Page 58 - Studio International - June 1967

summate control is seen not only in the paintings, The exhibition was announced first when a fac-
but in the meticulous and excellent graphite simile of a real legal contract was mailed out with
drawings. the heading: Contract for Purchase of a Concept
Enhancing the illusionary mystery of her paint- Tableau. The artist, hereinafter called the artist, and
ings is the very personal colour. Remington is the buyer, hereinafter called the buyer, were to
drawn again and again to the nether regions of the enter an agreement in which it was stipulated that
colour scale—deep purples, wine reds, midnight the buyer subsidizes the realization of a concept.
blues and rich greys. These colours are the heart of The exhibition, which followed a few weeks
her paintings, illumined and stressed by flares of later, was comprised largely of bronze plaques
pure orange or scarlet used sparingly for definition. bearing the names of various tableaux (The
Nothing could detach these dusky colours from Commercial, The God Box, The American Trip, 'a
their romantic associations, just as nothing could collaboration between Jean Tinguely, America
prevent extra-pictorial associations when the queer and me', and Mayor Sam Edsel) and printed
internal lights with their high effulgence radiate descriptions of what the tableaux would look like.
out from the centre of her pictures. The descriptions range from a poetic project in
I find this exhibition exceptional, then, because Hope, Idaho, where 'I plan to sign the world as the
the artist has fully digested a vital tradition, and most awesome "found object" I have ever come
is yet fully attuned to the present; because the across' to more tart, Kienholzian concepts such as
artist has not succumbed to 'serial' ideas (each a God Box 'in size somewhere between Reich's
picture is distinct both in imagery and abstract Orgone Accumulators and a Western Outhouse' with
form); and because the essential nature of painting, a bit of erudite historical-datum about the name decker bed, bare matresses, a single bed-pan, and
as I see it, is not compromised, but only extended. which 'comes from a slang phrase referring to the a frightfully realistic and pathetic double repre-
pipe organ in radio soap operas of the 1940s'. sentation of an elderly patient, manacled and
If the West Coast has given us this distinctive In all the scenarios, the peculiar fusion of authen- reclining. Instead of a face, there is a glass void
painter, it has also given us a one-man movement tic yahoo naivete and sophisticated, sociological within which black fish were swimming.
in the person of Ed Kienholz whose recent exhibi- comment, singles Kienholz out as an original. No Now, in American joke lore, there are innumer-
tion at the DWAN GALLERY, I'm pleased to report, one sees America with quite the same acerbity, and able variations on the nuthouse, its nude patients,
rocked and shocked the ladies. Despite the no one can rummage through the dead fads and and the effect they have when the Governor's wife
increasing tolerance threshold on the part of obsessions of the past twenty-five years with a more comes to visit. Madness has always retained its
gallery visitors, and despite the unceasing publicity penetrating eye. fearful tabu, along with death, in our young
an artist such as Kienholz attracts and encourages, The tour de force of the exhibition was the single country. Kienholz's attack on the delicate sensi-
there are still untold numbers of suburbanites executed tableau, the one which made the ladies bilities, long schooled to make Freudian getaways
who come and thrill with fear and disgust in exclaim their outrage and discomfit. Called The in jokes, is grim and effective. Moreover, the
the face of such an exhibition. State Hospital, it is a cell containing a double- combination of bitter criticism and obvious com-
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