Karl Wirsum
b. 1939; Chicago, IL d. 2021; Chicago, IL
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, 1968
Acrylic on canvas
Karl Wirsum used the clean style of commercial graphics and the abstracted form of a dissected frog to paint the singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, who used this painting as the cover for his album Because Is in Your Mind (1970). Best known for his 1956 song “I Put a Spell on You” and his sensational live performances, Hawkins appears here in full song, raining amoeba-shaped sweat down on a man wearing “armpit rubber,” like old-fashioned galoshes, to keep the moisture at bay. Wirsum sought to visualize how he and his fellow audience members felt during Hawkins’s performances. A member of the Chicago exhibition group the Hairy Who, Wirsum has a distinctive figurative style that combines visual motifs from across cultures in densely layered references.
