Scavenger's parade - assemblages and installation art, Edward Kienholz, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

Art in America, Oct, 1996 by Reagan Upshaw

The Tadpole Piano Pool With Woman Affixed Also (1971) is an homage to Kienholz's Dada precursors. An extremely Duchampian work (note the title's clear echo of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), it features a grand piano sheathed in galvanized metal and filled with water, aquatic plants and live tadpoles, while a cast of a nude pregnant woman, painted to match the metal, is langorously stretched out where the keyboard ought to be,(4) A galvanized lamp and piano bench stand alongside. (The combination of nude woman, water, greenery and aquatic life in an unexpected context also link this work with another Surrealist succes de scandale: Dali's Rainy Taxi of 1936-38, in which a nude mannequin shares a taxi seat with ivy, vegetables and snails while a shower of water is piped in.) The work is disquieting but is also one of the few Kienholz creations that could without qualification be described as beautiful.

The culmination of Kienholz's art about art was The Art Show (begun as a "concept tableau" in 1963, completed in 1977) in which he cheerfully bit the hand that fed him. In a two-room art gallery, 19 figures cast from critics, collectors, dealers and friends are arranged to simulate an exhibition opening. Some stand in conversational groups, others look at the art, which consists of 14 collage assemblages documenting the casting of the figures. Each person who was cast--among whom were Virginia Dwan, Jurgen Harten, Pontus Hulten and Eduardo Paolozzi--was asked to record a passage from the writings of an art critic that he or she found particularly unintelligible. Each realistically dressed effigy has a Plexiglas box embedded in its chest. When a visitor presses a button on the box, the recorded spiel (in English, Swedish, Japanese, Italian and other languages) is played back. In lieu of a face, each figure has been given an automobile air vent which spews--appropriately--hot air. Viewers at the retrospective are free to roam among Kienholz's figure and interact with them. To activate the recordings and then listen to them, viewers must get very close to the figures, essentially becoming a part of the tableau. Given the life-size scale of the figures and their realistic clothing, it is sometimes difficult to tell who in The Art Show is real--you have to wait to see who moves.

By the time The Art Show was completed, Kienholz had left Los Angeles for Berlin. In 1972 he met Nancy Reddin, whom he subsequently married. Kienholz acknowledged Nancy Reddin Kienholz's role as a collaborator in 1981, when he directed that all works created since their meeting should bear both their names. The question of changes in theme or appearance in the pre- and post-Nancy Reddin work is a complicated one. There may be a few more female figures as leading ladies, but Kienholz had dealt with women's issues such as abortion as early as The Illegal Operation, done in 1962. As his art works got larger and ever more elaborate, the use of assistants became necessary, and it becomes meaningless to speak of Kienholz's "hand" when discussing the construction of his works. He obviously felt that his wife's contributions were significant, but, perhaps as a testament to their collaborative process, her contribution doesn't show.