Page 48 - Studio International - February 1966

Even Arthur Dove, whose own poetic style quickly Succinctly summarized, this melancholy story of diffi-
asserted itself and whose watercolours and oils nor- cult beginnings is both touching and impressive.
mally referred, at least obliquely, to specific landscape
or animal motifs, found moments to move out into total
abstraction. His 1927 oval painting on Gershwin's New York
Rhapsody in Blue looks more like a Jackson Pollock Midway between a happening and an old-fashioned
than like anything that preceded him. tableau, Ed Kienholz's new outburst at the Dwan
Among those Americans who stubbornly insisted on Gallery concerns a popular dive in Hollywood known
reference to observed phenomena are two extraordin- as Barney's Beanery.
ary figures, Charles Demuth and Georgia O'Keeffe, both Anyone who has entered its rank but cosy confines in
of whom preserved their idiosyncratic styles with real life will have found it much as he experiences it in
tremendous tenacity, and both of whom stand up as Kienholz's careful reconstruction on 57th Street. Not
singular artists by any standard, national or international. only will he encounter the cigarette butts, spilled cheap
Sculpture did not fare as well. It is true that Max whisky and swinging crowd customarily adorning its
Weber made a few cubist sculptures early in his career, premises, but he will also be assailed by a carefully-
and that Archipenko arrived in the U.S. in 1923, but on distilled mixture of stale cigarette and beer smells.
the whole there was no vital activity in sculpture until Kienholz has left next to nothing to the imagination.
fairly recently. The one exception is John Storrs, who But that 'next to' is important: the sole reminder that
worked for a while with Rodin and boldly experimented this is, after all, a work of the imagination and not a
with a kind of futurist emphasis on the active plane and waxworks replica is in the visages of the clients. They
the potential surface-enlivenment of polychrome. all wear clocks for heads.
The value of this exhibition lies not only in its extensive Whether the clocks are intended as portents whether
Ed Kienholz review of every avenue tentatively explored by the first they are weighty philosophical allusions; whether they
Barney's Beanery 1965 American generation of avant-garde artists, but also in are mere whims; whether they are deliberately set at
Mixed media montage
Dwan Gallery its concentration on their outstanding contributions. different times; these remain open questions. I am