Edward Kienholz

Edward Kienholz (October 23, 1927 – June 10, 1994) was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor whose work was highly critical of aspects of modern life. From 1972 onwards, he assembled much of his artwork in close collaboration with his artistic partner and fifth wife,Nancy Reddin Kienholz. Throughout much of their career, the work of the Kienholzes was more appreciated in Europe than in their native United States, though American museums have featured their art more prominently since the 1990s.

Art critic Brian Sewell called Edward Kienholz "the least known, most neglected and forgotten American artist of Jack Kerouac's Beat Generation of the 1950s, a contemporary of the writers Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Norman Mailer, his visual imagery at least as grim, gritty, sordid and depressing as their literary vocabulary".

Early life

Edward Ralph Kienholz was born in Fairfield, Washington, in the dry eastern part of the state. He grew up on a wheat farm, learning carpentry, drafting and mechanical skills. His father was strict, and his mother was a religious fundamentalist. but the rebellious son longed to escape this constricted environment. He studied art at Eastern Washington College of Education and, briefly, at Whitworth College in Spokane, but did not receive any formal degree. After a series of odd jobs, working as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital, manager of a dance band, used car salesman, caterer, decorator and vacuum cleaner salesman, Kienholz settled in Los Angeles, where he became involved with the avant-garde art scene of the day.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles (ⁱ/lɒs ˈændʒəlᵻs/ loss AN-jə-ləs or loss AN-jə-liss) (Spanish for "The Angels"), officially the City of Los Angeles and often known by its initials L.A., is the second-largest city in the United States after New York City, the most populous city in the state of California, and the county seat of Los Angeles County.

Situated in Southern California, Los Angeles is known for its mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity, sprawling metropolis, and as a major center of the American entertainment industry. Los Angeles lies in a large coastal basin surrounded on three sides by mountains reaching up to and over 10,000 feet (3,000 m).

Historically home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California. The city was officially founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood. The city experienced rapid growth with the discovery of oil.

Nancy Reddin Kienholz

Nancy Reddin Kienholz (born December 9, 1943) is an American mixed media artist based in Hope, Idaho. She works in installation art, assemblage, photography, and lenticular printing. She is most famous for her collaborations with her husband and creative partner Edward Kienholz.

Early life

Reddin was born in Los Angeles, California in 1943. Her father, Thomas Reddin, was born in 1916 in New York City and worked in Los Angeles as a police officer; he would eventually serve as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from 1967 to 1969. Her mother, real estate broker Betty Parsons Reddin, was born in 1921 in Denver, Colorado. Nancy was the youngest of three children, born after older brothers Thomas T. Reddin (1938 – 1985) and Michael Gray Reddin (b. 1942).

Reddin was first married at age 19. She had one child from this marriage, Christine, in 1964, but the marriage ended after two years. Reddin received no formal training in art, and worked several odd jobs in Los Angeles before beginning her collaborations with Ed Kienholz in 1972.

The Beanery

The Beanery is a life-size, walk-in artwork created in 1965 by the American artist Edward Kienholz; it has been referred to as his greatest work, and "one of the most memorable works of late 20th-century art". It represents the interior of a Los Angeles bar, Barney's Beanery.

Modelled at ⅔ the size of the original Beanery, it features the smells and sounds of the bar, and models of customers, all of whom have clocks for faces with the time set at 10:10. Only the model of Barney, the owner, has a real face. Kienholz is quoted as saying "The entire work symbolizes the switch from real time (symbolized by a newspaper) to the surrealist time inside the bar, where people waste time, kill time, forget time, and ignore time".

First exhibited in the parking lot of the bar in October 1965, it is now in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. It was restored in 2012.

References

Fondazione Prada

Fondazione Prada, co-chaired by Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli since 1995, is an institution dedicated to contemporary art and culture. From 1993 to 2010, the Fondazione has organised 24 solo shows at its exhibition spaces in Milan, conceived as dialogues with internationally acclaimed contemporary artists such as Anish Kapoor (1995), Louise Bourgeois (1997), Sam Taylor-Wood (1998), Walter De Maria (1999), Enrico Castellani (2001), Steve McQueen (2005), Tom Sachs (2006), Nathalie Djurberg (2008) and John Baldessari (2010).

History

In the past 20 years, it has also promoted a rich cultural programme, such as film festivals (Tribeca Film Festival at Fondazione Prada”, 2004; “Italian Kings of the Bs. Secret History of Italian Cinema, 1949–1976”, 2004; “Secret History of Asian Cinema”, 2005; “Secret History of Russian Cinema”, 2007), multi-disciplinary and philosophy talks and architecture and design projects (“Herzog & de Meuron, OMA/AMO Rem Koolhaas. Projects for Prada. Works in Progress”, 2001; “Unveiling the Prada Foundation”, 2008; “Rotor: Ex Limbo”, 2011. In 2011, the Fondazione Prada opened a new exhibition space in Venice, the Ca’ Corner della Regina, a historic palazzo on the Grand Canal, which has hosted several collective exhibitions: “Fondazione Prada_Ca’ Corner”, 2011; “The Small Utopia. Ars multiplicata”, 2012, “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013”, 2013 and "Art or Sound", 2014.