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Critical circles and regional reputations: the Chicago imagists and the politics of art world peripheries

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Abstract

Current research on artistic groups suggests the career benefits of being place-based. This article examines the Chicago Imagists—a group defined by local recognition in Chicago and limited national renown—to explain the limits of these benefits when actors’ interests within a local scene diverge. Studying critical discourse on the Imagists from the 1960s to 1980s, we explain how “critical circles,” tied to the interests of regional evaluators, mediate artistic reputations. During initial group formation, Chicago artists and critics shared the goal of developing a distinct local art. However, critics’ investment in defining the boundaries of a “Chicago” style to further their careers ultimately diverged from Imagists’ investment in mastering a broader “American” style to further theirs. Chicago critics’ ensuing debates about the parochial limits of the label—and New York critics’ framing of Imagist work as provincial—further came to organize the very regionalism Imagist artists hoped to evade. We argue that attending to the divergent interests in the cultural field within which collaborative circles operate expands understanding of how affordances of place shape artistic careers. This study has further implications for theorizing the interplay of impression management and strong program perspectives on cultural wealth.

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Notes

  1. Here we acknowledge co-presence can mean many things. It often involves being in the same physical location. However, it may, in some instances, allow for creatives being in other locations (as in the case of transnational or even online circles), so long as ongoing communication is both possible and maintained.

  2. In art history, discussions of regionalism typically refer to a particular movement—American Regionalism—consisting of naturalist paintings celebrating local and national American culture in the early-to-mid twentieth century (Balken 2009). This movement—lauded throughout the 1930s—fell into disfavor by critics who deemed it provincial, anti-modernist, and perniciously nationalist, particularly in contrast to the Abstract Expressionist movement that emerged in New York in the 1940s (Dennis 1998).

  3. Consider also Corse’s (1995, 1997) account of how academics and literati constructed “national literatures” to justify their own significance.

  4. For an impressive archive of Imagist work, see https://chicagoimagists.com.

  5. According to Paschke, he and Flood approached Baum as a “pre-packaged” group. Ramberg, speaking about the 1968 HPAC “False Image” show, stated that those featured (among them, Brown, Hanson, and herself) had a different experience; according to Yoshida, they were “sort of discovered in school,” when Nutt brought Baum to SAIC to see their work (Ackland Art Museum 1981, p. 21).

  6. Warren (2011, p. 19) relays that various titles were proposed during different early gatherings of these artists, in which Wirsum did not understand the repeated references by the others to “Harry” (Harry Bouras, an artist of the preceding “Monster Roster” generation of Chicago artists). This led him to ask: “Harry who?” Given the group’s “penchant for puns and wordplay,” his question evolved into “Hairy Who.”.

  7. Ten of the 14 Imagist artists we identify in our methods section participated. The show brought international exposure to work previously exhibited at HPAC and, concurrently, at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1968, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C in 1969, and the School of Visual Arts Gallery in New York, also in 1969.

  8. Roger Brown Study Collection Archive, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Undated document by Roger Brown regarding art schools and the presupposition of such a thing as natural.

  9. Roger Brown Study Collection Archive, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Letter from Roger Brown to Neal Benezra regarding Benezra’s essay on the work of Ed Paschke.

  10. In each cultural domain, distinct fields of evaluation exist, due to particular historical contingencies (see Kostelanetz, 1974 on the role of critics in creating literary status). Here it bears note that while New York may be dominant in some arenas, it is not necessary dominant in all, as we address in our conclusion.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Amanda Anthony, Larissa Buchholz, Clayton Childress, Frédéric Godart, Wendy Griswold, Jennifer C. Lena, Ann Mullen, Kathleen (Casey) Oberlin, and Hannah Wohl for their helpful feedback and comments at different stages of this manuscript. We are further grateful for the incisive editorial and reviewer guidance at AJCS, and for the artists, critics, and administrators who shared their Chicago stories with us. Support for this research was generously provided by a MacArthur Collaborative Summer Research Grant through the Northwestern University Sociology Department.

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  1. Program in Arts Administration, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th Street, Box 78B, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Gemma Mangione

  2. Department of Sociology, Northwestern University, 1810 Chicago Avenue, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Gary Alan Fine

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Mangione, G., Fine, G.A. Critical circles and regional reputations: the Chicago imagists and the politics of art world peripheries. Am J Cult Sociol 9, 555–580 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-020-00101-2

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