Oops Goops!

Karl Wirsum has been exhibiting his work since his participation in the Hairy Who group exhibitions (1966-1968) at the Hyde Park Art Center on the South Side of Chicago that featured emerging artists who had all attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where Wirsum has taught for many years: James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, and Suellen Rocca. His imagery, inspired by Mesoamerican and Southwest Native American art, Chicago’s visual and music culture, toys, and comics, recalls a mad scientist’s urge to animate matter.

A weird alchemy holds together Wirsum’s figurative elements—the signature 1970s colors and waves patterns, and the hard textures that define the robot-like form—and the squiggles and green ‘goop’ on the swirling blue background. Not known for his work in intaglio printmaking, in this soft-ground etching and aquatint print Wirsum departs from his habitual backgrounds in one uninflected allover color. (See Smart Museum 2001.533.) For the background he created a “floating ink” effect, an ancient technique for making decorative papers (such as Japanese suminagashi) that exploits the surface tensions between two liquids, like oil and water, for unexpected visual effects. Three plates were required to achieve the final result.