Corbett vs. Dempsey

works by Ralph Arnold

Born in Chicago in 1928, Ralph Arnold grew up on the South Side, graduating from Eisenhower High School in 1946. Arnold's first art training was at University of Illinois, directly out of school, but this first attempt was abruptly interrupted. From 1951 to 1953, Arnold served in the Army in Korea, a life-changing experience that he documented in a moving photo-journal. When he returned to civilian life, in 1954, he continued his studies at University of Illinois, eventually earning his BFA from Roosevelt University in 1955. Arnold's earliest mature work comes from the late 1950s, when he worked at various odd jobs to earn a living. His role as a teacher began in the late 1960s, first at Rockford College, then at Loyola University, in Chicago, where he taught in 1967-68. He returned to Loyola in 1972, having taught at Barat College, in Lake Forest, in the interim. He was awarded an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976. From 1972 until 2000, he was a central figure at Loyola, where he achieved the rank of Senior Professor and served as Chair of Fine Arts and also chaired the African-American Studies Program.

The earliest of Arnold's works include collages and assemblages he made in the first part of the 1960s. Often abstract, they broke up the field into outlined partitions, lavishing attention on the rough surfaces and textures of the materials. Arnold's work appeared in several publications at the time, including Dona Meilach and Elvie Ten Hoor's Collage and Found Art, which featured him prominently. He often used stenciled letters, sometimes floating and sometimes congealing into text. At the same time, clearly influenced by Joseph Cornell, Arnold began constructing his own boxes, and he continued making shadowbox assemblages for the following four decades. His intricate sculptural constructions of the mid 1960s utilize found industrial materials - bottle tops, typewriter parts, springs, gears - often over-painting them in acrylic, lending them a pop or Neo-Dada feel that, together with the stencils, may call to mind Robert Indiana.

Arnold's analysis of identity probed his African-American-ness, what it meant to be black in the United States, but in the early 1970s his work also dealt with what it meant just to be American. His etchings, some directly political, satirized both left and right, never adopting a reduced radical stand. One advised readers: "Avoid the rush, STRIKE NOW!" A brilliant series of collages from 1971 turned its attention to television, adopting a less direct stand. Indeed, Arnold's own relationship to popular consumer culture was complicated. He was a bona fide collector, with a giant assortment of Mickey Mouse ephemera and a huge Swatch collection. In his collages, elements drawn from advertising always have an underlying sense of admiration and enjoyment that sits awkwardly with their critical edge. This ambivalence is part of what gives them their flavor and their power. They aren't all exactly didactic - indeed, Arnold was an avid abstractionist in the 1970s as well - though some prints and paintings certainly adopt a specific discursive position. But whatever their style, palette, or politics, Arnold's works are thoroughly immersed in the complex visual languages of popular culture.