Artist of the Day: Edward Kienholz

Edward Kienholz

 

My first exposure to Edward Kienholz occurred when I inadvertently stumbled upon his once controversial creation, "Back Seat Dodge '38" one day while wandering casually through the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

 

 The LA Board of Supervisors tried to ban "Back Seat Dodge '38"

 

Kienholz is known as an "installation artist," a term which evolved from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s to describe those whose work transcends far beyond the traditional tableau of fixed focal points and the strictly visual impact of framed artwork to engage the viewer's entire sensory experience. Imagine instead a series of integrated sculptures representing something more akin to a giant diorama or theatrical stage set.

 

He was also a pioneer of the Funk Art Movement, a progenitor of emerging artists such as David Gilhooly or Viola Frey who starting to use junk materials or "the leftovers of human experience," as Kienholz called it, to express their thoughts and ideas.

 

David Gilhooly is one example of Funk Art Movement artists.

 

I was immediately and powerfully attracted to the bawdy "Back Seat Dodge," and completely unaware that the sculpture, which portrays a couple fucking in the back seat of a car, gained a large dose of publicity/notoriety/celebrity in 1966 when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors tried to label the sculpture as pornographic and ban it from LACMA .

 

Ah, but some 40 years later, there I was in a very public section of the museum, feeling awkwardly voyeuristic and somewhat conflicted as parents with curious children in hand passed casually past.

 

"Ed always said that the best installation was one that would make it look like you came upon this couple at night, up at a necker's spot on Mulholland Drive," said Lyn Kienholz, who was married to the artist when he created the sculpture in 1964 and who sold it to the museum in 1981. "It would only be illuminated by the car's headlights and the light inside the car." 

 

Kienholz's "Roxy's" depicts a World War II-era whorehouse

 

Kienholz was famous for creating live-scale rooms, including time period decor. In one work, "Roxy's" he built the interior of a World War II bordello, including a portrait of General McArthur, a June 1943 calendar, and  era magazines to express early memories of his budding sexuality as a teenager. The room features macabre figurines, artistic interpretations of whores crafted from dolls, mannequins and human bones.

 

Kienholz had no formal artistic training. The Washington state native worked as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital and a vacuum cleaner salesman, among other things, before settling settled in Los Angeles and opening a series of art galleries. He is today famous for projecting the gritty, sometimes vulgar aspects of human existence with an almost whimsical flair.  While it once shocked a city, "Back Seat Dodge" almost had me giggling like an embarrassed adolescent who has stumbled upon something taboo yet fascinating.

 

In 1975, not long after moving to Idaho with his wife, Kienholz received a Guggenheim Award. For the next twenty years the couple traveled frequently to Berlin , where the artist had a strong following. He died in 1994.