Featured Review: Tom Huck and the Rebellious Tradition of Printmaking

Featured Review: Tom Huck and the Rebellious Tradition of Printmaking Brandy Baghead is going through major changes in Tom Huck's new triptych, on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum after two years in meticulous production. The printmaker from the self-fabled rural backwaters of Potosi hewed The Transformation of Brandy Baghead as the centerpiece of his third series of woodcuts, "Booger Stew," which vivisects contemporary phenomena such as\ reality television and self-actualization by way of Barbie Doll beauty. Modeled after three-part altarpieces (a form that reached its gruesome apogee in the gnarled crucifixions of the Northern Renaissance), Brandy Baghead is equal parts Matthias Grünewald, Garbage Pail Kids and House of 1,000 Corpses. Once a wholesome beauty queen, Brandy subjects herself to the nails, crowbars, cat intestines and electrical tape of mad surgeons giddy to transform her into their world's prevailing physical ideal: a breast-enhanced ice-skating chicken-oid. They succeed, to the frothing admiration of the populace, who wave signs of such high accolades as "cooz" and "skank" as she skates, proudly cross-eyed and feathered, on black ice. The uncomfortably gorgeous trio of images appears amid a selection of historical prints chosen by Huck to illustrate his influences, each annotated with his plainspoken take on the work. This short history of printed art, which includes Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, James Ensor, José Posada and Max Beckmann, depicts a medium hell-bent on disseminating images of bourgeois grotesqueries, rampages of moral vindication and the human herd as a macabre carnival of souls. Huck comes across as not only the real deal but a worthy inheritor of the legacy — thanks to the ambitious and obsessive scale of his work. These prints add up to truly fucked-up stuff of the highest order. (Click here for Ian Froeb's feature story about Tom Huck, "Evil Ink," January 18, 2007.) Through November 15 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive (in Forest Park); 314-721-0072 or www.slam.org. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sun. (10 a.m.-9 p.m. Fri.)

Tom Huck, The Transformation of Brandy Baghead Part II, America's Next Top Omelette (detail), woodcut, 48 by 82 inches.

Related Content

• In the Galleries - An Orchestrated Vision (Photography) CLOSES May 13 at the Saint Louis Art Museum
  May 10, 2012
• In the Galleries - Currents: Chelsea Knight at the Saint Louis Art Museum
  May 24, 2012
• Storytelling in Stills
  January 12, 2012
• RFT Spring Arts Guide 2012: Visual Arts
  April 26, 2012
• In the Galleries - Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler: Single Wide CLOSES March 25 at the SLAM
  March 22, 2012

More About

• Tom Huck
• Saint Louis Art Museum
• William Hogarth
• Potosi
• Visual Arts

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Arts and Theater Newsletter: Weekly information keeping you in the know when it comes to the art and theater scene. Find out about upcoming performances, exhibitions, openings and special events.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Click here for a complete list of St. Louis art capsules.