“What removed all of the cynicism was being there when my son was born. There’s all this pain. Then the next moment, there’s life. . . . “What was missing from the body of work of the murderers was any sense of hope. Now there are elements of hope and some humor in my work. You get to the point where you get sick of playing in the mud.”
John Ollman of the Janet Fleisher Gallery in Philadelphia, who is Fitzpatrick’s exclusive art dealer, says hope always has existed in the artist’s work, even in his violent and brutal earlier pieces: “I think maybe it’s a little more clear to Tony, but it’s always been there. Maybe he’s willing to see it now. Many of us saw it then.”
Ed Paschke, perhaps Chicago’s preeminent visual artist, enjoys Fitzpatrick’s work in part because “it’s autobiographical. It’s in the true spirit of what art is all about. It’s an extension of him. It’s a totally accurate record of who and what Tony is–a kind of curious combination of bravado and introspection. . . . His work is loaded with layers of ideas, and these layers reflect the fabric that is Tony Fitzpatrick–good guy, bad guy. On one hand it’s very street, and on the other hand it’s mixed with high culture. It’s bristling with energy.”
Although their styles vary, Paschke says he and his friend share an artistic affinity. “There’s a sense of the use of color and the layering of ideas that (we) build into (our) work, as well as an attraction to difficult subject matter. We’re not about making pretty pictures. We’re interested in provoking people.”
James Yood, a Chicago art critic who teaches art theory and criticism at Northwestern University and art history at the Art Instutute, says Fitzpatrick’s “coy subject matter” and his “cartoony, funky style” fit in with Chicago’s artistic tradition.
Fitzpatrick follows a long line of Chicago imagist artists, including Karl Wirsum, Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. These painters, who exhibited together with other Chicago artists in the 1960s as the Hairy Who, all have used “humor as a distancing element or surrealist gesture,” Yood says.
“Tony does that. The works are pixilated in clever ways. You immerse yourself in Tony’s world and are happy to do so.” Still, Yood calls himself only “a middling admirer” of Fitzpatrick’s art.
“My suspicion about Tony’s work is that he’s positioned himself in the tradition of the folk or outsider artist, while he’s neither of those things,” Yood says. “He’s a very savvy operator who’s adopted a funky, irreverent style that, while very clever, strikes me as thin. As I look at the work, I find it less interesting than I do Tony himself.”
However, Ann Wiens, editor of New Art Examiner magazine, finds both the artist and his art compelling. She describes Fitzpatrick’s work as “very accessible, yet very mysterious” and says, “He wouldn’t be nearly as interesting a person if he didn’t do this work, and the work wouldn’t be as interesting if he wasn`t the person he is. His life is what he makes his work about.”
Fitzpatrick’s personality is indeed complex. With his nobody-messes-with-me attitude and macho-man black leather jackets and tattoos, Fitzpatrick can come across as a tough guy. But those who know him say that’s not “the real Tony.” The man they describe is a doting father and husband, a loyal and generous friend.
“He’s an angel with a dirty face,” says Wendy Snyder, who was Fitzpatrick’s WLUP co-host. “I know Tony would hate me saying that, but it’s true.”
Chicago gallery owner Ann Nathan–one of the few local art dealers Fitzpatrick likes–calls him “an apple dumpling, because he’s really tender.” Yes, some may find his signature bluntness annoying at times, she says, “but they always come back to Tony. They may be unhappy for the moment, but they return. He’s terribly likable. He doesn’t say things to offend. He says things because that’s what he feels.”
Says Kilman: “Anybody who really knows Tony at all, knows he’s just a giant pussycat. In reality, there’s a large segment of him that’s completely opposite of what he projects to the public. He lends money to people he shouldn’t lend money to. He doesn’t know how to say no to friends or acquaintances. At times he’s become, right before my eyes, a sentimental slob, especially if it has to do with people near him.”
The fourth of eight children from a middle-class Irish Catholic family, Fitzpatrick grew up in Chicago’s western suburbs. Precocious and a rebel from the get-go, he was sent home from school in the 3rd grade by a nun who caught him reading “The Graduate.” His artistic talent surfaced during adolescence. His earliest works featured nuns under attack by eagles. Fitzpatrick, who is named for the patron saint of lost souls, spent most of high school “in a parallel reality,” sketching portraits of Jimi Hendrix.
Art, he says, “was something that made the mundane livable. It made all the stuff they were trying to impart on me superfluous, ’cause I just did what I wanted in my sketchbook.”
Although drawing was his savior, Fitzpatrick flunked two art classes. “They wanted me to draw pep rally posters–rah-rah (expletive),” he says. “I insisted on doing pretty much whatever the (expletive) I wanted to.”
Fitzpatrick’s brothers and sisters left high school and went on to respectable careers in nursing, education, business and law enforcement. After graduation, Fitzpatrick became dependent on alcohol and drugs and spent the next several years drifting from job to job–bouncer, caddie, cab driver, janitor, boxer, waiter. During those troubled years, which he prefers not to discuss, he continued to create art.
“My mother always made sure I had art supplies. When I was drawing on the slates, my mother would pick me up at my studio, drive me to Kmart and buy me the slates.” (Today, Fitzpatrick commands up to $800 for his etchings and $3,000 to $17,500 for his drawings.)
A serious car accident in 1981 forced Fitzpatrick to take a hard look at his life. After a night of drinking, he drove a van into a house, breaking both of his hips and his pelvis. Rehabilitation was long and painful. “I began to rethink myself, and I didn’t like what I saw,” he says. “I was a loudmouthed, opinionated guy, who hadn’t done much to back it up.”
By the next year, he was sober. “And I decided to get serious about what I professed to be,” says Fitzpatrick, who now ingests nothing stronger than Starbuck’s iced espresso, Rolaids and Tums. He opened a storefront art gallery in Villa Park, started writing poetry and began bartending at the joint across the street.
In 1985, he used his earnings to finance a trip to New York, where he talked an East Village gallery into showing his work. Only a few pieces sold, and Fitzpatrick feared the gallery would release him. Then, as the show was coming down, film director Demme happened by, fell in love with Fitzpatrick’s work and bought the remaining slates. Tony Fitzpatrick had arrived.
A few months later, while visiting a New York nightclub, Fitzpatrick learned that Demme was in the building and wanted to thank his patron. On the way, he encountered Buzz Kilman, Demme’s longtime friend.
“This very large guy was walking toward me in a black leather jacket and T-shirt, and he’s coming right toward ME,” Kilman recalls. “I truly thought I was in trouble. . . . “He went off to find Jon, and I followed him with a bottle in my hand, ready to put it over his head if necessary.”
By evening’s end Fitzpatrick had become fast friends with Demme and Kilman. And his next New York show, in 1987, a study of Coney Island, was a smashing success. “It sold out opening night, and I began thinking maybe I wasn’t going to be a failure,” Fitzpatrick recalls. “It was the first time I felt like I was doing work that was really good, really fresh.”
His friendship with Demme led to an album cover for the director’s “Something Wild” soundtrack and bit parts in his films (most recently as a homophobic bartender in “Philadelphia”). His friendship with Kilman and their mutual affection for questionable films–specifically Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Predator”–led to a gig as Kilman’s sidekick on “Drive-In Reviews,” WLUP’s movie review show. Soon Fitzpatrick became a bit player at the station, appearing on several programs, hosting Art-O- Rama, a Chicago art scene segment, and occasionally filling in for vacationing disc jockeys.
When disc jockey Garry Meier chose to leave the station last fall rather than swap his afternoon time slot for Danny Bonaduce’s evening shift, the Loop management tapped Fitzpatrick and Snyder for the job. In the show’s early days, Larry Wert, WLUP general manager, said he offered Fitzpatrick the high-profile position because he found his “reckless” attitude and “blunt honesty” appealing.
“Tony’s kind of a bull in a china shop,” Wert said. “And we wanted a bull in a china shop.” During a break in a broadcast last fall, Fitzpatrick said he took the job in part for the extra income. He wanted the money “to build a really great printmaking facility where I can do any kind of printmaking I want.”
On a sunny, late-winter afternoon, Fitzpatrick sits in that new facility and discusses his decision to quit the 7 p.m. to midnight shift after only a five-month run. While he talks, Max races around the studio, playing with one of several friends who have stopped by to visit Fitzpatrick that day.
“It wasn’t fair to my wife to have the whole responsibility of child-rearing so I could be on the radio. I didn’t want to be one of those guys that by the time he’s 40, he’s been married three times and has a bunch of kids he doesn’t know. The radio dial is littered with guys like that.”
Michele, who returns from feeding the baby in the back room, says the radio show “wasn’t fun for him anymore. It used to be fun, then it became a source of aggravation. But I think Tony needed to do it to see where it went.” Fitzpatrick knew he was ready to quit when he returned home after an especially bad night and found his wife and daughter awake.
“Gaby smiled at me. I didn’t know she could do that yet, and evidently she had been doing it for a few weeks. That’s when I decided to leave the show.” Besides, the program’s ratings were poor. The show, which featured pesky big brother Fitzpatrick going head-to-head with bratty little sister Snyder, earned only a 1.9 percent share of the listening audience during the fall ratings period. (In comparison, the top Loop draw, Jonathon Brandmeier, scored 5.2 percent.)
“In truth, I probably should never have taken this job,” says Fitzpatrick, “but now we get into the crippling ego part again. I have this problem where I think I can do everything.” Last fall, Fitzpatrick was confident that World Tattoo would triumph and that he would wildly enjoy a full-time radio job. Today, he is abandoning his funky renaissance man lifestyle–no more art galleries, no more acting jobs, no more high-profile radio gigs, he says, although he is negotiating with the Loop for a Saturday night show.
“For a long time I had to prove to myself that I could do more than one thing well. I no longer have that need. This might sound funny saying this to a reporter, but I really have a desire to be a lot less public. I’ve got a different life. I have a wife and two little kids. I’d rather be home with them than standing on a movie set delivering one line or being on a radio show. I’ve taken stock of what I think is most important, and to me that’s being a good father, a good husband and a good artist.”
