Photo By Gail

Karl Wirsum (1939 – 2021) used the clean style of commercial graphics and the abstracted form of a dissected frog Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (1968). who used this painting as the cover for his album Because Is In Your Mind (1970). Best known fir 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.

The artist sought to visualize how he and his fellow audience members felt during Hawkins’ 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.

Photographed in the Whitney Museum as Part of the Exhibit, Sixties Surreal.