Corbett vs. Dempsey

works by Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke is one of the most celebrated artists from Chicago, the city of his birth in 1939 and his home thereafter. After receiving his BFA from the School of the Art Institute in 1961, Paschke worked as a psychiatric aide and sold spot illustrations to Playboy magazine. Drafted into the Army in 1962, Paschke spent two years illustrating weapons manuasl and pursuing AWOL soldiers in Louisiana. Following a brief trip to Europe, he returned to Chicago and in 1865 joined a team of draftsmen at the Wilding Studio rendering a map to be used in training astronauts for the Apollo moon mission. Paschke then began work for Silvestri, a display company, painting a Piranesi-style scene on a temporary, first-floor façade of the Carson Pirie Scott and Company department store. In 1967 Paschke quit working to have more time to paint; on the GI Bill, he enrolled at SIC, receiving his MFA in 1970.

At the first "Hairy Who" exhibition at HPAC in 1966, Paschke saw several of his former SAIC colleagues professionally engaged and organized. He assembled his own group of SAIC alumni (Sarah Sanright, Edward C. Flood, Robert Guinan, and Richard Wetzel) and exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1968 as the "Nonplussed Some," In 1969, dropping Guinan and Wetzel and adding Don Baum, they exhibited as "Nonplussed Some; Some More"; in 1970 they merged with some Hairy Who artists as "Marriage Chicago Style' (Wirsum, Rossi, Paschke, Rocca, Flood, Canright); and in 1971 the same three couples exhibited as "Chicago Antigua." Although this exhibition history often has associated Paschke with the Chicago Imagists, his subject matter and almost Photorealist style set him apart from this group.

Like many Pop artists of the 1960s, Paschke worked from various media, images, though culled form tabloids, sports papers, and pornographic magazines, to portray inhabitants from the fringes of society that were subject rare to Pop art. With the aid of an overhead projector, Paschke combined disparate elements into one composition, painted first in black and white and then in color to achieve the luminous, almost electrified, look still characteristic of his canvases. In the early 1970s, Paschke's focus shifted from complex, composite images to solitary figures. A group of objects "portraits' feature bulging leather shoes and purses sprouting hair or warts, thereby asserting their origin as skin. Continuing his fascination with bodily embellishments, especially tattoos and fantastical costumes, Paschke began to concentrate on elaborately costumed figures against richly patterned backgrounds, which culminated in a series of fabric abstractions painted in 1976. In the late 1970s, Paschke's work underwent a radical shift form realistic, recognizable individuals to anonymous dandies and elegant women seemingly from the glamorous entertainment world. Spectral bands of color cut through both figure and background, recalling images on a malfunctioning color television. Masked characters with black holes for eyes and mouths point to the spiritual emptiness behind these celluloid images. In the 1908s the electronic disturbances eventually disintegrated Paschke's images, leading him back to more solidified forms with psychological presences and toward an investigation of religion, violence, and sexuality.

Biography by Monique Meloche, from Art in Chicago 1945 - 1995