Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence

by John Corbett, Ray Yoshida (Illustrations), Tom Van Eynde (Photographs)

Ray Yoshida (1930–2009) taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 40 years, where, with his students―among them, Jim Nutt, Philip Hanson and Christina Ramberg―he fostered a scene of artists that would become known as the Chicago Imagists. Touch and Go is the first book to comprehensively examine Yoshida's work in relation to his life in an educational institution, both as a student and a teacher. The Chicago arts scene of the 1960s and 1970s is explored here as a community of mutual influence, with Yoshida as a figure of particular importance. As John Corbett writes in his "He was influential. He was influenced. He was part of the nuanced series of relays that has produced the unique art scene in Chicago, open to input from elsewhere, but in many ways a world quite hermetic and almost perversely eccentric."

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 2015

About the author

John Corbett is a writer, curator, and producer based in Chicago. He is co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery. Corbett is the author of several books, including Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Duke U. Press, 1994), Microgroove: Forays into Other Music (Duke, 2015), A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation (University of Chicago Press, 2016), Vinyl Freak: Love Letters to a Dying Medium (Duke, 2017), and Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music (University of Chicago, 2019). As an essayist and reviewer, Corbett has written for numerous academic and commercial publications, including DownBeat, The Wire, The Chicago Reader, The Chicago Tribune, NKA, Bomb, LitHub, and Lapham’s Quarterly. Corbett has edited or co-edited many books, including several on the musicians Sun Ra and Peter Brötzmann, as well as the 125 books and catalogs that his gallery, Corbett vs. Dempsey, has produced, and he has contributed to major museum monographs on artists including Jim Lutes, Charline Von Heyl, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, and Sadie Benning, and essays on artists Rachel Harrison for the Art Institute of Chicago and Bob Thompson for the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Corbett’s work as a music producer includes his label, the Unheard Music Series, which existed from 1999-2006, and Corbett vs. Dempsey, an ongoing label issuing CDs of new and historical jazz, experimental music and improvised music. In 2002, Corbett was invited to be guest artistic director of JazzFest Berlin, and he co-produced the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music as well as a weekly series of concerts at the club of the same name. He has organized many musical events and festivals, most recently a series at the Art Institute of Chicago and stand-alone events at the Guggenheim Museum of Art, NYC, and the Menil Collection, Houston. As a curator, Corbett has been involved in many exhibitions at museums including the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago (Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago, 2016), the Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art, 1964-1980), Sullivan Galleries, the School of the Art Institute, Chicago (Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence, 2010), and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn, and Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 2009). Corbett taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1988 to 2014.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great plates and an interesting idea to show not only Yoshida's work but those who were influenced by him. Ray Yoshida was one of my most beguiling advisors in graduate school who over three years taught me a lot, even when he wasn't my official advisor by leaving me encouraging notes and pushing me right when I needed it.