Page 29 - Studio International - May 1966

1927) a nude collaged on to a medieval church interior is layers of cloth, he thrashed about and grabbed at the legs
followed by a shot of machinery grouped with a basket of passing spectators. He improvised a stream-of-con-
chair. sciousness monologue, pouring out disjointed, irrational
The most incongruous of all juxtapositions are to be statements.' Such a scene in a Happening can justly be
found in Happenings, in which several of the prominent regarded as pure Surrealism, with firm roots in the com-
Pop artists have been involved. Oldenburg's Injun, per- mon source of Jarry.
formed on two evenings in Dallas in 1962, provides some Inconsequential juxtapositions are by no means the only
interesting examples of deliberately inexplicable incon- Surrealist element in Happenings; the same source could
gruities, influenced by the irrationality of dreams. be cited for both the overall, environmental aspect of the
(Oldenburg, by the way, wrote down his own dreams over productions, and for the emphasis on sex. A spectator's
a period of several years). The script itself actually refers physical involvement is the most obvious aspect of a
to 'inexplicable pastoral scenes: boxes tumble off the roof Happening which distinguishes it from a normal theatri-
of the garage. The spotlight plays down in the garden on cal creation, and can be paralleled by the unusual exhibi-
some people moving around in bags ? Someone is talking tion techniques of the Surrealists. Beds resting on real
on the porch of the children's house. Perhaps a hanged grass around a large pool met the spectator at the centre
man....' Details of the production itself includes such of their 1938 Paris exhibition; overhead he would have
sequences of events as: 'It was dark on the porch. Torn seen, as part of Duchamp's display, 1,200 coal sacks
pieces of heavy kraft paper hung from the ceiling, making forming a ceiling. Five years later in New York Duchamp
a shifting maze through which the people pushed their stretched string in many directions across the open gal-
Jim Dine
My tuxedo makes and way. In the centre of the porch, inside a fencelike struc- lery space of the Surrealist show. Back in Paris the princi-
impresses blunt edge to the ture, was the man in the brownish-green net (the artist pal theme of the 1959-60 show (also mainly arranged by
light 1965 himself) who had come from the audience at the begin- Duchamp) being erotica and the Marquis de Sade, at
Oil and collage
71 7/8 x 35 7/8 in. ning of the performance. Almost invisible under the the vernissage a live, nude model was used as a table off
which (whom) to serve food and drinks. As Happenings
are only partially a manifestation of Pop, in that Pop
artists have created some of them, a further discussion
would be out of place here, but they highlight in their
environmental involvement a characteristic of paintings
by Tom Wesselmann, tableaux by Edward Kienholz, the
sculpture of Segal, and the combined works of several
artists in the 1964 Supermarket.
In a New York dealer's gallery a supermarket was
created in which were displayed Pop works, of which the
most publicized at the time were the Campbell soup tins
signed and arranged in a pyramid by Andy Warhol.
Claes Oldenburg contributed his familiar plaster food,
and Robert Watts his metal fruit and vegetables; Jasper
Johns contributed his painted bronze beer cans (by then
five years old) ; Roy Lichtenstein produced enamelled
hot dog displays; Tom Wesselmann created a still-life of
freshly roasted turkey; and James Rosenquist produced
a large painting for a $100,000 beauty contest. Photo-
graphs of this highly controversial exhibition clearly show
that the realism of a genuine supermarket was trans-
cended, resulting in a fantasy world of the Surrealists
thirty years earlier.
Edward Kienholz's tableaux assembled for exhibitions in
dealer's galleries, mainly in Los Angeles, range from
simple groupings to more complex arrangements. He
satirized the countless National Weeks in the States in
1963 with an arrangement of a chair on which stood a
hatbox pierced by a rolling-pin, surrounded by other
objects including the national flag: the whole concoction
being entitled National Banjo on the Knee Week. In the same
year, in a New York gallery, he recreated a notorious
wartime brothel in Las Vegas complete with seven sculp-
tural prostitutes. The tableau had the shocking confron-
tation of a Surrealist nightmare, complete with one whore
who had an electric clock for a belly, and another who
had a coin-operated machine filled with unborn babies.
One critic has talked of this tableau as the creation of a
`sensitive adolescent'; but the involvement of the spectra-