Hairy Shoes #1, Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke’s figure paintings of the 1960s featured subjects from the margins of conventional society—circus performers, strong men, and female strippers, among others. The works earned his initial notice and notoriety as “the wildest, naughtiest, most sinful painter Chicago had produced,” as one admirer recalled. Seeking to escape these remarkable images and the debate they prompted, he turned to still-lifes with a focus on a surprising subject: shoes.
His earliest efforts showed little change from his 1960s manner, but Paschke quickly decided he wanted to get more personally involved. “I considered that leather, at one point was living flesh for some animal. This could have been related,” he said, “to the atrocities of the Second World War, when flesh of people was used in a barbaric, sadistic way.” The horrors of the Nazi death camps were still fresh in the public’s mind, reinforced by attention paid to Adolf Eichmann’s trial and eventual execution in 1962. Numerical identifications tattooed onto the arms of Germany’s prisoners might also have been on Paschke’s mind. Flamboyant tattoos decorated the bodies of some of his ‘60s figures; others appeared on some shoes from the early ‘70s. The association of shoe leather and human flesh, tattoos and bearded soles, suggests a level of
meaning beyond the desire merely to shock, which had previously been the primary goal.
Hairy Shoes #1 is from a trio of similar images: this drawing, a large painting of the same subject, and Paschke’s first lithograph (also in the Museum’s collection), all dating from 1971. Paschke’s drawing was acquired though the Museum’s first federal grant, which was generously matched by membership funds. That acquisition campaign in the early 1970s added a number of American drawings to the Museum’s collection at a time when the market for them was relatively affordable. Later they formed the basis for a graduate seminar that culminated in an exhibition and catalogue authored by the students. CCE