OYVIND FAHLSTROM
Near the center of Column No. 1 (Wonderbread) (1972) is an area shaped like a bread slice; the text inside states, “Helps build strong bodies in 12 ways.” Beside the text is a happy bodybuilder, but below the bread slice is a larger area with a text that lists the allegedly deleterious effects of Wonder bread. Beside this text is a nude man next to a load of bread, and sticking out of the loaf are guns that are shooting at him. To the right of the bread slice is an image of a body being destroyed by bombs. Here the text explains that the same corporation that at the time made Wonder bread also made electronic systems for missiles: “Helps destroy strong bodies.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Fahlstrom’s taste for the surreal is most evident at the bottom of the picture, where a newspaper headline reads “4 Police Cars Crash Chasing Nude Driver.” To the right are images of prisons, then of various activities of oil companies. Above them the text and images refer to bourgeois life-styles. None of these images are connected to the nude-driver story as clearly as the image strings mentioned above are connected; indeed, each Column alternates between images that are intimately, causally linked and those that have more associative connections.
Part of what gives his imagery resonance is the multiple ways in which it relates to the text. Often the maps and charts and figures simply illustrate the words’ meaning. At other times the images literalize words meant as metaphors: a Lenin quote about “radish radical[s]–red outside, white inside” is accompanied by a drawing of a split radish. Even within a single panel an object’s function can shift: a gold crown stands for the kingdom of Laos; the same crown, only smaller, is also seen on the king’s head. Two boats–one with small money bags on deck, one with larger–are seen steaming toward and away from Chile to illustrate the inequality of capital flows between Chile and the U.S.
The silkscreened Dr. Livingston Collage is dated 1974 but is based on a work of some 15 years earlier. Images drawn from Swedish comics are combined and inked over to obscure their origin; the eye is confronted with a dense, almost abstract surface, full of rhythmic clutter that leads the eye in and out and around without reaching any pictorial finality or clear meaning. The image directs the viewer’s attention to the intense, even seductive physicality of its shapes; it doesn’t appear to point to anything outside of itself. In this respect Dr. Livingston Collage reminded me of the work of Jasper Johns, who owns one of Fahlstrom’s key paintings, Sitting . . .
Fahlstrom also made a number of Monopoly-like board games. On view is Sketch for “Kidnapping Kissinger”, which is shaped somewhat like a country: the top border is a straight line (like much of the U.S. northern border); other borders have the curves of coastlines. The “country” is divided into squares labeled with the names of one or two states. Each state is also numbered in the upper left, as if it were also a date on a calendar. Dotted lines thread their way across the squares, and a set of complex rules is written in the border. The eye is not encouraged to look for an aesthetic image but to parse it into states, dates, journeys, rules, plots. The image becomes a landscape, which becomes a game of travel and power. This sketch can also be seen as instructions for viewing most of the other images in the exhibit.
