Kienholz: The Hoerengracht
Sunley Room, National Gallery, until 21 February 2010
The first time I saw Ed Kienholz’s work was at his 1996 retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York. I was completely overwhelmed — there was something so powerful and so disturbing about his huge stage-set-size installations which covered subjects such as brothels, mental hospitals and abortion.
Kienholz was a pioneer of assemblage art in the Fifties and Sixties, using objects he found in flea markets and elsewhere to make up his ‘tableaux’. He died in 1994; but from the early Seventies he and Nancy Reddin, the photographer whom he married in 1972, worked together as a team, travelling between their studios in Idaho and Berlin. And it is their joint work ‘The Hoerengracht’ (‘Whores Canal’), 1983–8, which has been assembled — with just inches to spare — in the Sunley Room: it is the Kienholzes’ largest construction.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in