'Roxy's', door Edward Kienholz tijdens de tentoonstelling 'Tableaux' in het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Ed van der Elsken, 1970

#EdvanderElsken #EdwardKienholz #Kienholz #fotografie #photography #EdVanDerElsken #EdvanderElsken

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2019-299-22-7

'The Wait', door Edward Kienholz tijdens de tentoonstelling 'Tableaux' in het Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Ed van der Elsken, 1970

#TheWait #EdvanderElsken #UncleSam #Kienholz #fotografie #photography #EdVanDerElsken #EdvanderElsken

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-F-2019-299-22-9

It's funny how the mind works. Somehow, reading another person's post about a mysterious crashed '41 Pontiac reminded me of an art installation I once viewed.

I saw Edward Kienholz's "Back Seat Dodge '38" late one evening in 2003 at LACMA. I'd wandered through the almost empty gallery for a while, ignoring the old song coming from one corner of the room, when I finally decided to check out the source of the music.

There was a truncated old car with an open door drawing attention to the back seat, occupied by a couple of mixed-media mannequins.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/collections.lacma.org-images/remote_images/ma-52642-WEB.jpg

The car's lights were on, and big band music played from the radio, and old beer bottles were strewn around the vehicle. The plaster woman may or may not have been conscious, and a chicken-wire man (wearing only shoes and socks, and maybe a watch on one plaster hand) was on top of her.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/collections.lacma.org-images/remote_images/ma-52649-WEB.jpg

The sculpture is apparently inspired by an actual event when the artist was 17 (which would have been 1944). He drove his father's '38 Dodge to a dance and enticed a girl into the car, where they "drank beer and had a nice time." The artist couldn't remember her name later, and it's really not clear how consensual any of this was.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/collections.lacma.org-images/remote_images/ma-52647-WEB.jpg

Nothing I've found online captures the hallucinatory feeling of walking around the installation in person, as the radio music plays. Something that happened long ago, never discussed. Maybe someone's grandparent was conceived that night. What became of the girl? The memories (such as they are) are full of holes. But such events have happened, and continue to happen, over and over again.

#art #Kienholz #lacma #assemblage