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  • THE BIG DIG: KARL WIRSUM • SKETCHBOOK 1966

  • Dateline, Chicago, 1966

    Opening reception for Hairy Who at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, February 25, 1966 (photo by Bill Arsenault)

    Dateline, Chicago, 1966

    Karl Wirsum joins Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Suellen Rocca, Art Green, and Jim Falconer for an exhibition at the Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC) under the group moniker Hairy Who.  In the span of one sketchbook, by means of an image diary, we are transported from six weeks before that landmark show to three months in its wake.  Ideas hatched and probed in the home studio/laboratory – secret experiments of the notorious Dr. Worse-Some. By that time, Wirsum had established himself as an artist to watch.  He’d graduated from the School of the Art Institute in 1961, and two years later, age 22, he mounted an ambitious solo debut at the short-lived Sedgwick Street Gallery in Old Town. In a curatorial nod to classic Surrealist installations, the gallery’s rooms were painted black and each work was illuminated dramatically by a little lamp above it.  Richard Wetzel, who co-directed the space, recalls the show: “It included paintings and a number of drawings in various media.  Among the paintings were several that featured double portraits of women, some of them Siamese twins.  The one that excited me most presaged his later work; it portrayed a strangely distorted woman facing us with a bicycle horn attached to her waist.  When you squeezed its bulb, she coughed.  The title was: ‘I Had Tubercular Leprosy…PLEASE?’  The show flier reproduced a drawing of a stylized horse vomiting an array of geometric shapes and objects.  Its title was: ‘The Horse, He’s Sick.’”

  • At Sedgwick Street Gallery, Wirsum also participated in group exhibitions alongside future Imagists Wetzel and Ed Paschke. He had paintings...

    Karl Wirsum is presented with the Higher Culturalization for Everyone Award (a plastic gorilla) from Richard Wetzel in front of Sedgwick Street Gallery, Chicago, on the occasion of Wirsum's one-person exhibition, 1963 (photo by Bill Arsenault)

     

     At Sedgwick Street Gallery, Wirsum also participated in group exhibitions alongside future Imagists Wetzel and Ed Paschke.  He had paintings in Eye On Chicago and The Sunken City Rises (both in 1964), independently produced round-ups at Illinois Institute of Technology that also included Nutt and Nilsson.  Wirsum’s classic portrait of blues singer Howlin’ Wolf, “No Dogs Aloud,” was included in the Animal segment of Don Baum’s Three Kingdoms: Animal, Mineral, Vegetable at HPAC.  People were already paying attention to this irreverent young painter. By the end of 1965, Baum had agreed to the first of a series of smaller group exhibitions, suggesting they add Wirsum to the original quintet proposed by Nutt and Falconer.  Hairy Who was slated to open. February 25, 1966.  It would take Wirsum and his new comrades to a whole other level of local visibility and now stands as one of the landmark events in Chicago art history.  But in the months leading up to this exhibition, Wirsum was busy up in Wrigleyville, working on drawings and paintings.  He had established a personal working methodology centered on sketchbooks – drawing in them on a daily basis, he moved between several, often trying out variations on a single image in two or three places simultaneously.  And luckily for posterity he dated all of them.  This leaves us an unusually precise map of his activities, especially the development of particular images.  Some of the drawings were quite finished in and of themselves.  Miraculous compositions, he began removing them from the sketchbooks to sell or exhibit at an early stage, a process that has continued for the last five decades.

  • In this beautiful sketchbook, we find a number of now-iconic Wirsum images. There are drawings for “Drink Hearingade Made with...

    Ray Siemanowski, Karl Wirsum and Lorri Gunn at Hairy Who reception, HPAC (photo by Bill Arsenault)

     

    In this beautiful sketchbook, we find a number of now-iconic Wirsum images.  There are drawings for “Drink Hearingade Made with Your Earplug in mind,” which was reverse-painted on glass, a material the limitations of which were revealed when the inevitable happened and Wirsum and his girlfriend Lorri Gunn knocked the piece over and shattered it.  (In a nod to Duchamp, the artist fixed it with a screw and piece of painted wood, as he'd seen shop owners do with broken windows; Wirsum began reverse-painting on Plexiglas instead.)  The phrase makes its way into “Hearing Ade Quiz,” a Wirsum page in the first Hairy Who comic book, and other sketches for his spread in that publication – Siamese twins, a dog face reminiscent of a Pacific Northwest Native American mask (or totem), and a girl with a comb – are refined into final shape.  What is interesting but confusing at first is that some drawings appear to be sketches for paintings that are in the first Hairy Who exhibition.  How, logically, could there be a drawing on January 6 for “Son of Sol Moscot,” which appears in the show six weeks later, moreover given that the painting was completed in 1965?  Or “First Quarter of Moon Dog,” a sketch for which appears on January 10?  Or several images related to “Spawning a Yawn with a Yellow Awning On” that were made after the Hairy Who show was already hanging?  It turns out that what had always seemed like a unidirectional process leading from sketches through variations to a final image and a painting was in fact more complex, recursive even, involving the gradual evolution of an image, a related painting, then more sketches, perhaps another painting, and so on. 

  • The inverted tape-dispenser/eyeglasses of “Sol Moscot,” the dog-in-hat images, and the awnings were all intended to appear in series, as...

    Lorri Gunn and Karl Wirsum with Chicago mayoral candidate John L. Waner at Wirsum's solo show C.A. Doctor, Dell Gallery, 1967 (photo by Bill Arsenault)

    The inverted tape-dispenser/eyeglasses of “Sol Moscot,” the dog-in-hat images, and the awnings were all intended to appear in series, as variations on a theme, the way Wirsum’s twin women images had some years earlier; only the awnings – a disintegrating face drawn from medical skin disease photographs set against a vibratory palette of optical patterns inspired by the striped fabric awnings of game and attraction booths at Riverview, the legendary amusement park that closed in 1967 – made their way into multiple manifestations, one of which was shown at the Whitney’s Annual Exhibition in 1967, illustrated in its catalog, and reproduced in the Time magazine review.  As you move through these daredevil drawings, they transform and sometimes merge.  On March 29th the hat-dog of February 9th somehow makes its way onto the face of the kite that appears as a woman’s viscera, a reference to renaissance anatomical etchings like those of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi.  Another hat-dog image grafts onto a human portrait, like the dog had turned into a necktie and sprouted a Stetson-topped fellow.  There are drawings that don’t end up as paintings, too, like the canine lady Wirsum invented on February 16, his last entry in this sketchbook before the Hairy Who show opened and the hellhounds of Chicago Imagism were unleashed.

  • Sketchbook, 1966

    Sketchbook, front cover (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sketchbook, inside front cover (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 4, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 4, 1966  colored pencil, graphite, and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 5, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 5, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 6, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 6, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 10, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 20, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 25, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 25, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, January 25, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 7, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 7, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 7, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 7, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 7, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 9, 1966  ink, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 9, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 9, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 10, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 11, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, February 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, n.d. (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 1, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 1, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 3, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 3, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 3, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 3, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 4, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 4, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 4, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 4, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 7, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 8, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 9, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 16, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 17, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 18, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 22, 1966  colored marker, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 22, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 22, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 24, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 24, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, March 29, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 5, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 5, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 14, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 14, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 19, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 25, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 25, 1996 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 25, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 27, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, April 27, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 2, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, n.d. (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 15, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 15, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 18, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 18, 1966  colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 18, 1966  ball-point pen on sketchbook paper  14 x 11 inches (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Untitled, May 18, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sketchbook, inside back cover, 1966 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Sketchbook, back cover (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

     

    • Untitled, January 6, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook, 14 x 11 inches

      Untitled, January 6, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook, 14 x 11  inches

    • Son of Sol Moscot, 1965, private collection (photo by Robert Chase Heishman)
      Son of Sol Moscot, 1965, private collection (photo by Robert Chase Heishman)
  • Plates

    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 4, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 4, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 4, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 4, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, January 6, 1966
      Untitled, January 6, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, January 10, 1966
      Untitled, January 10, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Karl Wirsum, January 20, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Karl Wirsum, January 20, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled , January 25, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled , January 25, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 25, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, January 25, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, February 9, 1966
      Untitled, February 9, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, February 9, 1966
      Untitled, February 9, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, February 9, 1966
      Untitled, February 9, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, February 10, 1966
      Untitled, February 10, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, February 16, 1966
      Untitled, February 16, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 2, 1966
      Untitled, March 2, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 3, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 3, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 4, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 4, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 7, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 7, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 8, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 8, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 9, 1966
      Untitled, March 9, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 18, 1966
      Untitled, March 18, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 16, 1966
      Untitled, March 16, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 22, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 22, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 22, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 22, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 22, 1966
      Untitled, March 22, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled (Comb Mouth), March 29, 1966

      Karl Wirsum, Untitled (Comb Mouth), March 29, 1966

      $14,000.00
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    • Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 29, 1966
      Karl Wirsum, Untitled, March 29, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, March 29, 1966
      Untitled, March 29, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, April 5, 1966
      Untitled, April 5, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, April 25, 1966
      Untitled, April 25, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, April 27, 1966
      Untitled, April 27, 1966
      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled (Life Shaver), May 18, 1966

      Untitled (Life Shaver), May 18, 1966

      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, May 18, 1966

      Untitled, May 18, 1966

      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, May 18, 1966

      Untitled, May 18, 1966

      $14,000.00
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    • Untitled, January 10, 1966, ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

      Untitled, January 10, 1966, ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

    • First Quarter of Moon Dog, 1966, oil on canvas, 38 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches. Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the Raymond K. Yoshida Living Trust and Kohler Foundation, Inc.

      First Quarter of Moon Dog, 1966, oil on canvas, 38 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches. Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Gift of the Raymond K. Yoshida Living Trust and Kohler Foundation, Inc.

  • Q/A with Karl Wirsum, By John Corbett and Jim Dempsey

    Wirsum spread in The Portable Hairy Who! comic (bottom panel, right page by Suellen Rocca), signed for artist Dominick Di Meo on the night of the opening

    Q/A with Karl Wirsum

    By John Corbett and Jim Dempsey

    John Corbett: Was work in a sketchbook always part of your practice?

    Karl Wirsum: Yes. The sketchbooks are about how I experience life.

    JC: Do you remember when it started?

    KW: When I was child in grade school, I always had a sketch book around.

    JC: Did you think about your sketchbooks as repositories of finished drawings or strictly as points along the way to paintings?

    KW: The sketchbooks are how I refine the drawings for finished paintings or drawings. They are not the finished product.

    JC: Do you remember when you started dating your sketchbook drawings so exactly?

    KW: I began dating them in the 60s and 70s because Picasso did but then stopped because I had too many sketches to date. Recently I started dating them again.

    JC: Were the sketchbook drawings primarily about the transformation of an image?It seems like there’s a lot of experimentation with how one image can morph into another. 

  • KW: That is a fairly accurate description. Other experiences and ideas come into play and help me make the transformations for myself.

    JC: You clearly moved back and forth between different sketchbooks at the same time. Was this done systematically or according to which sketchbook came to hand? What was the effect of shuttling between different sketchbooks?

    KW: It was so I could see the images at the same time as I sketched a new image from them.

    Jim Dempsey: Was there a moment when you knew you were ready to jump from a sketch to a painting?

    KW: My mind would be seeing different images and be in different places. but once it was focused on one place I knew it was ready to be a painting. 

    JC: We’ve noticed that there were drawings related to several of the paintings that were part of the first Hairy Who show that crop up in this sketchbook after the show has opened. This suggests that you were working on the same image later, maybe with additional paintings in mind. Is that right? Did you sometimes work backwards from paintings to sketches, or did they always terminate in a painting?

    KW: I never worked backwards always from sketches or drawings to paintings but I would sometimes work on a series of related paintings from my sketchbook drawings. But I would reverse (change) focus on a new painting. A sketch often used more than one idea and so I would use those ideas for different paintings.

    [interview taken and transcribed late June, 2020, by Ruby Wirsum]

    • The Odd Awning Awed, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 33 x 29 inches

      The Odd Awning Awed, 1966, acrylic on canvas, 33 x 29 inches

    • Awful Awning, 1966, oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 27 7/8 inches, Smart Museum of Art University of Chicago

      Awful Awning, 1966, oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 27 7/8 inches, Smart Museum of Art University of Chicago 

    • Spawning a Yawn with a Yellow Awning On, 1966, private collection
      Spawning a Yawn with a Yellow Awning On, 1966, private collection
    • Untitled, April 27, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

      Untitled, April 27, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

    • Untitled, March 22, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

      Untitled, March 22, 1966, colored pencil and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches

    • Time magazine, 1967

      Time magazine, 1967

    • Untitled, January 5, 1966, colored pencil, graphite, and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches
      Untitled, January 5, 1966, colored pencil, graphite, and ball-point pen on sketchbook paper, 14 x 11 inches
    • Drink Hear Ing Ade, 1966, acrylic on glass, decals, tape, and painted wood frame, 11 x 9 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches, private collection (photo by Jeremy Lawson, courtesy of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College)

      Drink Hear Ing Ade, 1966, acrylic on glass, decals, tape, and painted wood frame, 11 x 9 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches, private collection (photo by Jeremy Lawson, courtesy of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College)

    • Karl Wirsum, Drink Hearingade Made with Your Earplug in mind, 1966, acrylic on glass, tape measure, decals, metal hardware, and painted wood frame, 22 x 20 1/2 x 3/4 inches, private collection (photo by Jeremy Lawson, courtesy of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College)

      Karl Wirsum, Drink Hearingade Made with Your Earplug in mind, 1966, acrylic on glass, tape measure, decals, metal hardware, and painted wood frame, 22 x 20 1/2 x 3/4 inches, private collection (photo by Jeremy Lawson, courtesy of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College)

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