Jim Nutt, Fret, 1990. acrylic on linen in artist’s frame, Frame Size: 26″ x 26″; 2D Size: 13″ x 13″. Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Collection of Mark and Judy Bednar.
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art already had sizeable collection of art from the Chicago Imagists movement of the 1960s-‘70s when Windy City philanthropists Paul and Judy Bednar agreed to donate 55 more pieces from their private collection to the museum. The donation, which brought the museum’s collection to 279 pieces and prompted a major spring exhibition, would give MMoCA what may well be the second-largest collection of Imagist works second only to that of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), which birthed the movement.
MMoCA was set to launch the exhibit March 13 with opening ceremonies that included appearances by Gladys Nilsson and Robert Lostutter, two of the remaining living Imagists. But the COVID-19 virus had other plans. The reception was cancelled and the gallery doors locked tight as part of Gov. Tony Evers’ shelter-at-home initiative.
Museum curators did the next best thing, launching a comprehensive online exhibit with samples from each of the 15 artists represented, including Nilsson and Lostutter. “Uncommon Accumulation: The Mark and Judy Bednar Collection of Chicago Imagists” will run through Sept. 27, and curators hope people will eventually be able to visit the museum, located on Madison’s State Street, to personally view the exhibition.
Unusual Inspiration
The Imagists originally emerged in the mid-1960s while still SAIC students, prompted by instructors to look for unusual sources of inspiration. East Coast artists were then producing abstract canvases, so the Imagists returned to a figure drawing, but with techniques and content that strayed far from formal portraiture. Comic books, advertising, department store window displays, and even tattoos became grist for the artistic mill, resulting in imagery bordering on both surrealism and sarcasm and often laced with political and social commentary.
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“It was a very exiting time to do art,” says Lostutter, 80, an Emporia, Kansas, native whose grandparents’ support enabled him to attend SAIC. “A lot of attention was being paid to Chicago, and we had managed to rise above the rank of mere regional artists, which was not a complimentary description.”
Lostutter’s work is represented in the online exhibit by a whopping 62 images, most of which feature his signature blend of human and bird-like forms. Other artists’ imagery includes dazzling arrays of abstract canvases and grotesque human forms, brightly colored and heavily influenced by the era’s commercial art.
Their Own Way of Looking
“Any artist looks at things and they become source material,” says the 80-year-old Nilsson, who has 25 images posted online. “The instructors urged us to look at anything—high art, low art, street art—digest it and have it become part of our artistic soul.
“I have always been interested in social discourse among subjects and their various postures, which I have on file in my mind,” Nilsson explains. “My subjects have low-key mundane exchanges rather than trying to solve the world’s problems.
“I’ve developed my own way of looking at things,” she adds.
A corresponding exhibit of “collage art” by Imagist Ray Yoshida accompanies both the gallery installation and online exhibition.
