Эдвард Киенхольц: Художник, обличающий современность.

American artist (1927 1994)

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, 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 Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation of the 1950s, a contemporary of the writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer, his visual imagery at least as grim, gritty, sordid and depressing as their literary vocabulary". that year he met grad student Walter Hopps, who owned the Syndell Gallery. They co organized the All City Art Festival, 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. 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. This artwork later caused a stir at the documenta 4 exhibition in 1968. 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", 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. He sold a number of Concept Tableaux, but only The State Hospital progressed to a completed artwork. 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." 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 parakeet cheerfully chirping and hopping about. The bird is considered an integral part of the installation, but requires special attention to ensure that it remains healthy and active, as described in the Whitney Museum's online catalog and video. Another well known work, The State Hospital, incorporates a pair of black goldfish swimming in each of two glass goldfish bowls representing the head of an inmate suffering with mental illness. Kienholz's work commented savagely on racism, aging, mental illness, sexual stereotypes, poverty, greed, corruption, imperialism, patriotism, religion, alienation, and most of all, moral hypocrisy. Because of their satirical and antiestablishment tones, their works have often been linked to the funk art movement based in San Francisco in the 1960s. Although he was an atheist and despised feigned religiosity, Keinholz carefully preserved an anonymous store window shrine discovered in Spokane, Washington. Calling this found outsider artwork The Jesus Corner, Keinholz exhibited it in a Spokane museum in 1984, and then showed it at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Ten years later, Keinholz insisted on selling it at a reduced price to the Missoula Art Museum in Missoula, Montana, to ensure that it would be on view in an environment he felt comfortable with.

Kienholz is acknowledged as a pioneer, as early as 1960 with Roxy's, of what came to be known as installation art and assemblage art. He also produced early works of conceptual art with his Concept Tableau series in the mid 1960s. In 1968, Ed Kienholz's carefully documented and self consciously outrageous behavior in what has been called the "TWA Incident" revealed aspects of what would later be called "performance art". In spite of his claims to be merely a rough working class carpenter and mechanic, Kienholz was well aware of his position in the contemporary art scene, and acted assertively to shape his image and legacy.