Edward Kienholz
Edward Kienholz | |
---|---|
Whitworth College "Self-taught" | |
Known for | Installation art Assemblage |
Notable work | Roxy's (1961) The Illegal Operation (1962) Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1964) The Wait (1964-65) The State Hospital (1966) Five Car Stud (1972) |
Movement | Funk art |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (1976) |
Edward Ralph Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor 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 fifth wife,[1][2] 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.
Art critic Brian Sewell called Edward Kienholz "the least known, most neglected and forgotten American artist of
Early life
Edward Ralph Kienholz was born in
Artistic development
In 1956, Kienholz opened the NOW Gallery, for which Michael Bowen designed the sign;[5] that year he met grad student Walter Hopps, who owned the Syndell Gallery. They co-organized the All-City Art Festival,[6] then in 1957, with poet Bob Alexander, they opened the Ferus Gallery on North La Cienega Boulevard.[7] 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.[8] 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. Set in the year 1943, Roxy's depicts Kienholz's memories of his youthful encounters in a Nevada brothel complete with antique furniture, a 30s era jukebox, vintage sundries, and satirical characters assembled from castoff pieces of junk.[9] 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",[6] and threatened to withhold financing for the museum unless the tableau was removed from view.[10] 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.[10] LACMA did not formally acquire the work until 1986.[11]
In 1966, Kienholz began to spend summers in
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."[6]
Kienholz occasionally incorporated defunct or operating radios or televisions into their works, sometimes adding sound and moving images to the overall effect. Live animals were selectively included as crucial elements in some installations, providing motion and sound that contrasted starkly with frozen tableaus of decay and degradation. For example, The Wait, a dismal scene of a lonely skeletal woman surrounded by memories and waiting for death, incorporates a cage with a live
Kienholz's work commented savagely on racism, aging, mental illness, sexual stereotypes, poverty, greed, corruption, imperialism, patriotism, religion, alienation, and most of all,
Although he was an
Collaboration with Nancy Reddin (1972–1994)
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 fifth wife and collaborator, former photojournalist Nancy Reddin Kienholz.[1][11] Collectively, they are referred to as "Kienholz". Their work has been widely acclaimed, particularly in Europe.[3]
In the early 1970s, Kienholz received a grant that permitted him to work in
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, and showed both established and emerging artists, including Francis Bacon, Jasper Johns, Peter Shelton, and Robert Helm.[1] The Keinholzs continued to produce their own new installations and sculptures for exhibition.
Death
Edward Kienholz died suddenly in Idaho on June 10, 1994, from a
After Edward's death, Nancy Reddin Kienholz continued to administer their joint artistic estate, organizing shows and exhibitions,[21] until her own death in 2019.
Exhibitions
Retrospectives of Kienholz's work have been infrequent, due to the difficulty and expense of assembling fragile, 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 Kienholzes' native land, though American museums have now started to feature their work more prominently, especially after a major retrospective (
The diverse and freely improvised materials and methods used in Kienholz works pose an unusual challenge to
In 2009, the
In 2011, Kienholz's work was visited with renewed attention in Los Angeles partly as a result of the Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions,
Kienholz's work entitled The Jesus Corner is now on display at the Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, Washington.
Legacy
Kienholz is acknowledged as a pioneer, as early as 1960 with Roxy's, of what came to be known as
French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard's book Pacific Wall (Le mur du pacifique) is an extended meditation on Keinholz's Five Card Stud installation.[28]
References
- ^ a b c Smith, Roberta (June 13, 1994). "Edward Kienholz, 66, Sculptor Known for Elaborate Art, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-07-09.
- ^ a b c Sewell, Brian (19 November 2009). "Truth about the sex trade from Edward Kienholz". London Evening Standard. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
- ^ a b c Wilson, William (June 13, 1994). "Kienholz Legacy Reaches Past Art: An American original, the artist's life and work fueled the force of the Beat Generation". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2014-07-09.
- ^ a b c Willick, Damon (Spring 2006). "Good morning, my name is Ed Kienholz". X-tra. X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
- ^ Comments by Michael Bowen on a photograph of the NOW Gallery's entrance. Beat Super Nova
- ^ a b c "Edward Kienholz / MATRIX 21". Archived from the original on December 1, 2009.
- ^ "Late Fifties at the Ferus". Archived from the original on January 29, 2010.
- ^ "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
- ^ a b Rooney, Kara L. (June 3, 2010). "EDWARD KIENHOLZ Roxys". The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Art, Politics, and Culture. The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2013-06-22.
- ^ a b Wyatt, Edward (October 2, 2007), "In Sunny Southern California, a Sculpture Finds Its Place in the Shadows", The New York Times
- ^ a b Peltakian, Danielle. Chronology, Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) Sullivan Goss Gallery
- ISBN 978-0-87427-099-0.
- ^ Bocchi, Giancarlo (ed.). "The Concept Tableaux - 1965/66". Archivio di tra. Fondazione bocchi. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
- ^ Bocchi, Giancarlo (ed.). "The State Hospital - 1966". Archivio di tra. Fondazione bocchi. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
- ^ "The Wait (1964-65)". Whitney Museum of American Art. Archived from the original on 2014-05-31. Retrieved 2014-07-09.
- ^ Couvrette, Shelly. "Edward Kienholz: The State Hospital". Cat Sidh. Retrieved 2014-08-16.
- ^ "Minimal Art," The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Art, ed. Harold Osborne (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981) 376.
- ^ a b Walsh, Cory (November 8, 2013). "Piece of honesty: Ed Kienholz found art 'The Jesus Corner' is a 'humble expression of one man's belief'". Missoulian. Retrieved 2014-07-09.
- ^ Net, Media Art (August 11, 2021). "Media Art Net | ADA – Aktionen der Avantgarde: ADA - Avant-garde actions". www.medienkunstnetz.de.
- ^ Hughes, Robert. "All-American Barbaric Yawp." May 6, 1996. TIME
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85709-453-4.
- ^ "Edward Kienholz in". Askart.com. 1989-02-05. Retrieved 2013-06-22.
- ^ Daniel, Vinod; et al. (25 October 1993). "Nitrogen Anoxia of "The Back Seat Dodge 38": A Pest Eradication Case Study". WAAC Newsletter. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
- ^ "Edward Kienholz's Renowned Installation Roxys, 1960-61 at David Zwirner". artdaily.org. Royalville Communications, Inc. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
- ^ "Ferus Gallery, Edward Kienholz installation » Pacific Standard Time at the Getty". Getty.edu. 1965-05-15. Retrieved 2013-06-22.
- ^ a b "Edward Kienholz: Five Car Stud 1969–1972, Revisited". LACMA. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Retrieved 2013-06-22.
- ^ Leigha, D. B. (June 18, 2012). "art basel prada acquires edward kienholz's five car stud". designboom. Retrieved 2013-06-22.
- S2CID 143634184. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
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 978-0-520-06730-1. — Largest book of Kienholz work published before Ed's death; places his art in a broad cultural context as well as asserting its importance in the history of American and modern art.
- Kienholz, Edward; Kienholz, Nancy Reddin; Hopps, Walter [curator]; Brooks, Rosetta (1996). Kienholz : a retrospective (2. print. ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art
- Kienholz, Nancy Reddin; Livingstone, Marco (2001). Kienholz : tableau drawings. Los Angeles: L.A. Louver. ISBN 0-9708187-0-X.
- Wiggins, Colin; Wildt, Annemarie de (2009). The Hoerengracht : Kienholz at the National Gallery London. London: National Gallery. National Gallery, London
- Martina Weinhart & Max Hollein, ed. (2011). Kienholz die Zeichen der Zeit = the signs of the times ; [...anläßlich der Ausstellung Kienholz.Die Zeichen der Zeit, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt: 22.Okt. 2011 - 29.Jan.2012, Museum Tinguely, Basel: 22.Febr. - 13.Mai 2012] (in German and English). Köln: König. ISBN 9783863350871.
External links
- Interview of Edward Kienholz, part of Los Angeles Art Community - Group Portrait, Center for Oral History Research, UCLA Library Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles.
- Solo and Group Exhibitions 1961-2010. LA Louver
- Edward Kienholz. Back Seat Dodge '38. LACMA
- Edward Kienholz Images of objects (in English) Library Maxima Moshkova (in Russian)
- Willick, Damon. "Good morning, my name is Ed Kienholz...: Issues of the Artist's Self-Presentation". X-TRA. X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly. Retrieved 2017-02-03. Illustrated essay
- Ed & Nancy Reddin Kienholz at LA Louver Gallery
- "Kienholz: A Retrospective". goodreads.com. Retrieved 2011-07-29. — Capsule review of the definitive catalog of Kienholz artwork
- Kienholz. The Signs of the Times. Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt Video: Kienholz Exhibition Frankfurt, Germany, October 22, 2011. - January 29, 2012.