Ред Грумс: Америкалық поп-арт суретшісінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

American multimedia artist (born 1937)
the 1986 film

Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American multimedia artist best known for his colorful pop art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone (of Provincetown's Sun Gallery) when he was starting out as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Provincetown and was studying with Hans Hofmann.

Grooms was born in Nashville, Tennessee during the middle of the Great Depression. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Nashville's Peabody College. In 1956, Grooms moved to New York City, to enroll at the New School for Social Research. A year later, Grooms attended a summer session at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. There he met experimental animation pioneer Yvonne Andersen, with whom he collaborated on several short films. Red Grooms belongs to a generation of artists who, in G. R. Swenson's words, "took the world too seriously not to be amused by it." As Judith Stein notes, "At times Grooms's humor has an absurdist streak, full of the impetuous energy and preposterous puns of the Marx Brothers. He shares a comic sense with Bob and Ray whose straight man/funny man teamwork plays off against the mundane conventions of daily life. As an empiricist with a keen political sense and a retentive memory for visual facts, Grooms follows in the tradition of William Hogarth and Honoré Daumier, who were canny commentators on the human condition." In 1969, Peter Schjeldahl compared Grooms to Marcel Duchamp, because both embodied "a movement of one man that is open to everybody."

In the spring of 1958, Grooms, Yvonne Andersen and Lester Johnson each painted twelve foot by twelve foot panels, which they erected with telephone poles on a parking lot adjacent an amusement park in Salisbury, MA "

Inspired by artist run spaces such as New York's Hansa Gallery and Phoenix, and Provincetown's Sun Gallery, Grooms and painter Jay Milder opened the City Gallery in Grooms' second floor loft in the Flatiron District. When Phoenix refused to show Claes Oldenburg, Grooms and Milder dropped out of Phoenix and City Gallery presented Oldenberg's first New York exhibition, as well as that of Jim Dine. Other artists who showed at City Gallery include Stephen Durkee, Mimi Gross, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson, and Alex Katz. Today Grooms is recognized as a pioneer of site specific sculpture and installation art. City of Chicago (1967), a room sized, walk through "sculpto pictorama," features sky scraper proportioned sculptures of Mayor Daley and Hugh Hefner "joined by such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln, Al Capone, and fan dancer Sally Rand, accompanied by a sound track featuring gunfire and burlesque music. Grooms's genius for rendering the intricacies of architectural ornament is vividly apparent in several three dimensional vistas of Chicago's famous buildings. Evident here and in the numerous other cityscapes Grooms has created is his extraordinary ability to capture a sense of place with a great sensitivity to detail." One of his biggest themes is the use of painting people, often using other artists or their styles to show his appreciation for their works.

Regarding his large wall relief, William Penn Shaking Hands with the Indians (1967), based on a similarly titled painting by Benjamin West, Grooms remarked, "To tell the truth I did [the work] more because of Mr Benjamin West than Mr. Penn. Benjamin West is a hero for American Art. As I understand he set up the whole tableau for The Treaty on his estate using actors from a touring Shakespeare company Then he had an easel installed in the basket of a hot air balloon tethered at 60 feet, and with the help of sandwiches and birch beer hauled up to him by his wife, painted this great masterpiece in six days. To me, this is exemplary American behavior." Grooms commented "Denver is beginning to rival Grumpsville, Tennessee, as one of the great sourpuss towns."

Besides painting and sculpture, Grooms is also known for his prolific printmaking. He has experimented with numerous techniques, creating woodblock prints, spray painted stencils, soft ground etchings, and elaborate three dimensional lithograph constructions. His 1973 purchase of a hot glue gun facilitated several masterpieces of paper sculpture; for example, Sam, a portrait of Sam Reily who appeared in Fat Feet; and Gretchen's Fruit, a tour de force still life. In 1979, Grooms spent a week teaching at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, where he first started working in bronze. Regarding the several western and football themes made in metal, Grooms told Grace Glueck: "It looks just like my regular stuff, but it's for the ages. . It turns out to be easier to work with than less durable materials." The monumental Lumberjack (1977–1984), cast from a whimsical woodsman Red made as a gift for artist Neil Welliver, demonstrates his facility with the lost wax method of casting. In 2003, Grooms was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Academy of Design.

Grooms currently lives and works in New York City in a studio in lower Manhattan at the intersection of Tribeca and Chinatown, where he has lived for around 40 years. He has one daughter, Saskia Grooms.