HYDE PARK — The Gene Siskel Film Center will be showing a documentary on the Imagists, a group of artists who got their start at the Hyde Park Art Center.
“Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists” tells the story of Ed Paschke, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Karl Wirsum and other artists in the movement who got established through a series of exhibitions at the art center between 1966 and 1973.
“Both the work in New York and Chicago was very much about popular culture, but the New York work tried to be very objective and impersonal, and the work here was very subjective, very personal,” says Suellen Rocca, a Chicago-based Imagist artist in the film. “So I say New York was cool, and we were hot.”
The film will run Oct. 3-9 at the Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
The movement also included Gary Panter, who was the art director for the “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” TV show and brought the style to a mass audience.
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