On Dangerous Ground
Karl Wirsum in his studio, drawing room, October 2014
Like Isaac Bashevitz Singer’s simple but honest hero Gimpel the Fool, Wirsum’s goofy characters often inhabit a dangerous, unpredictable territory. Yet, like Gimpel, they manage, whether from divine intervention or sheer luck, to find a happy ending.
So ended a review of a Karl Wirsum exhibition I wrote over 30 years ago. Reading those sentences today, I find myself wondering about questions that, at the time, I faintly sensed but was unable to articulate. Might it be possible, I now ask, to discern the nature and possibly even the origin of this dangerous, unpredictable territory? And if I could thereby gain a better footing by doing so, might I then put aside inexplicable answers – “divine intervention and sheer luck” – and discover by which means Wirsum contrives his escape to “a happy ending”?
A studio visit and conversation with Wirsum a few years ago prompted these questions, for the visit and conversation were far different from what I had expected. In the days and months afterward, I found that his entire body of work had become inexorably altered in my mind. This is not to say that Wirsum has changed since we had first met in the late 1970s. He has aged, of course, but retains his same wiry form and slightly elfin appearance, and his personality continues to exude the same sweet, unaffected, openness that he has displayed since the day we met. Neither was the art in his studio any less formally inventive or masterfully executed than when I had written about him in 1984.
I had, so to speak, invited myself over to his studio, being in Chicago on a family visit. Having never been to Wirsum’s studio, I called him prior coming to town to see if he would allow me to come by. Gracious as always, he made time for me on the Sunday morning of my stay. I should add that because Wirsum has always been so kind in speaking with me, I asked if my teenage daughter could accompany me, as I wanted her to have a small window into what I do and, at the same time, meet one of the more important artists working today. Happily he agreed without hesitation.
It was bright and sunny the day we came by, and we waited at the door barely a moment before Wirsum welcomed us in. The first floor of the home he shares with his wife, the artist Lori Gunn, looks like that of many a Chicago artist I have visited. Neat and comfortable, the shelves and walls are covered with art hanging salon style from just above the furniture up to the ceiling – some by the couple’s other artist friends and some by the Outsider artists whose work abounds in Chicago collections. He gave us a brief tour of the living area, and then we went up the stairs to the studio.
Wirsum Studio, painting area, October 2014
Of all the artists who may be included under the definition of Chicago Imagism, Wirsum’s art is arguably the most rigorously composed and painted. For all the crazy, fantastic imagery packed into every work, his technique itself is next to immaculate; his every line perfectly executed, his brushstrokes nearly invisible. So perhaps I thought his studio would present itself in the same way. It does not. Instead we find waist high stacks of books, magazines, and drawings stacked in such an overflowing profusion that navigation through the mounds of paper is only possible by keeping to a narrow footpath created and loosely maintained by Wirsum. A definite sense of horror vacui pervades. The studio is comprised of two large rooms, one for painting and one for drawing. In the room where he paints – he had two works in process that day – one entire wall is covered with a bookshelf that, like the floor around us, is crammed with even more books, magazines, folios, and objects (including a few of the artist’s sculptures and old fashioned mannequins sitting side by side). And in front of these bookshelves with their visual bedlam, Wirsum has one of his two easels positioned. Across the room, and a floor covered with so much detritus that the heavily patterned rug beneath is hopelessly overmatched, sits the other painting in process, its preparatory drawing on the floor at its feet, jars of paint and brushes on either side.
Wirsum Studio, drawing room, October 2014
Still, the cacophony of books, papers, and paint in this room is nothing compared to the room where Wirsum draws. Here the thin footpath weaves through tables and portfolio drawers covered (up to a foot high in places) with hundreds of drawings in various states of finish. Quickly moving past my initial surprise, it became clear that these precarious paper mesas are organized according to compositions or figures Wirsum is relentlessly reworking. In some cases there are so many versions of a drawing that they might understandably be mistaken for animation cells – except that although the character and composition depicted is clearly the same, the colors and lines never are. And while these are merely the artist’s preparatory drawings, I cannot overstate the high degree of finish brought to each.
Wirsum Studio, drawing room, multiple studies, October 2014
The implications of Wirsum finishing these revisions to such a high level are at least twofold. First, that he cannot see if the drawing is right unless every aspect – color, line, and composition – has been completed. At this stage of honing, even a close approximation will not suffice. Second, while various versions may seem interchangeable to the outside viewer, for the artist finding the exactly correct mixture of elements is of the utmost import. There is right, and then there is right, and regardless of how minor these differences appear to us, for Wirsum the distance between each version is vast.
After the studio tour, the three of us returned to the first floor to sit around his dinner table and talk for a bit. We spoke of a number of things, including the fact that for many if not most of his paintings, he would revise the same image over a five to ten year period. This, in turn, would lead to a second and then third version of the same painting, something that often goes unnoticed because the versions are rarely shown together. “I often don’t feel a piece is done until I have made at least three versions”, he said. Near the end, I asked Wirsum where he had grown up; was he from Chicago or somewhere else? He explained that he had grown up on Chicago’s south side, and that he had been an orphan. He then went on to relate how he had become orphaned: When he was nine years old, his father, mother, and he had been driving somewhere. His father was behind the wheel, his mother sitting in the back seat behind his father, Wirsum sitting with his mother to her right when, without warning, a very large truck ran a light and plowed into the driver’s side of the car, immediately killing both of his parents in front of him.
My daughter and I were, not surprisingly, somewhat shocked to hear such an unexpected and tragic story. Wirsum, for his own part, told this tale with the calm, nonplussed, even slightly cheery demeanor that is his norm. For him, it is something that happened a long time ago. He has, after all, a good career, a lovely wife, and successful children. For me, however, the realization that death, up close and personal, had entered the artist’s consciousness while still a child, coupled with my newly gained understanding of his studio environment, created an immediate and pronounced shift in my perception of Wirsum’s work. Conclusions I had arrived at three decades ago felt, if not wrong, at the very least seriously incomplete.
I began rethinking Wirsum’s entire oeuvre through the lens of this visit. Rereading my 1984 review of his work, I was pleased to note that I picked up, albeit in only a glancing remark at the end, the element of danger in his work that now, post studio visit, seems far more pronounced.
Reflecting on his work today, visual clues’ aligning less with a light-hearted interpretation and more with an unsettling contemplation of mortality stand out with newfound clarity. Start with the artist’s selection of his primary subjects, which are all, without fail, monsters and demons. No matter how benign or idyllic his compositions may be, there is never a figure presented which is not either grotesque, deformed, alien, or horrific; the stuff of nightmares. Take, for example, a relatively early work by the artist in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wirsum’s now iconic Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, 1968. Occupying the center of this medium-size acrylic on canvas, a large figure takes up about 80% of a dizzying composition. Below and in-between his legs, stands a significantly smaller figure.
Karl Wirsum
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, 1968
Acrylic on canvas
121.9 x 91.4 cm (48 x 36 in.)
The main figure is abstracted, nearly symmetrical, and appears to have been smashed flat, his torso split wide open, his organs and nerve endings presented a-la dissected frog in an electrified palette of orange, blue, green, black, yellow and red. The smaller male figure, child-like in scale to the main figure, has a discernable head but his body is a writhing armless blob of black and red, and one can easily read his presence as either an enthralled fan or, more likely, a shocked witness. The predominant color of the surrounding background is a bright blood red. When reduced to a verbal description, we imagine something horrific and gruesome – even without noting that the first word of the title, painted in black, yellow, and red undulating letters across the top of the painting, is Screamin’.
Yet viewing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins evokes neither a horrific or gruesome response. Why?
Take the much more recent painting Fat Snowball’s Chance, 2013, where within a hand-painted bright red frame we see a red, yellow, and black horned demon with a pierced nose hoisting a flaming snow ball on a spade (spear?) against a freezing background of icy blue-white snow.
Karl Wirsum
Fat Snowball’s Chance, 2013
acrylic on canvas with painted wood frame
39 x 53 inches
The demon’s limbs are elegantly drawn and, in true Wirsum fashion, each with precise contours and patterns unique to themselves; the left leg and knee rendered in completely different fashion from the right, the left shoulder and arm just as different than the right arm and shoulder. He stands contrapposto, caught in mid-action, and we are unsure what happens next. Again, as with every other work by Wirsum, we have an image that in description sounds frightening, but in the viewing is perceived as funny, wacky even. Reducing Wirsum’s images to words let us glimpse, like a hidden message, something dark and dangerous inside, yet which stands in stark contrast to how we normally see the work. We are left with the realization that Wirsum so transmutes his subject matter, so utterly masters and domesticates it, that it becomes all but invisible to us.
How? How does Wirsum start with monsters, ghouls, demons, and aliens, and end up with images that make us smile instead? I believe there are two parts to this answer.
The first can be seen in the artist’s playful yet rigorous approach to creating every work, which can be described as follows: An unrelenting focus on the complete flattening of all dimensional aspects. A pre-occupation with distilling descriptive lines while at the same time treating each line as a fresh opportunity for improvisation and new opportunity to riff freely on the human form. The consistent use of a high key color palette that, while often described as evoking comic books and pinball machines, delivers a retinal intensity that is just short of fluorescence. In short, by translating recognizable images and references into his own unified world, Wirsum exercises a visceral mastery over his subject matter’s existence that even casual viewers at least subconsciously intuit.
Karl Wirsum
Mr. Whatzit on the Road to Burmashave, 1985Acrylic on canvas with painted wood frame
48.25 x 36.5 inches
The second part of the answer, subtler and yet more persuasive, is Wirsum’s control of time, that is, his ability to freeze time. One can say that all works of art are frozen in time and present themselves forever as they did on the day they were completed. (Note, in this regard, that artwork is always written about in the present tense.) But Wirsum is doing something more, he is freezing the action inside the picture. The demon in Fat Snowball’s Chance may be poised mid-action, but we also know with absolute certainty that neither is he about to put down nor pitch the flaming snowball. So locked in the moment is he that the flame does not flicker and the snowball does not melt. Even in a painting like Mr. Whatzit on the Road to Burmashave, 1985, where Wirsum’s clever stylization of Mr. Whatzit’s back leg and undulating arms unquestionably implies hyper-fast movement, there is no doubt that this character is as locked in a timeless moment as an insect sealed in amber eons ago. Look at that detail of the multiple studies again, where three versions of a masked figure are in the act of toppling over. While it is obvious that Wirsum is seeking the most correct depiction for the character, take a moment to notice that he is just as focused on getting the angle of the fall just so; a moment of perfect equilibrium.
Wirsum Studio, drawing room, multiple studies, detail, October 2014
His eye is open wide and he’s grimacing in anticipation of what comes next, because he is falling, or about to fall and unable to stop himself. There’s no way back so perhaps he’s doomed, he’s certainly doomed…but suspended between what was and what will be, he will never hit bottom, he will never die. Wirsum has made sure of that.
So, after three decades, I find some clarity. The dangerous, unpredictable territory I gleaned long ago is that place that only begins to come into focus for most of us as we pass through middle age. But it was revealed to Wirsum in all of its inescapable horror when he was only a nine-year-old boy. Over the ensuing decades he has used his considerable aesthetic guile and skill to give form to this universal fear and master it, literally stopping it in its tracks. He has done so using shapes, lines, and colors and been so successful at domesticating it through the genius of his lively, buoyant art that we notice, only with the greatest difficulty, the haunted darkness at its center.
