Chicago Imagists - The Hairy Who

The Hairy Who

Many of the later Chicago Imagists were mentored by School of the Art Institute teacher and artist Ray Yoshida and art history professor Whitney Halstead.

In 1964, Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson began to teach children's classes at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. They and James Falconer approached the center's exhibitions director, Don Baum, with the idea of a group show consisting of the three of them and Art Green and Suellen Rocca. Baum agreed, and also suggested they include Karl Wirsum.

The six artists held exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1966, 1967, and 1968. They named the exhibitions "Hairy Who?" but never intended to organize themselves together as a unified group. The naming of the exhibition was explained in an interview conducted by Dan Nadel with artist Jim Nutt; "At the time art show names were very cool, the less they said about the work the cooler (better). There had been a number of shows at MoMA… titled “Sixteen Americans” or “Thirteen Americans”... All of us were determined not to emulate such suave coolness, but didn’t have a clue what would work. At our first get-together to discuss the show we were getting nowhere with this problem. This was also our first exposure to Karl in the flesh for the five of us. As frustration mounted from not solving the dilemma, group discussion disintegrated into smaller units, when Karl was heard saying plaintively, “Harry who? Who is this guy?” At which point some of us were hysterically incredulous that he didn’t know about Harry Bouras, the exceptionally self-important artist who was the art critic for WFMT, the cultural FM station in Chicago. All of us found this very funny, including Karl, and as we bantered about variations of the situation, we realized the potential for the name, especially if we changed Harry to Hairy."

The Hairy Who included:

• James Falconer
• Art Green
• Gladys Nilsson
• Jim Nutt
• Suellen Rocca
• Karl Wirsum