(The catalogue for an exhibition of eleven of Ed and Lyn K...)
The catalogue for an exhibition of eleven of Ed and Lyn Kienholz's 1960s sculptural tableaux, held at the Kunsthaus Zurich and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, in 1971. The book is chaptered by tableaux, each introduced with commentary by Kienholz, with a color overall view and b&w photos providing details of each tableaux. The eleven tableaux in the exhibition are: Roxy's; The Illegal Operation; The Nativity; The Birthday; While Visions of Sugar Plums Danced in Their Heads; The Back Seat Dodge '38; The Wait; The Beanery; The State Hospital; The Eleventh Hour Final; and The Portable War Memorial. The final chapter presents "Concept Tablieaux." Introductions and texts by Felix Baumann, Pontus Hulten, and Bernard Bertschinger. Unpaginated ca. 140 pages with 12 gatefolds; 12 color plates + b&w plates throughout; 8.5 x 10.75 inches. Biography, exhibition history, bibliography. Text in English and German.
Edward Kienholz: An exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in cooperation with the Museum's Contemporary Art Council March 30 to May 15, 1966
(Catalog of the exhibition organized by the Los Angeles Co...)
Catalog of the exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in collaboration with the Museum's Contemporary Art Council, Lytton Gallery, 30 March to 15 May 1966. Text by Maurice Tuchman. Exhibitions, bibliography, catalog of works. Ill. black and white, and a table folded. Edward Kienholz (1927 - 1994) was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. Art critic Brian Sewell called Edward Kienholz "the least known, most neglected and forgotten American artist of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation of the 1950s, a contemporary of the writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer, his visual imagery at least as grim, gritty, sordid and depressing as their literary vocabulary". In 1956, Kienholz opened the NOW Gallery, for which Michael Bowen designed the sign; that year he met grad student Walter Hopps, who owned the Syndell Gallery. They co-organized the All-City Art Festival, then in 1957, with poet Bob Alexander, they opened the Ferus Gallery on North La Cienega Boulevard. The Ferus Gallery soon became a focus of Avant Garde art and culture in the Los Angeles area. This 1966 show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) drew considerable controversy over his assemblage, Back Seat Dodge '38 (1964). The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called it "revolting, pornographic and blasphemous" and threatened to withhold financing for the museum unless the tableau was removed from view. A compromise was reached under which the sculpture's car door would remain closed and guarded, to be opened only on the request of a museum patron who was over 18, and only if no children were present in the gallery. The uproar led to more than 200 people lining up to see the work the day the show opened. Ever since, Back Seat Dodge '38 has drawn crowds. LACMA did not formally acquire the work until 1986.
Edward Kienholz was an American self-taught sculptor known for his elaborate found-object assemblages, which convey a harsh scrutiny of American society.
Background
Edward Ralph Kienholz was born on October 23, 1927 in Fairfield, Washington, in the dry eastern part of the state. He grew up on a wheat farm, learning carpentry, drafting and mechanical skills. His father was strict, and his mother was a religious fundamentalist; the rebellious son longed to escape this constricted environment.
Education
He studied art at Eastern Washington College of Education and, briefly, at Whitworth College in Spokane, but did not receive any formal degree.
Career
In 1953 he settled in Los Angeles. Works Combine Visual and Verbal Puns Once in Los Angeles, Kienholz ran a succession of art galleries while embarking on his artistic career. His earliest works consisted of painted wood panels. Even in these early works we sense the bitterness and irony so characteristic of his later mature work. An early painting entitled George Warshington in Drag (1957) presents us with an image of our heroic first president in drag. The title, often an important ingredient in Kienholz' work, had been inscribed on the painting's surface. Walter Hops has suggested that the artist "mixed, in a sort of pun, two national compulsions: cleanliness and aggressiveness" by a simultaneous reading of the words "wash" and "war. " The combination of both visual and verbal puns is a characteristic of Kienholz' art. This technique allowed him to comment effectively on American society and its values. Works Recall Social Issues By the late 19506 Kienholz broke free from the two-dimensional surface altogether and began to create three-dimensional "constructions" through the assembly and combination of everyday objects. One of Kienholz' earliest constructions, entitled John Doe (1959), is at once a jolting and bitterly humorous comment on the anonymity of the individual in America's commercial society. By thrusting a paint-splattered mannequin's head and torso into a baby carriage, Kienholz created a shocking, even repulsive, commentary on the way in which contemporary values and social conditions affect the individual. Another construction-The Illegal Operation (1962)-also revolves around an issue of great social concern-illegal abortion. It is a ferocious image riddled with visual puns. An ordinary shopping cart has been converted into a surgical table. Upon this makeshift table rests a soiled and bloody mattress, the end of which has been ripped open suggestively. On the floor rests a hospital bedpan and bucket full of blood-stained refuse and rags. In the foreground sits a small stool beside a saucepan filled with crude surgical instruments. An old household floor lamp provides the only source of light for this back room operation. The detail and staging seen in The Illegal Operation anticipates Kienholz' more elaborate "tableaux" later in the decade. Life-Sized "Tableaux" During the mid-19606 Kienholz' constructions were expanded into life-sized environments referred to as "tableaux. " These elaborate tableaux are typically composed of a life-size cast or assembled figures set within a familiar environment. In this respect, Kienholz' art shared an affinity with that of George Segal, but Kienholz combined the elements of fantasy, wit, irony, and sarcasm with reality. The result was always a rather moralistic criticism of American life. Kienholz' tableau The State Hospital (1964 - 1966) is a gruesome image of institutionalism. Within the austere confines of a constructed cell, a nude mental patient with a fishbowl containing live fish for a head is otherwise modelled with revolting realism. The figure lies strapped to his bed. In the adjoining bunk above lies an identical figure surrounded with a cartoon bubble which points to the figure below. The implications are clear. The figure is both physically and mentally confined. His thoughts are restricted, like the fish in his bowl head, to himself and his self image. The spectator peering into this barren cell becomes a part of the patient's dismal world. His space becomes the viewer's, and the viewer suddenly loses his/her self-complacent attitude before such a grisly image. Through the realistically rendered environment and shocking imagery, Kienholz forced viewers to recognize what he saw as universal aspects of the human condition-loneliness and despair, both caused by society. In another tableau, The Wait (1964 - 1965), Kienholz turned to the themes of old age and death. An old woman fashioned from animal bones sits in an antique chair. A glass jar containing a faded photograph serves as her head. Homey, domestic comforts surround her: an old lamp, a braided rug, a lapped cat, and a sewing basket on the floor. On the table to the right sits a collection of old family photographs representing her past. This lonely woman whose life has already passed must now await the inevitability of death. The overriding theme of death is ironically juxtaposed with the inclusion of a live bird which chatters away as the beholder remains frozen before this pathetic widow. Kienholz' work during the 19706 and 19806 became more sophisticated and elaborate. In a later example entitled Sollie 17 (1979 - 1980) Kienholz placed three cast images of the same man within a realistically constructed dilapidated urban dwelling. Clad only in a pair of baggy undershorts, the old man is seen lying on a soiled bed reading a pulp Western. On the right edge of the bed the same man sits. His head-a framed photograph attached to the cast body-is downcast as the lonely man plays a game of cards. Finally the man is seen to the rear gazing out a window which opens onto an urban cityscape. The barrenness of the man's life is echoed in the bare bulb that illuminates this sordid interior from above. This is a powerful image of alienation and the despair of a vacuous life; a life wherein time is not measured by a clock but by the water that drips from a faulty tap. Kienholz reproduced familiar environments by taking discarded objects from everyday life and assembling them in such a way that they took on a renewed significance. With an uncanny eye for detail and arrangement Kienholz orchestrated frozen dramas. By demanding that the viewers take an active part in his play he confronts them with images of themselves and the world around them. Everything suddenly becomes imbued with an allegorical significance and a once familiar world becomes hostile. Kienholz acknowledged that his wife often assisted him in his work. After 1973 Kienholz, spent six months of each year in Berlin and the other six months in Hope, Idaho. Kienholz died of a heart attack on June 10, 1994 in Hope, Idaho. His burial was reminiscent of his "tableaux. " He was buried in the passenger seat of a 1940 Packard coupe with the ashes of his dog in the back seat and, in the glovebox, a bottle of vintage wine. In 1996, a retrospective of his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.