Minnesota-born artist Doug Argue returns for retrospective at Weisman Art Museum

Look into the beady black eyes of a chicken, its red, floppy wattles dangling at the base of its beak. The chicken’s red comb looks like a mohawk. There’s something startlingly human about this chicken, portrayed in Doug Argue’s empathic painting “Lucy,” 2002, which he was inspired to paint after a trip to Syria in 1999.

“They had all these huge banners of Hafez al-Assad, father of the dictator who is there now,” Argue said. “And I thought, he’s kind of like the chosen one, like this chicken, so I did three really big pieces of just the individual chicken.”

The anthropomorphic chicken is one of more than 40 artworks in “Doug Argue: Letters to the Future,” the artist’s retrospective at the Weisman Art Museum. It was organized by curator Liz Armstrong, who gave Argue his first show at the Walker in 1985 after seeing his work for a Jerome Foundation Fellowship.

A lot has happened since then for the artist, whose career changed when he won the Rome Prize in 1997. Known internationally, he now lives in New York and his work is in collections at Mia, Walker, Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles and more.

The St. Paul-born artist is best known locally for the large-scale painting “Untitled (Chicken Painting),” 1994, which is owned by the Cafesjian Art Trust and was on view at the Weisman for many years. The painting portrays a factory farm where chicken cages go on into what looks like infinity. Perhaps more than a critique of factory farming, the painting masterfully utilizes perspective techniques of Renaissance painters.

In Argue’s more recent works, such as “Genesis,” 2007-2009, a magnificent blast of rainbow colors, he continues his deep dive into perspective. But look more closely and you’ll find a variety of random letters blasting around through the colors — it is part of Argue’s fascination with language.

Homecoming

The opening on June 16 felt something like a homecoming, although Argue comes back often. His son Mattison LeMieux, 34, the subject of some of Argue’s figurative paintings about fatherhood, lives here and now has his own son, Kian.

“He [Mattison] looked really proud and it made me really happy,” Argue said. “There were like more than 120 people at the opening, which really shocked me — people I had gone to middle school and high school and college with.”

In his earliest work in the show, “Gopher Bar,” 1987, named after the seedy bar in St. Paul where he used to go and hang out with other artists, a bartender with a fish head pours drinks. Behind him, the wall is covered in taxidermy. A motley crew of cartoonish characters smoke and jabber away. The painting is free associative and expressionistic.

Armstrong remembers Argue’s work from when she first came to the Walker in 1983.

“I always like the outsiders, and the Walker prided itself on always working on the fringes,” she said. “I just really respond to Doug. … It’s like, here’s this pure artist.”