Harry's Place Arts

A guest post by de Bentvueghels

Previous episode here

“De Hooch’s grotto-scenes are strange interiors with tombs or remnants of ancient sculptures, often with female bather, and always with a view out of the mouth of the cave into the distance. They are difficult to describe as landscapes, being interiors; the feeling is weird and moody, rather opposing the rationalism of his landscapes.”

James D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints. Garland Publishing Inc., New York and London, 1976, p. 54, n. 23.

Disconcertingly the Kienholz exhibition at the National Gallery has a fairy tale or Christmasy aura to it, as if, standing at the threshold to the cavernous darkness where only twinkling as well as stationery red lights are visible, one might expect to see scenes of jovial merriment and child-like wonder were one to advance any further.

Such is not the case, however, as Ed and Nancy Kienholz in their work The Hoerengracht [Whore's Canal] have recreated a scene from Amsterdam’s red light district, showcasing prostitutes sitting or standing for prospective clients, either behind the glass of their uncurtained room-windows or on the street itself. The work was created between 1983 and 1988 and has been shown at a number of museums and galleries before now taking up residence at the National Gallery until 21 February 2010.

Cigarettes and associated paraphenalia are ubiquitous: packets of cigarettes, cigarette lighters, butt-ends in ashtrays. Some of the mannequins hold cigarettes the tips of which have been painted to simulate that they are alight. Some well-known international brands are represented (Rothmans, Pall Mall, Marlboro), and some which are obscure, possibly restricted to Holland such as Roxy cigarettes. It may be surmised that the inclusion of the latter brand was of particular interest to Ed Kienholz as it would have provided a direct link to one of his previous tableaux, Roxy’s (1961).

On a window ledge – the one that has the pair of ceramic dogs – there are three cassette tapes, only one of which can be identified, in this case a recording of Olivia Newton-John’s If Not For You (song-writer Robert Zimmerman).

However, it is not Olivia Newton-John that one listens to as one peers into the rooms slowly absorbing ephemeral details, rather the radios, two or three – it was not quite clear, are tuned to London November 2009 and Lady Gaga’s Poker Face and quite possibly a discussion on education on BBC radio 4? As if the exhibition were not already sufficiently disorientating suddenly one is confronted with the sensation that one is here and now in the present – a particularly clever if perhaps not entirely intentional ploy of the artists to remind participants of the show of the contingent nature of what they are experiencing. Or the suspended tableau requires the presence of an audience to set it in motion – patchwork art carrying patchwork people?

Here is Jacques Brel singing Dans Le Port d’Amsterdam, followed by Iggy Pop and the Stooges – The Passenger - which seems an appropriate place to end this tour.