Ed Paschke died two years ago this Thanksgiving, and though tributes were profuse in the weeks that followed, not a lot of his work was on view to remind Chicagoans of one of the most accomplished artists born and raised in the city.
He had had two retrospectives, but they were 15 and 22 years earlier. So imagining the whole scope of Paschke’s career at the time of his death was difficult and could only be achieved imperfectly, with the aid of catalogs from the retrospectives plus more recent shows at dealers in Chicago and Paris.
“Ed Paschke,” the moderately sized exhibition that reopens the newly re-christened Chicago History Museum, is therefore the event for which fans have been waiting. It surveys 38 years with more than 40 artworks — the last retrospective covered 21 years with 95 pieces — but because they are not all the often-shown works, even people who know his career will be able to see it again cleanly.
Given that the CHM was not consecrated to art, it has shown significant restraint in its stagecraft, indulging extra-artistic drama just twice, in an introductory space evoking the interior of Paschke’s studio and electronic panels at show’s end that propose color schemes for the artist’s final large commission, left unfinished at the time of his death, having reached only a stage in black and white.
Both inclusions are questionable, as is the showing of unfinished art. But they all work, with the commission giving insight into Paschke’s painting methods and the 18-minute electronic conjecture looking appropriate enough for an artist whose most exciting phase was devoted to exploring electronic media in one way (paint) or another (holographic light boxes).
In between is a straight chronological presentation, with each decade prefaced by a text panel that additionally reproduces some of Paschke’s photographic source material. The text itself generally is clear, even if in one instance, when describing the work of the 1980s, “enormity” is used to mean large when in fact it means heinous.
The earliest work shows the influence of Pop Art, though soon enough Paschke asserted himself as kind of urban realist who specialized in disquieting portraits. The meticulous attention given these figures carried over to the play of light on articles of clothing, and for a moment emphasis was on abstract pattern. But then he began dissolving figures in a forbidding electronic environment, and these paintings are his most mysterious and daring as well as his most formally satisfying.
His later pieces return to solidity on a massive scale, eventually focusing on heads from earlier art or historical figures. The “meaning” of these pieces is complicated by words and symbols from other cultures, but ultimately the power of them is in suggestiveness and craft rather than narrative or concept.
As the most traditional of the so-called Imagists, the Chicago artists with whom Paschke exhibited, he had the widest appeal, reaching viewers that even might have been put off by his sometimes lurid subject matter or treatment. The present exhibition, concise and telling, will doubtless expand that audience even further.
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“Ed Paschke” continues at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., through Feb. 19, 2007. 312-642-4600.