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Edward Kienholz

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

Edward Kienholz

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(born Oct. 23, 1927, Fairfield, Wash., U.S. — died June 10, 1994, Hope, Idaho) U.S. sculptor. He pursued painting until he moved to Los Angeles and began producing large wooden reliefs for walls (1954). His controversial environmental sculptures, begun in the late 1950s, were elaborately detailed three-dimensional assemblages that harshly indicted U.S. society. His most famous walk-in scenes include Roxy's, a replica of a 1943 Los Angeles bordello, and The Beanery, a reproduction of a decrepit bar with 17 figures, piped-in smells, jukebox music, and background conversation. Critics labeled some of his images repulsive or pornographic.

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Oxford Grove Art:

Edward Kienholz

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(b Fairfield, WA, 23 Oct 1927; d Hope, ID, 10 June 1994). American sculptor. He attended Eastern Washington College of Education in Cheney, WA, and then Whitworth College in Spokane, WA, both for short periods, but received no formal art training. He then studied briefly at a number of other colleges in the West and in 1953 moved to Los Angeles, where two years later he had his first one-man show at the Cafe Galleria. In 1956 he opened the Now Gallery in Los Angeles, one of the city's first avant-garde galleries; on its closure in 1957 he opened the Ferus Gallery with the critic Walter Hopps.

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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Edward Kienholz

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Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) first gained recognition as a member of the Pop Art generation. His "constructions" and "tableaux" were comprised of commonplace objects and cast figures which are combined to form familiar environments. These environments illuminated his vision of the decadence and hypocrisy of American values, culture, and society.

Edward Kienholz was born in Fairfield, Washington, in 1927. Kienholz' rural upbringing provided him with the skills of mechanics and carpentry that would later prove so useful in the creation of his detailed "constructions" and "tableaux." Between 1945 and 1953 Kienholz led a rather itinerant life. He held various jobs, travelled, and attended several colleges, including Washington State College, Eastern Washington College of Education, and Whitworth College. 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 1950s 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-1960s 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 1970s and 1980s 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.

Further Reading

There are many articles and numerous museum catalogues that are concerned with Kienholz. Some useful sources containing excellent background material are Lucy Lippard, Pop Art (1966); H. H. Arnason, History of Modern Art (1968); John Russell and Suzi Gablik, Pop Art Redefined (1969); and John Wilmerding, American Art (1976). See also: "All-American barbaric yawp" by Robert Hughes in Time, May 6, 1996, vol. 147, no. 19; and "Ed and Nancy: The Kienholzes' Art of Collaboration," by Kay Larson in The Village Voice, March 12, 1996.

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Edward Kienholz

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Edward Kienholz

Edward Kienholz photographed by Lothar Wolleh, 1970
Born October 23, 1927(1927-10-23)
Fairfield, Washington
Died June 10, 1994(1994-06-10) (aged 66)
Idaho
Nationality American
Field Installation art
Training Self-taught

Edward Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American installation artist whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Throughout much of their career, the work of the Kienholzes was more appreciated in Europe than in their native United States, though American museums have featured their art more prominently since the 1990s.

Contents

Early life and artistic development

Sollie 17, mixed media construction by Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, 1979-80, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Edward Ralph Kienholz was born in Fairfield, Washington, in the eastern part of the state. He grew up on a farm, learning carpentry, drafting and mechanical skills. He studied at Eastern Washington College of Education and, briefly, at Whitworth College in Spokane, but did not receive any formal artistic training. After a series of odd jobs, working as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital, manager of a dance band, used car salesman, caterer, decorator and vacuum cleaner salesman, Kienholz settled in Los Angeles, where he became involved with the avant-garde art scene of the day.

In 1956, he opened the NOW Gallery, for which Michael Bowen designed the sign;[1] that year he met grad student Walter Hopps, who owned the Syndell Gallery. They co-organized the All-City Art Festival,[2] then in 1957, with poet Bob Alexander, they opened the Ferus Gallery on North La Cienega Boulevard.[3] The Ferus Gallery soon became a focus of avant garde art and culture in the Los Angeles area.

Despite his lack of formal artistic training, Kienholz began to employ his mechanical and carpentry skills in making collage paintings and reliefs assembled from materials salvaged from the alleys and sidewalks of the city.[4] In 1958 he sold his share of the Ferus Gallery to buy a Los Angeles house and studio and to concentrate on his art, creating free-standing, large-scale environmental tableaux. He continued to participate in activities at the Ferus Gallery, mounting a show of his first assemblage works in 1959.

In 1961, Kienholz completed his first large-scale installation, Roxy's, a room-sized environment which he showed at the Ferus Gallery in 1962. This artwork later caused a stir at the documenta 4 exhibition in 1968.[citation needed]

A 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"[2] and threatened to withhold financing for the museum unless the tableau was removed from view.[5] 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.[5] LACMA did not formally acquire the work until 1986.[6]

In 1966, Kienholz began to spend summers in Hope, Idaho, while still maintaining studio space in Los Angeles. Also around that time, Kienholz produced a series of Concept Tableaux. which consisted of framed text descriptions of artwork that did not yet exist. He would sell these works of early Conceptual Art (though the term was not in widespread use at the time) for a modest sum, giving the buyer the right (upon payment of a larger fee) to have Kienholz actually construct the artwork.[7]

Kienholz's assemblages of found objects—the detritus of modern existence, often including figures cast from life—are at times vulgar, brutal, and gruesome, confronting the viewer with questions about human existence and the inhumanity of twentieth-century society. Regarding found materials he said, in 1977, "I really begin to understand any society by going through its junk stores and flea markets. It is a form of education and historical orientation for me. I can see the results of ideas in what is thrown away by a culture."[2]

Kienholz's work commented savagely on racism, aging, sexual stereotypes, poverty, greed, corruption, imperialism, patriotism, religion, alienation, and most of all, moral hypocrisy. Because of their satirical and antiestablishment tones, his works have often been linked to the funk art movement based in San Francisco in the 1960s.[8]

Collaboration with Nancy Reddin

In The Infield Was Patty Peccavi by Edward and Nancy Kienholz; 1981; metal, resin, cloth, wood, glass, paper, photomechanical reproduction, electric lights, stuffed bird and paint; in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

In 1981, Ed Kienholz officially declared that all his work from 1972 on should be retrospectively understood to be co-authored by, and co-signed by, his wife and collaborator, Nancy Reddin Kienholz.[6] Collectively, they are referred to as "Kienholz." Their work has been widely acclaimed, particularly in Europe.

In the early 1970s, Kienholz received a grant that permitted him to work in Berlin. His most important works during this period were based on the Volksempfängers (radio receiving apparatus from the National Socialist period in Germany). In 1973 he was guest artist of the German Academic Exchange Service in Berlin.

In 1973, Kienholz and Reddin moved from Los Angeles to Hope, Idaho and for the next twenty years they divided their time between Berlin and Idaho. In 1976 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1977 he opened "The Faith and Charity in Hope Gallery" at their Idaho studio.

Kienholz died suddeny in Idaho on June 10, 1994, from a heart attack while hiking in the mountains near their home. He was buried in a Kienholz installation: Robert Hughes wrote, "[H]is corpulent, embalmed body was wedged into the front seat of a brown 1940 Packard coupe. There was a dollar and a deck of cards in his pocket, a bottle of 1931 Chianti beside him and the ashes of his dog Smash in the back. He was set for the afterlife. To the whine of bagpipes, the Packard, steered by his widow Nancy Reddin Kienholz, rolled like a funeral barge into the big hole."[9]

Exhibitions

Nancy Reddin Kienholz has continued to administer the joint artistic estate, organizing shows and exhibitions.[10]

Retrospectives of Kienholz's work have been infrequent, due to the difficulty and expense of assembling literally room-sized sculptures and installations from widely-dispersed collections around the world. Kienholz work has often been difficult to view, both because of its subject matter, and the logistics of displaying it. Relatively few of the major works had been on display in the US, the Kienholz's native land, though American museums have now started to feature their work more prominently, especially after a major retrospective (posthumous) exhibition in 1996 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The Bowers Museum (Santa Ana, CA), the Dayton Art Institute, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) are among the public collections holding work by Edward Kienholz.[11]

The diverse and freely improvised materials and methods used in Kienholz works pose an unusual challenge to art conservators who try to preserve the artist's original intent and appearances. Treatment of Back Seat Dodge '38 for clothes moths presented an awkward situation, which was deftly addressed by the Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum in behalf of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, owner of the artwork.[12]

References

  1. ^ Comments by Michael Bowen on a photograph of the NOW Gallery's entrance. Beat Super Nova
  2. ^ a b c Edward Kienholz / MATRIX 21 UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
  3. ^ Late Fifties at the Ferus. LACMA
  4. ^ "His truck used to have ED KIENHOLZ--EXPERT painted on the door. You might not trust Roy Lichtenstein to frame a shed or Jasper Johns to re-weld a railing, but Kienholz was doing that stuff since childhood." Hughes, Robert. "All-American Barbaric Yawp." May 6, 1996. TIME
  5. ^ a b Wyatt, Edward (October 2, 2007), "In Sunny Southern California, a Sculpture Finds Its Place in the Shadows", New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/arts/design/02dodg.html?ex=1349928000&en=924d5cd6d7aea227&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink 
  6. ^ a b Peltakian, Danielle. Chronology, Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) Sullivan Goss Gallery
  7. ^ Kienholz, Edward; Nancy Reddin Kienholz ; Walter Hopps [curator] ; with contributions by Rosetta Brooks (1996). Kienholz : a retrospective (2. print. ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. ISBN 978-0874270990. 
  8. ^ "Minimal Art," The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Art, ed. Harold Osborne (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981) 376.
  9. ^ Hughes, Robert. "All-American Barbaric Yawp." May 6, 1996. TIME
  10. ^ Wiggins, Colin; Wildt, Annemarie de (2009). The Hoerengracht : Kienholz at the National Gallery London. London: National Gallery. ISBN 9781857094534. 
  11. ^ Edward Kienholz in AskArt.com
  12. ^ Daniel, Vinod; et. al. (25 October 1993). "Nitrogen Anoxia of "The Back Seat Dodge 38": A Pest Eradication Case Study". WAAC Newsletter. http://cool.conservation-us.org/waac/wn/wn16/wn16-1/wn16-102.html. Retrieved 2011-07-29. 

Further reading

  • Pincus, Robert L. (1990). On a scale that competes with the world : the art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520067301.  — Largest catalog of Kienholz work published before Ed's death
  • Kienholz, Edward; Nancy Reddin Kienholz ; Walter Hopps [curator] ; with contributions by Rosetta Brooks (1996). Kienholz : a retrospective (2. print. ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. pp. 304. ISBN 978-0874270990.  — Catalog of definitive retrospective (posthumous) exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
  • Wiggins, Colin; Wildt, Annemarie de (2009). The Hoerengracht : Kienholz at the National Gallery London. London: National Gallery. ISBN 978-1857094534.  — Exhibition catalog of the last major installation assembled by Kienholz before Ed's death, at the National Gallery, London

External links


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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Oxford Grove Art. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
$copyright.smallImage.alttext Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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