Ray Yoshida 1930-2009
by Dan Nadel
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Ray Yoshida: “Comic Book Specimen – #2 – Right Profile,” 1968
Ray Yoshida: “After an hour,” 1968I got a rather sad email this afternoon. Ray Yoshida, a crucial figure in the birth of the Hairy Who and their colleagues in mid-late 1960s Chicago art, passed away a few days ago after a sustained illness. He was 78. As an instructor at the Art Institute, Yoshida taught the likes of Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, and was an older contemporary and champion of Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, and Karl Wirsum, among others. He is credited with being a force for cohesion amongst the artists of the time, as well as an early supporter. His own work, beautifully redered paintings that bring figuration close to pattern-making and abstraction, and luminous, jigsaw puzzle-like collages, is also extremely powerful and important. I never met Yoshida, to my regret, but he was spoken of warmly by Nutt and Nilsson, and his New York gallerist, Adam Baumgold. He is the second crucial figure from that period to pass in recent months. Don Baum, who first exhibited the Hairy Who at the Hyde Park Art Center, died a few months back. Baum, an artist and curator, was an important early champion of the work. I visited him in 2005 and recorded a long interview. He was a very sweet, and sharp man, surrounded by the work of the artists he so loved. I’m grateful to have met him. In any case, all of this reminds me how much I love the work of that period, and how still under-researched it remains. My condolences to the Yoshida family, and, belatedly, to the Baum family.
Labels: Christina Ramberg, Don Baum, Gladys Nilsson, jim nutt, Karl Wirsum, ray yoshida
His collage work is really amazing and inspiring.
Ray was my teacher in Chicago, back in the early 90’s, he was always busting my chops about something, always yelling at us for being late, or not working hard enough. At the time I kind of hated him.
I now know that he was mean to us because he loved ART and wanted us to do our best for it. He was right ART should always get out best. Ray gave his.
Jason Robert Bell.
Are you guys still thinking of publishing a book on the Imagists? I just bought an old catalog of a 90’s Jim Nutt exhibition from Powell’s, and it’s really great – some Yoshida collages in it – they’re beautiful.
Peter Saul was my professor at UT in the mid-nineties, and he didn’t give a shit about anything.
Dan, I studied with Ray in the early 80s. I was also close to Christina Ramberg. The last time I talked to him was on the phone a couple of years ago, when I knew he was in bad health. Christina unfortunately died a tragic death many years ago when she was still young.
I think it one of the great shames of American Art that the innovative work and substantial accomplishments of the Hairy Who artists and other great Chicago artists have been neglected and overlooked. They certainly had and still have a large influence on my own work.
To see what I mean you can view some images at http://www.aardbart.com. . The powerful influence of those artists is readily apparent and I owe them a great debt of gratitude and respect.
I met Ray in High School in the late 80’s- and had him as a professor in the early 90’s- he had the most amazing set of eyes and his work was so sophisticated beautifully composed- if you moved one element the entire structure would fall.
I’m still working on a retrospective exhibition and book of the work, yes. But it’s been difficult (and now, I suspect, even more difficult) to find a venue interested in taking it on. But I continue to work on it. The book can’t really happen without the exhibition, for logistical (i.e. documenting and funding) reasons so… we’ll see. It’s a long term project. But I’m on it! I swear!
Awesome. I’m actually almost more excited now about an exhibition than a book!
Ray was my teacher at SAIC from about 1970 on. We sometimes went to Maxwell Street together searching for comics and old toys. I used to tease him that the comics he was “destroying” for his work might be high priced collectibles—I think that idea actually appealed to him. Of course the commercial value of any item, whether high or low, was of no consequence to him; only the inspiration was of value.Everything was “source material.”Ironically (for me) I became a comic book artist and art director…so sorry I never gave Ray a box of my product to transform. He had already transformed me.