{"id":43733,"date":"2007-11-20T17:33:03","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T23:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=43733"},"modified":"2021-06-14T10:24:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T16:24:22","slug":"sl-art-centers-masters-of-west-coast-assemblage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sl-art-centers-masters-of-west-coast-assemblage\/","title":{"rendered":"SL Art Center’s Masters of West Coast Assemblage"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ed and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, “Jerry Can Standard Prototype”<\/p><\/div>\n

Downstairs, off their Main Gallery, the Salt Lake Art Center’s Projects Gallery is a small room where shows can be overlooked. The impact of architecture on art shown here can be like putting food between slices of bread: it becomes a snack. One can inhale a quick aesthetic lunch before hurrying on to more important events. Or, as in the present case, a footnote to whatever is showing in the larger gallery can be rendered optional.<\/p>\n

The problem with this is that art grows like shrubbery. Most artists add a modicum of growth to an existing branch, making the shrub larger but not altering its eventual shape. It’s a rare artist that forks off a new branch, and a rare work that lets us clearly see the structure underlying art’s new shape. Academics live with diagrams of structures in their heads, which their eyes project onto the work. They fill a gallery with examples of the growth that fills out the newly reshaped shrub, but in the process we may lose sight of the fork that made it possible.<\/p>\n

The current show at the Art Center is a case in point.\u00a0SF Recylced,<\/em>\u00a0in the Main Gallery, is worth seeing. It makes a point about the social role of artists\u2014 beyond, that is, making marginal neighborhoods safe for gentrification. But those who miss the corner gallery, or enter for a quick look, may miss the primal breakthrough that its contents demonstrate.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, “Jerry Can Standard Prototype,” Ed and Nancy Reddin Kienholz\u2019s television set made from a 5-gallon gas can. The Kienholzes are to assemblage what Picasso was to its two dimensional cousin, collage. Prior to Pablo, artists who set real objects against their painted work wanted to oppose the real and the represented. Picasso\u2019s Cubist collage was intended to deny the privilege of the real, to force viewers to relinquish the artificial separation between two kinds of sensory knowledge.<\/p>\n

Prior to the Kienholzes, assemblage was largely the work of Dadas and Surrealists, who wanted to produce waking dreams that broke down logic. But look at “Jerry Can Standard Prototype”: what\u2019s striking about it is how \u201cright\u201d it looks. It\u2019s not simply that the TV set is a dangerous incendiary we ought to think twice about bringing into our homes. If that were all the artists had to say, then a surplus bomb with a TV screen would do. But this \u201cprototype\u201d looks much deeper into the human condition and the American psyche and marvels that at a certain moment in time a TV set and a gas can\u2014two highly evolved examples of design, manufacture, and marketing\u2014could bear such a family resemblance. The period decor table it stands on\u2014a signature Kienholz touch\u2014drives the point ever closer to the bone. It\u2019s not necessary for a sewing machine and an umbrella to meet by chance on an operating table for us to see how strange ordinary life is. All we have to do is see it as it really is: the way Ed and Nancy presented it, in ever-larger and more visionary installations. This is why they are two of the most important American artists ever, and their work should come out of the closet and into the mainstream imagination.<\/p>\n

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Betye Saar, “Opening Ragtime”<\/p><\/div>\n

“Opening Ragtime,” Betye Saar\u2019s diptych box, reveals similarly layered truths. Inside are the closeted secrets of America\u2019s racist past, but also a claim for repossession of a stolen birthright. The graphic power of the \u201cStars and Bars,\u201d the Confederate battle flag, is linked to the flair of a minstrel\u2019s dress, while the image of slavery becomes the aura of a tribal spirit. The title, spelled out in reverse in printer\u2019s type, argues the padlocked clock cannot stop time forever.<\/p>\n

George Herms\u2019 “Clue To” comments in a similarly poetic fashion on another great divide: this one between the classical and the romantic, the rigid and the spontaneous, the immoveable and the fragile, viewed through the life of legendary jazz pianist\u2014and electro-shock therapy victim\u2014\u201cDodo\u201d Marmarosa.<\/p>\n

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George Herms\u2019 “Clue To”<\/p><\/div>\n

Focusing on the process of assembly and its significance sets William Dole\u2019s work apart from the collage it resembles. His interests are more in line with Abstract Expressionism (with a hint of Minimalism to come) than with the pictorial goals of European collage.<\/p>\n

Wallace Berman\u2019s verifax collage of handheld devices put a symbolic universe in the palm of the hand. In one or another of Berman\u2019s several versions, this prophetic device has recently emerged as the poster child of West Coast Assemblage. Forget the\u00a0i-Phone<\/em>: Berman saw the real implications of technology in the transistor radio.<\/p>\n

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Collage by Wallace Berman<\/p><\/div>\n

These five works by six artists are a monument of the American Twentieth Century. Jim Edwards has selected five deceptively small-looking works and assembled a show of giants in a small space. Given the systemic neglect of art made west of the Mississippi, we may hope that this is just the beginning of a rediscovery of art and artists who could only have come from those who live here: from among us.<\/p>\n

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Work by William Dole<\/p><\/div>\n

Masters of West Coast Assemblage and Collage, curated by Jim Edwards, continues in the\u00a0Salt Lake Art Center’s\u00a0Projects Gallery through January 26, 2008.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Downstairs, off their Main Gallery, the Salt Lake Art Center’s Projects Gallery is a small room where shows can be overlooked. The impact of architecture on art shown here can be like putting food between slices of bread: it becomes a snack. One can inhale a quick aesthetic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":58558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[4000,4001,4002,4004,4003],"class_list":["post-43733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-betye-saar","tag-ed-and-nancy-reddin-kienholz","tag-george-herms","tag-wallace-berman","tag-william-dole"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/75.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 14:44:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43733"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58566,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43733\/revisions\/58566"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}