Careful with that axe, Ed
Far more than Chris Burden, Ed Kienholz has been much disparaged for throwing machismo around like it was nobody’s business, but although you can see where the critics were coming from when discussing installations like 1991’s “Mine Camp”, aka “Mein Kampf”, seen below, (and his work delved into rape and incest as well), I think in his case, brutish was beautiful.
If he had “an obvious desire to play God”, as one observer wrote — and he really was buried in his car, like a Chinese warlord on his chariot — Kienholz (1927-1994) was another take-no-shit American who scorned formal artistic training, took life by the horns and wrestled with it, starting with a Kesey-style gig as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, where you’re bound to get a skewed view of evolution. See the rest.
