111 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603, United States
The Art Institute of Chicago where John Chamberlain studied from 1951 to 1952.
Career
Gallery of John Chamberlain
Lichtentaler Allee 8A, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany
The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden where John Chamberlain had a solo exhibition in 1991.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Stedelijk Museum where John Chamberlain had a solo exhibition in 1996.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
1071 5th Ave, New York, NY 10128, United States
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum where John Chamberlain had his first retrospective in 1971.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
1533 Sul Ross St, Houston, TX 77006, United States
The Menil Collection where John Chamberlain had a solo show in 2009.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
1960
John Chamberlain visiting a show at the Jackson Gallery, New York City. Photo by Fred W. McDarrah.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
1965
John Chamberlain (second left) with art curator and historian Henry Geldzahler (left) watching the installation of one of Chamberlain's works on the wall in New York City. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
1965
John Chamberlain installing one of his works on the wall in New York City and art curator Henry Geldzahler (standing on the floor) watching him. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (left) with art curator and historian Henry Geldzahler in New York City. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain with a photo camera.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain choosing materials for his sculptures.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain. Photo by Rob McKeever.
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain
Gallery of John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain
Achievements
'Nutcracker' by John Chamberlain purchased at Sotheby's in New York City for $4,786,500 in 2011.
John Chamberlain (second left) with art curator and historian Henry Geldzahler (left) watching the installation of one of Chamberlain's works on the wall in New York City. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
John Chamberlain installing one of his works on the wall in New York City and art curator Henry Geldzahler (standing on the floor) watching him. Photo by Steve Schapiro.
John Chamberlain was an American artist who worked in such fields as sculpture, painting, graphic art, photography, printmaking and filmmaking. He became well-known due to his dynamic and colourful sculptures made of wrecked automobile parts. Other materials the artist used in his sculptural compositions included galvanized steel, Plexiglas, aluminium foil and urethane foam.
Background
John Chamberlain was born on April 16, 1927, in Rochester, Indiana, United States. He was a son of Claude Chester, a fifth-generation saloonkeeper, and Mary Francis Waller.
When John was a four-year-old child, his parents divorced and the boy was sent to his grandmother in Chicago, Illinois, United States where he was raised.
Education
At his childhood, John revealed the interest in music, but because of the lack of talent, he didn’t pursue the training. He studied hairdressing in Chicago in 1950. This period, he produced his first sketches and started to teach himself painting. After a few private lessons, he decided to enter the Art Institute of Chicago in 1951. A year later, he left the institution because the training program seemed to him too conservative.
Later, Chamberlain tried to pursue his studies at the University of Illinois where he spent only six weeks.
Finally, in 1955, Chamberlain became a student of the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. He had studied there for one year. There, he met the poets Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan who became his lifetime friends.
In 2010, the artist received the honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan, United States.
John Chamberlain started his career in 1943 when he entered the United States Navy. He had served in the Pacific and the Mediterranean for three years.
In 1946, he returned to Chicago and earned his living as a hairdresser and makeup artist.
His debut sculpture from the automobile parts, titled Shortstop, appeared in 1957. It was made from the 1929 Ford Pie Wagon which he had found in the backyard of his friend Larry River’s house. The first solo exhibition at which the artist presented his early metal artworks to the public took place in Chicago the same year and the following year at the Davida Gallery in New York City. The artist’s sculptures were noticed by critics.
The next huge solo exhibition of John Chamberlain was organized in 1960 at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York City. This time, at the beginning of the 1960s, John Chamberlain produced the collages using such materials as pigments, paper, cardboard, fabric staples, aluminium foil and scrap metal. Due to Chamberlain’s unique style of combining discarded automobile parts, he was invited at the Art of Assemblage Exhibition which took place at the Museum of Modern Art in 1961.
In the middle 1960s, Chamberlain adopted new material for his artworks – urethane foam. These foam compositions were exhibited in 1965 at the Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles, United States. Other significant expositions in which Chamberlain participated during this decade included São Paulo Art Biennial (1961) and Venice Biennale (1964).
At the end of the 1960s, the artist tried his hand in film production. So, he created two films in 1968. The first one was titled Wide Point and the second one – The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez.
In the 1970s, John Chamberlain returned to his first material, the metal. The artist accompanied it with colour to create new remarkable visual effects. The artworks of this period were presented at Chamberlain’s debut retrospective in 1971 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and at Whitney Biennial two years later.
In fact, during his career, John Chamberlain exhibited around the world and had about one hundred solo shows including Dia Art Foundation (1983), Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (1991), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1996) and Menil Collection, Houston (2009).
Quotations:
"Art is a liaison between some sort of deranged mentality and others who are not going through it."
"Art is basically made by dissatisfied people who are willing to find some means to relieve the dissatisfaction."
"The good thing about being an artist, is it's a legitimate way of looking at things cross-eyed."
"A sculpture is something that if it falls on your foot, it will break it."
"I wasn't interested in car parts per se, I was interested in either the colour or the shape or the amount... Just the sheet metal. It already had a coat of paint on it. And some of it was formed.... I believe that common materials are the best materials."
"I think of my art materials not as junk but as garbage. Manure, actually: it goes from being the waste material of one being to the life-source of another."
"I'm more interested in seeing what the material tells me than in imposing my will on it."
"My work has nothing to do with car wrecks."
"If I have a room full of parts, they are like a lot of words and I have to take one piece and put it next to another and find out if it really fits. The poet’s influence is there, plus in my titles."
Membership
John Chamberlain was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and of the National Academy of Design.
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1990
National Academy of Design
,
United States
2006
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"The only reason Chamberlain is not the best American sculptor under forty is the incommensurability of 'the best' which makes it arbitrary to say so." Donald Judd, an American artist
Connections
John Chamberlain was married four times. Firstly, he married in 1948.
His next wife became a woman named Elaine Grulkowski eight years later. The couple had three sons - Angus, Jesse and Duncan. Elaine died at the beginning of the 1970s, after the divorce. Chamberlain’s son Jesse didn’t survive his father – he died in 1998 in Sag Harbor, New York, United States.
In 1977 in New York City, the artist remarried for the third time. His spouse's name was Lorraine Belcher. They had lived together for nine years.
In 1996 John Chamberlain married Prudence Fairweather, Dan Flavin's former assistant.
John Chamberlain: The Foam Sculptures
The flip side of John Chamberlain's well-known crushed car sculptures in foam with essays by Klaus Kertess, Iris Winkelmeyer, and Marianne Stockebrand that treat the sculptures in the larger context of Chamberlain's oeuvre and discuss the issue of conservation.
John Chamberlain: Choices
The catalog accompanied one of Chamberlain's exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museum. It includes the essays by Susan Davidson, Donna De Salvo, Dave Hickey, Adrian Kohn and Charles Ray with an extensive chronology by Helen Hsu and a lexicon by Don Quaintance.
2012
John Chamberlain: New Sculpture
The volume was published in conjunction with two Chamberlain's exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery's New York and London venues.