Westermann's way: long an underground favorite of informed viewers and fellow artists, H.C. Westermann now ranks among a widely admired vanguard of outsiders and mischief-makers. Traveling concurrently, a comprehensive retrospective and a show of his prints highlight this artist's eccentric yet well-wrought forms - Critical Essay

As many writers have pointed out, the works of American sculptor H.C. Westermann (1922-1981) defy easy art-historical categorization. Falling outside the confines of realism, Pop, Minimalism or conceptual art, Westermann's supremely well-made, enigmatic objects meld dark comedy, political rancor and existential angst--with some deliberate lapses into sentimental reverie and anecdotal detail. In his catalogue essay for the current retrospective curated by Lynne Warren and Michael Rooks for Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Robert Storr calls the artist "one of postwar art's great misfits," placing him in an alternative tradition of artists and writers, from Goya and Baudelaire to Charles Ray and Mike Kelley, who pursue a notion of the grotesque. The Stedelijk Museum's recent five-man show, "Eye Infection," similarly positioned Westermann in a select group of late-century "bad boy" artists with Jim Nutt, Peter Saul, R. Crumb and Kelley.

Yet, even among these determined iconoclasts, Westermann holds his ground as the odd man out. The moral consciousness that molds his work remains outside art-world sympathies and trends. Never sanctimonious or smug, his art seems founded on a sense of rectitude. As Dennis Adrian, scholar and friend of the artist, writes in his catalogue essay, "Westermann's character was grounded in an enduring honesty that had no choice but to address (sometimes with relish, sometimes in frustration) the paradoxes at the core of formalism and those at the core of humanism." Westermann felt obliged to grapple with these complexities without compromise or equivocation.

Short statements often written or incised on the works hint at the values of his loose yet distinct worldview. In a nutshell, Westermann espoused the intrinsic worth of craftsmanship, individualism, moral discernment and natural beauty. His ethical sense seems particularly American, evoking, say, the libertarianism of Emerson, the stubborn specificity of William Carlos Williams and the plainspoken values of Shaker furniture-makers. His outrage at the horror of war is manifested with a fierce black humor similar to that of American novelists Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

The MCA retrospective offers a comprehensive survey of Westermann's sculpture, much of which was generated from forms commonly made by craftspeople and home carpenters, such as toys, dollhouses and boxes. Wood was Westermann's primary medium, and he revered it. As curator Rooks points out in the catalogue raisonne published within the hardcover version of the exhibition catalogue, "Westermann strove to correlate his work with his belief system, at the core of which was the idea that one demonstrates integrity through actions and objects." The immaculately hand-finished sculptures feature dovetailed corners, doweled joints, flawless laminations, homemade hardware and meticulous inlays. Precise carpentry and attention to the nuances of wood were moral and philosophical imperatives. In a forthright letter of 1958 to his sister, Westermann wrote, "I would most certainly prefer to die than do one, just one, piece that I didn't pour everything conceivable within me, into. And by this I mean right from my heart. Art is not to be cheated or bargained with as are business practices."

Those heartfelt impulses did not result in simpleminded or one-note art works. Westermann's sculptures are challenging formal conundrums that thrive on paradox and are spiced by loopy humor and puns, both visual and verbal. The tone of his quirky, enigmatic objects is at once judgmental and questioning, cranky and amiable, virile and fey. Despite their diversity, his boxes, machines, ships, houses, tableaux, figures, drawings and prints all seem to bear the signature of their author--in the same manner that, say, the comedies, Westerns, musicals and action movies of the American filmmaker Howard Hawks seem of a piece, with their recurring themes of friendship and sacrifice spiced with jaunty sexual banter.

Westermann's tough-guy pose was fostered by early experiences as a professional acrobat, carpenter, railroad repairman and janitor. Traumatic stints as a machine gun crewman in World War II and Korea instilled a stark awareness of the absurdities of war and a bitter skepticism regarding politics and bureaucracies. Although he had briefly attended college in his native Los Angeles, Westermann left the military to finish art school in Chicago, where he soon found his place among the inventive figurative artists of the "Monster Roster" (including Leon Golub and Cosmo Campoli). He spent less than a decade in the city but has long been associated with the Chicago school of quirky, surrealist-influenced figuration.

Early on, Westermann's prickly outsider status sparked a kind of cult worship. Artists in particular have responded, among them such diverse figures as Donald Judd, Billy Al Bengston and Ken Price. Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, William T. Wiley, Robert Arneson, Richard Pettibone and Terry Allen have made works in homage to Westermann. At the exhibition's Chicago opening, Allen spoke of his deep regard for the artist and led his band in an inspired performance of "Juarez," the 1975 song cycle that Westermann greatly admired for its depiction of the rougher edges of the American Southwest.