Last fall, at the age of 87, Chicago artist Tristan Meinecke was the subject of his first retrospective. While the exhibit of his paintings, drawings, constructions, and recorded music was being mounted at 1926 Exhibition Space, Meinecke said to one of its curators, John Corbett, “I just hope I make it until the show.” But when I interviewed him in September he seemed vigorous to the point of pugnacity: when I took offense at his use of the term “little faggot” to describe a former Art Institute official he disliked, he responded by asking whether the Reader wasn’t a “hippie newspaper.”
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Shortly before Christmas, says his son Brad, Meinecke was watching a football game on TV, rooting for his school, the University of Michigan. When the game turned against the Wolverines, he jumped up in anger and then fell over, injuring his leg. Admitted to the emergency room, he was diagnosed with a serious blood infection.
