Read Comments (8)

Ray Yoshida: “Comic Book Specimen – #2 – Right Profile,” 1968

Ray Yoshida: “After an hour,” 1968

I 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.