Edward Kienholz: John Doe
Edward Kienholz is best known for his installations which were quite shocking for their time and still create a lot of controversy even today. His art consists of full frontal pornography but in this particular work which is called John Doe, Kienholz looks at the anonymity of the name which is used to describe a person without an identity. The man is in the form of a shapeless corpse with a large head and the fact that he is mobile yet at the same time without direction.
Aspects of the sculpture
In John Doe, Kienholz attempts to create a situation where violence is acceptable and anonymity is a fact of life. The head seems to be bleeding from every direction and the expression of the face is almost one of calmed resignation and despair. The metal perambulator is also significant since it shows a certain detachment from human reality with the armless and legless torso bound into a stationery shape with pillows at the back of it. Kienholz seems to emphasize the gross violence that was imparted on this poor man with a sense of ambiguity. The paint and resin on the man is also a symbol of wanton violence which shows that the subject is terribly treated, a parallel with the violence that is almost ever present in countries such as Africa and South America. At times, the sculpture also recalls the murder of some high profile figure such as President John F Kennedy with the bloody clearly seen streaming down the head. The torso of the figure is also singularly affected by violence and seems to be pierced in the centre in a pose which almost represents martyrdom. Kienholz is skillful at incorporating all these elements and fusing them into a workable piece of machinery that also has its own aesthetic appeal.
The primary colours used in the sculpture are intriguing whilst there is also a sense of implied depth through the overlapping forms in the work. The shape is actually stationery although there is also some organic shaping in the composition of the structure.
John Doe also continues to confirm Kienholz’s skills at using industrial refuse and other assorted pieces of discarded rubbish to create sculptures and artifacts of considerable artistic and aesthetic value. In a way, Kienholz was a pioneer in the use of recycling material as art and this definitely created new avenues and vistas with which he could explore often overlooked facets of art. The anonymity of the John Doe figure is almost comparable to other solitary figures in art such as ‘The Wanderer’ by Friedrich where the man stands alone on a mountain surveying the vista before him. Here although John Doe is simply a torso, the fact that he is mobile opens up new avenues of exploration which may not always seem possible but are up to a point very probable.
Despite the lack of any formal training in art, Kienholz managed to convey imagery and sculptures which both shocked and jolted the public into reaction. John Doe was one of the first works which came out of his move to the Los Angeles studio in 1959 and in itself was an indictment of the Korean War and America’s military interventions which Kienholz viewed as heavy handed and brutal, something which he was to comment upon regularly in his works dating from the Vietnam War period.
The sculpture does not have much repetition element although there is a sense of rhythm, balance and contrast in proceedings. There is unity and variety in it also especially in the directional forces where the man’s gaze is somewhat surreal in its intensity. The contrast between warm and cool colours is also instructive.
However John Doe is also very much a portrayal of Christian iconography in the sense that it also alludes to the crucifixion of Christ on the cross. Although Kienholz was undoubtedly an agnostic, his portrayal of the Christ like figure as John Doe was undoubtedly a masterstroke. The work with all its modernist tendencies goes back to the simple in the sense that it is a portrayal of man’s suffering without much hope for salvation. The fact that Kienholz managed to convey this message using a simple collage is very much a masterstroke in his sculptural work. The installation also conveys a sense of momentum accordingly and is very much a shocking part of his work, a work which launched Kienholz on his road to stardom.
Kienholz later works move on from John Doe but they also comment viscerally on racism and violence although in John Doe, the racism element is not so pronounced. However the whole aspect of the installation which also uses rubber and metal conveys a certain innocent sense of attrition which culminates in the fantastic and grotesque torso.
References
Pincus, Robert L. (1990). On a scale that competes with the world : the art of Edward and Nancy
Reddin Kienholz. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06730-1. — Largest
catalog of Kienholz work published before Ed's death
Kienholz, Edward; Nancy Reddin Kienholz ; Walter Hopps [curator] ; with contributions by Rosetta Brooks (1996). Kienholz : a retrospective (2. print. ed.). New York: Whitney Museum of American Art. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-87427-099-0. — Catalog of definitive retrospective (posthumous) exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art
