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On A Scale That Competes With The World The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Keinholz by Robert L. Pincus book

On the left is a portfrait of Keinholz from 1958. On the right, the text from Bob’s introduction to his book.

On A Scale That Competes With The World: The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz

On a Scale That Competes With the World offers the first comprehensive view of a major oeuvre that spans the past three decades. Much of the art produced by Edward Kienholz and, later, by Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz has been exhibited and collected in Europe. It has received less critical attention that it deserves in the United States, largely because its “literary” qualities ran counter to the predominant Minimalist aesthetic of 1960s American art. With this book, Robert Pincus clarifies the importance of the Kienholz’s work in American art history and interprets its deeply thoughtful critique of American society and culture.

Placing the Kienholz’s’ art in a broad cultural context, the author suggests that we view it against the backdrop of the soaring American optimism of the nineteenth century. The genre paintings of George Caleb Bingham and William Sidney Mount and the writings of Walt Whitman are vivid expressions of that spirit. In sharp contrast, the art of Kienholz and others of his generation radiates anger. But the outrage evident in Kienholz’s early works—The Illegal Operation, The Wait, and The State Hospital are among the best known—is strongly social rather than political, Pincus maintains, with parallels in the writings of contemporaries such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer. Their anger springs from the perception that grand American ideals have been betrayed.

Table of Contents

A Theoretical Preface
Introduction
Drift and Consolidation: Becoming An Artist
The Horrific Object: Sculpture as Social Criticism
Two Rites of Passage
Generic Tragedies: The Creation of a Narrative Sculptural Art
The Grand Tour of the Tableaux
Words, Numbers, and Rooms: Concept Tableaux, Watercolors, and Occasional Tableaux
An Era of Collaboration
Filling the White Easel: Rejections of, Re turns to, America
Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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