Horace Clifford (H.C.) Westermann, Korea, 1965.
H.C. “Cliff” Westermann (1922–81) seems to have really loved his wife. An entire section of “Your Pal, Cliff: Selections from the H.C. Westermann Study Collection” is devoted to the American artist’s gifts to Joanna Beall Westermann, and other homages to her are scattered throughout this retrospective of Westermann’s sculptures, prints, and related sketches, correspondence, tools and other objects. Most of these materials were donated to the Smart Museum in 2001 by Joanna’s estate; many have never been exhibited before.
Born in Los Angeles, Westermann moved here in 1947 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Except for a stint in the Korean War, he lived and worked in Chicago until 1961. The Imagists emulated Westermann’s embrace of grotesque, surreal imagery as well as his humor and references to vernacular culture. Younger artists, including Bruce Nauman and Jeff Koons, became fans. Yet in the mainstream art world, Westermann’s emphasis on craftsmanship and figuration rather than readymades or abstraction marked him as an outsider.
Westermann’s marriage comes off as one of the most significant influences on his work—starting with the artist’s wedding gift to Joanna, Burning House (1958). Some brides might find this sculpture disturbing: Flames made of tin billow from the windows of the red, yellow and blue pine house, which stands more than three-and-a-half feet tall. A tiny hand painted on a glass window in the cupola succumbs to the fire beneath the word Joanny, Westermann’s nickname for his then-fiancée. This enigmatic object is an in-joke, a reference to a fire that damaged the couple’s Chicago apartment in 1953.
Many of Westermann’s other works similarly intertwine morbid and cheerful attitudes. In 1945, while serving as a marine in World War II, the artist witnessed a catastrophic kamikaze attack on his aircraft carrier that haunted him the rest of his life, inspiring his famous “Death Ships,” the doomed vessels he depicts in prints and sculptures. A 1975 study for The Dance of Death (San Pedro), a print from Westermann’s series “The Connecticut Ballroom,” depicts a couple in formal attire dancing on a pier, suavely ignoring the rats at their feet and the death ship in the background.
Curators Rachel Furnari and Michael Tymkiw make exceptional use of Westermann’s preparatory drawings, wooden blocks, color studies and canceled proofs to illuminate his printmaking process, but the prints here are outclassed by the sculptures. While the artist enlivened letters to friends and family with goofy illustrations, his drawings usually come off as crude and poorly composed when given a central role in his prints—even though these works required months of preparation.
Westermann’s genius for wood- and metalwork, however, is awe-inspiring. His glass-fronted curio cabinet Korea (1965, pictured) commemorates his experiences in both WWII and the Korean War. The artist embellished the cabinet with references to his aircraft carrier, a fist grasping a real sailor’s rope and (carved, incredibly, from a single piece of wood) a chain with a lock dangling from it. This piece was a gift to Joanna, as was Untitled (Brass HCW and JBW) (1973). The small-scale sculpture of the embracing Westermanns has moving parts; the curators’ text explains that raising the male figure’s arms turns them into the female figure’s lifted legs.
As compelling as the “Death Ships” are, we’re more charmed by such bawdy symbols of the Westermanns’ romance, which manifest the uniquely blurry boundary between the artist’s private life and his art for public consumption. The curators portray even the couple’s rural Connecticut house as an artwork: Small Joint (1970), a wooden scarf joint inked with an inscription to Joanna and inlaid with a heart, reflects Westermann’s experiments with the carpentry techniques he used to build the house from 1969–81. Idiosyncratic and impeccably made, it seems designed—like Westermann’s entire career—to break down the divisions between “art” and “craft.”
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