Word: kienholzes
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High in the hills above Hollywood's Sunset Strip, a brick path worn slippery as slate leads to a sturdy, plain studio. Inside lives the man who last week was the most talked-about artist in all Los Angeles, 38-year-old Edward Kienholz. To keep in line the crowds thronging to see his work, the Los Angeles County Museum took the precaution of canceling all days off and vacations for its guards...
...taco on a plate is made of asphalt tile. Every object is rigidly held in place by epoxy, preserved in fiber glass, sometimes flocked to give it a mysterious felt texture. Point of it all? "People in any context are a reason for a tableau," says Kienholz, "this speaks volumes about our present society...
Greasy Verisimilitude. But not even in their wildest dreams did the oldtimers go in for a production like Edward Kienholz's The Beanery (opposite), currently assembled at Manhattan's Dwan Gallery. A veritable apotheosis of the ordinary, it is West Coast Artist Kienholz's reconstruction of a favorite Los Angeles artists' greasy spoon, a kind of frozen happening quickened by sounds (random conversations, taped on the spot, and jukebox background music) and circulating odors (stale bacon grease) pushed around...
...Kienholz, 38, has meticulously created the eatery on Santa Monica Boulevard. In his quest for verisimilitude, he even bought a new phone booth to replace the Beanery's so that he could have the real thing for his stage-set. The jukebox, too, is real, though the choice of records turns out to be art world in-puns: Up a Larry Rivers; It's Delightful, It's Delovely, It's de Kooning...
Rather than cartoons, Edward Kienholz, 38, goes in for whole stage sets (or "tableaux," as he calls them) that have the grisly impact of a charnel house, yet on second glance present deeply shocking morality plays. Birthday, says the well-spoken former farmer, should express the hope offered by even the most forlorn birth. Giant plastic arrows express resurrection, even if with a tainted blatancy; the plastic bubble above the mannequin mother's mouth, actually a dimestore baby's plastic bubble, symbolizes a scream. It is theater, embalmed in translucent epoxy and cluttered with props-a ghostly coat...