had enjoyed in Chicago posters. Without waxed poetic about the had categorically vanished. a unifying narrative accoutrement that the Hairy The physical and creative the poster reads Who donned for their exhi- Don distance between the Hairy Baum as vulgar instead bition opening: Who and the SFAI show in his of snarky, creepy home, “Three of the ‘Hairy Who’ is reflected in the exhibition’s instead of quirky. 1972 group of young Pop artists promotional poster (Fig. 12). As geographic from Chicago were at the As with the Hairy Who III distance forced opening. They were James exhibition, Nutt designed the Hairy Who Nutt, wearing an outsize the SFAI poster single- to remove them- trench coat, his wife, handedly. Largely adhering selves from the Gladyss Nilsson, and Karl to the visual vernacular intricacies of their Wirsum, who wore white that the group had estab- exhibitions, the mechanic’s overalls with red lished in Chicago, the purpose of their collar and cuffs.”23 poster draws on obvious 30 31 brand and its audience was Hairy Who motifs but inevitably called into Moffat’s review focuses it neglects the evocative question. The SFAI poster on the Hairy Who’s style and elements of visual storytelling reflects the that the potency ethos. Contrasting the present in the HPAC of the Hairy Who’s visual group’s appearance with posters. The SFAI poster left corner and the dismem- language derives from the that of the “ladies from the centers on a pair of figures bered fingers above the value of the group’s meta- straight world” wearing pictured from the shoulders woman’s head. Unlike the phorical “hand” in crafting stuffy furs to the SFAI open- up. The grotesque almost poster for Hairy Who III, their exhibitions. ing, Moffat illustrates how macabre man and woman the radical scale changes the group embodied their Without a Baum, the group seem to melt into each seem incredulous rather than audacity; the group’s was forced to step back other but they rest dubiously curious. The hand drawn performance had become from the execution of their part of the value of their The poster is formally quite their articulated brand. The creative collaboration. The are also obtusely insurgent, art. Moffat also defines the sophisticated; the type SVA exhibition’s limited catalogue’s introduction blasting art critics, cata- Hairy Who as Pop artists, is well placed and mindful critical success illustrates begins with Jim Nutt ques- logues, and collectors with an association that the of the paragraphs’ rags that Hairy Who had crafted tioning the publication’s little restraint. In their final group never claimed. Likely and optical alignment while a commercial identity that usefulness “Now you’re statement to the public, the attempting to differentiate the large numbers playfully relied almost entirely on their starting to stand between group’s “brand” snaps the Hairy Who from illustrate light and shadow. visual brand and designed us and the public,” intro- fully into focus. California’s own counter material. As the group pro- duces four of the six artists Glaser’s design of the SVA The Hairy Who discovered cultural Funk artists, Moffat’s gressed toward their last by their Zodiac signs, exhibition poster ignores a way to harness their casual Pop categorization chronicles a 1954 “style” and translate it into a indicates that the nuances Fig 13. Cubs game at marketable “brand.” Each of the Hairy Who’s Milton which all six artists Glaser artist’s practice migrated self expression and identity were coinciden- Poster from an act of pure self creation were lost on for tally in attendance, Part 2. expression to the creation SFAI’s West Coast audience. offers Gladys Chicago: (or even curation) of The lack of opportunity Drawings Nilsson’s opinion visual products produced for branded material at the by “The of art critics “Only Hairy Who” for a specific audience SFAI show compared to 1969 if they’re tall, and manufactured to be the HPAC exhibitions com- dark and hand- bought, traded, and pelled the Hairy Who to some and sold. The artists may have rely on their reputation a little on the thin occasionally functioned without expanding upon their side,” and finally as designers, but more brand voice. The conse- signs off “Against importantly The Hairy Who quences of the Hairy Who’s Fig 14. drugs; for wres- Milton was an explicitly designed empty national identity tling magazines.”24 Glaser project. Seen in this context, would follow the group to Poster for This rambling the Hairy Who interrogates New York a year later. Dylan’s parody of an the Hairy Who’s extant visual Greatest the fragile boundaries catalogue intro- In the Winter of 1969, the identity. Aside from the Hits separating art from design. 1969 duction serves as Hairy Who’s fifth show white hairs sketched on the the Hairy Who’s was held at the School of number 2, the figural illus- closing statement Visual Arts (SVA) in New York. tration, bold strokes, of purpose. The SVA’s founding director and graphic typography that Green, Falconer, Shirley Glaser organized the characterized the design exhibition together, they Nilsson, Nutt, Rocca, and two part exhibition on the of the Hairy Who are almost 32 33 distilled and elaborated their Wirsum, proclaim them- Hairy Who and California willfully ignored. Because brand identity. selves the Hairy Who one Funk, which Glaser implicitly Glaser’s portfolio of work at final time. After cutting positioned as the Hairy the time included many The Hairy Who’s final exhibi- through the introduction’s Who’s sculptural counterpart. provocative applications of tion was held at the Corcoran abrasive and endearingly For the first time, the Hairy illustration and typography Gallery in the Spring of youthful snark, the artists Who artists were completely (Fig. 14) his bordering on 1969. The introduction to the reiterate their Hairy Who removed from the creative Modernist design for the exhibition’s catalogue (or mythology, attributing an process of their exhibition. SVA’s Hairy Who poster is as the Hairy Who spell it almost spiritual significance Milton Glaser designed particularly curious. Evidently “cat-a-log”) epitomizes to their simultaneous the poster for the SFAI show Glaser (or possibly both the group’s strategic use of presence at the 1954 open- without input from the Glasers) wanted to separate branded language and ing Cubs game. The artists contributing artists (Fig. 13). the Hairy Who’s art from clarifies the goals of their THIS PUBLICATION WAS WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY MADDIE GOLDSTEIN AS PART OF HER B.F.A. Endnotes SENIOR THESISEdition No. 1 PROJECT AT THE CORCORAN

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