Ed Paschke

Chicago artist Paschke established his reputation in the late 1960s with a version of Pop art inspired by the crude imagery and garish colors of urban subculture. His depictions of showgirls, wrestlers, and various types of social misfits are indebted to tabloids, sports papers, and pornographic magazines. This forceful image of a tattoo-covered stripper belongs to a major series of women performers he created in the mid-70s, whose echoes of femme fatale offer a striking contrast to the lighter side of New York Pop a la Lichtenstein.