Ed Paschke
Encyclopedia
Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American
painter
. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat.
in 1939, where he spent most of his life. He received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961, and later his Masters Degree in Art in 1970 from the same school. Drafted into the Army on November 4, 1962, he was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana, where he worked in the Training Aids Department, working on projects including illustrations for publications, signs, targets and manuals to explain weapons and procedures to incoming troops.
Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the height of the Imagist
movement in the late 1950s, while supporting himself as a commercial artist. In 1976, he started to teach at Northwestern University
.
On November 22, 1968, Paschke married Nancy Cohn and had a son Marc and a daughter Sharon.
Paschke lived and worked in Chicago, where he died in his house on Thanksgiving
day, 2004, apparently of heart failure. His wife Nancy Paschke was an artist as well and died two months after him, on January 17, 2005, in Chicago.
and expressionism
.
He avidly collected photographs-related visual media in all its forms, from newspapers, magazines, and posters to film, television, and video, with a preference for imagery that tended toward the risqué and the marginal. Through this he studied the ways in which these media transformed and stylized the experience of reality, which in turn impacted on his consideration of formal and philosophical questions concerning veracity and invention in his own painting. At the same time, he sought living and working situations — from factory hand to psychiatric aide — that would connect him with Chicago’s diverse ethnic communities as well as feed his fascination for gritty urban life and human abnormality. Thus he developed a distinctive oeuvre that oscillated between personal and aesthetic introspection and confronting social and cultural values.
In his early paintings Paschke both incorporated and challenged depictions of legendary figures by transforming them into corps exquis, such as Pink Lady (1970) where he set Marilyn Monroe
’s famous head atop the suited body of an anonymous male accordion player; or Painted Lady (1971) where he redesigned screen legend Claudette Colbert
as a tattooed lady fresh from a freak show. Another direction through which he explored the features and quirks of meaning and logic was in paintings of leather accessories interpreted as anthropomorphized fetish objects, such as Hairy Shoes (1971) and Bag Boots (1972).
In the decades separating Pink Lady and Matinee (1987), Paschke shifted his interest from print to electronic media and a dazzling spectrum of televisual waves and flashes began to fill the paintings. Forms and images disintegrated, broken apart in the fabric of electronic disturbance and its surface. In Matinee, the face of Elvis Presley
is fragmented into a field of glowing swathes of color with lips and eyes alone suggesting the human presence beneath the electronic overlay.
Paschke made use of an overhead projector to layer images, which he then rendered using the traditional and time-consuming medium of oil painting. He began with an underpainting in black and white, then addressed it with refined systems of colored glazing or impasto to enliven the optical and physical textures of his painting. With this original and painstaking process he created a formal parallel with the black-and-white-to-color progression in the historical development of printing, film, and television images, at the same time moving the subject matter from the particular to the non-specific to allow a wider range of interpretation. In his later work, once again forms became more solidified, moving back towards certain kinds of psychologized presences and the edgy tension that characterized his earlier work.
Unlike most of his Pop predecessors with their unthreatening embrace of popular culture, Paschke gravitated towards the images that exemplified the underside of American values — fame, violence, sex, and money — a preference that he shared with Andy Warhol
, who was one of his foremost inspirations. Although long considered to be an artist of his own time and place, his explorations of the archetypes and clichés of media identity prefigured the appropriative gestures of the “Pictures Generation” and for a new generation of global artists his totemic, eye-popping paintings have come to embody the essence of cosmopolitan art.
His work is included many museum collections including: the Art Institute of Chicago
, Walker Art Center
, Minneapolis, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art
, New York, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Major exhibitions include:
At the time of his death a New York critic lamented that Paschke's "contribution to the art of his time was somewhat obscured by his distance from New York." Since his death there have been several museum and gallery exhibitions of Paschke's work, most recently including a museum-quality show at Gagosian Gallery
on Madison Avenue in New York City, curated by noted pop artist Jeff Koons
. As a student, Koons admired Paschke’s work and became his assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. Paschke's influence in both his subject matter and pioneering use of color continues to influence artists around the world.
Polish American
A Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art. As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
he was influenced by many artists featured in the Museum's special exhibitions, in particular the work of Gauguin, Picasso and Seurat.
Life
Paschke was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in 1939, where he spent most of his life. He received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1961, and later his Masters Degree in Art in 1970 from the same school. Drafted into the Army on November 4, 1962, he was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana, where he worked in the Training Aids Department, working on projects including illustrations for publications, signs, targets and manuals to explain weapons and procedures to incoming troops.
Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the height of the Imagist
Chicago Imagists
The Chicago Imagists is the name of a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, surrealism and complete uninvolvement with New York art world trends...
movement in the late 1950s, while supporting himself as a commercial artist. In 1976, he started to teach at Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
.
On November 22, 1968, Paschke married Nancy Cohn and had a son Marc and a daughter Sharon.
Paschke lived and worked in Chicago, where he died in his house on Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Day is a holiday celebrated primarily in the United States and Canada. Thanksgiving is celebrated each year on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States. In Canada, Thanksgiving falls on the same day as Columbus Day in the...
day, 2004, apparently of heart failure. His wife Nancy Paschke was an artist as well and died two months after him, on January 17, 2005, in Chicago.
Work
Although Paschke was inclined toward representational imagery, he learned to paint based on the principles of abstractionAbstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
and expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
.
He avidly collected photographs-related visual media in all its forms, from newspapers, magazines, and posters to film, television, and video, with a preference for imagery that tended toward the risqué and the marginal. Through this he studied the ways in which these media transformed and stylized the experience of reality, which in turn impacted on his consideration of formal and philosophical questions concerning veracity and invention in his own painting. At the same time, he sought living and working situations — from factory hand to psychiatric aide — that would connect him with Chicago’s diverse ethnic communities as well as feed his fascination for gritty urban life and human abnormality. Thus he developed a distinctive oeuvre that oscillated between personal and aesthetic introspection and confronting social and cultural values.
In his early paintings Paschke both incorporated and challenged depictions of legendary figures by transforming them into corps exquis, such as Pink Lady (1970) where he set Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
’s famous head atop the suited body of an anonymous male accordion player; or Painted Lady (1971) where he redesigned screen legend Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American-based actress of stage and film.Born in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures...
as a tattooed lady fresh from a freak show. Another direction through which he explored the features and quirks of meaning and logic was in paintings of leather accessories interpreted as anthropomorphized fetish objects, such as Hairy Shoes (1971) and Bag Boots (1972).
In the decades separating Pink Lady and Matinee (1987), Paschke shifted his interest from print to electronic media and a dazzling spectrum of televisual waves and flashes began to fill the paintings. Forms and images disintegrated, broken apart in the fabric of electronic disturbance and its surface. In Matinee, the face of Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
is fragmented into a field of glowing swathes of color with lips and eyes alone suggesting the human presence beneath the electronic overlay.
Paschke made use of an overhead projector to layer images, which he then rendered using the traditional and time-consuming medium of oil painting. He began with an underpainting in black and white, then addressed it with refined systems of colored glazing or impasto to enliven the optical and physical textures of his painting. With this original and painstaking process he created a formal parallel with the black-and-white-to-color progression in the historical development of printing, film, and television images, at the same time moving the subject matter from the particular to the non-specific to allow a wider range of interpretation. In his later work, once again forms became more solidified, moving back towards certain kinds of psychologized presences and the edgy tension that characterized his earlier work.
Unlike most of his Pop predecessors with their unthreatening embrace of popular culture, Paschke gravitated towards the images that exemplified the underside of American values — fame, violence, sex, and money — a preference that he shared with Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, who was one of his foremost inspirations. Although long considered to be an artist of his own time and place, his explorations of the archetypes and clichés of media identity prefigured the appropriative gestures of the “Pictures Generation” and for a new generation of global artists his totemic, eye-popping paintings have come to embody the essence of cosmopolitan art.
His work is included many museum collections including: the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
, Minneapolis, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, Washington D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Major exhibitions include:
- Ed Paschke: Selected Works 1967–1981, Renaissance Society, University of ChicagoUniversity of ChicagoThe University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
(1982, traveled to the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston) - Ed Paschke Retrospective, Centre PompidouCentre Georges PompidouCentre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
, Paris (1989–1990, traveled to the Dallas Museum, Texas and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990–1991) - Ed Paschke: Recent Work, Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago (2003)
- Ed Paschke: Chicago Icon, A Retrospective, Chicago History Museum (2006)
At the time of his death a New York critic lamented that Paschke's "contribution to the art of his time was somewhat obscured by his distance from New York." Since his death there have been several museum and gallery exhibitions of Paschke's work, most recently including a museum-quality show at Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
on Madison Avenue in New York City, curated by noted pop artist Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....
. As a student, Koons admired Paschke’s work and became his assistant in Chicago in the mid-1970s while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Paschke would prove to be an important mentor and formative inspiration for the young artist. Paschke's influence in both his subject matter and pioneering use of color continues to influence artists around the world.