Comments on: “I don’t see anything but a bunch of junk thrown together. And he calls that art!” http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/%e2%80%9ci-don%e2%80%99t-see-anything-but-a-bunch-of-junk-thrown-together-and-he-calls-that-art%e2%80%9d/ Mon, 20 May 2013 19:02:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: cshteynberg http://lacma.wordpress.com/2010/04/01/%e2%80%9ci-don%e2%80%99t-see-anything-but-a-bunch-of-junk-thrown-together-and-he-calls-that-art%e2%80%9d/#comment-1334 Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:36:50 +0000 http://lacma.wordpress.com/?p=6093#comment-1334 Absolutely fascinating video! On a side note, outside of the Back Seat Dodge ’38 bits, I especially like the part where the guy says, “Everything’s wired–nothing’s really people anymore.” He’s followed by a man who talks about going to war in a machine era in which, “a machine finds the enemy, and a machine shoots down the enemy, and you just sit there and watch the buttons.”

However, I think you understate what’s going on in Back Seat Dodge ’38. It’s not a depiction of two young people making out, it’s of them having sex. The transparency of the chicken wire man puts the focus on the woman. The hand placement of the man, the foot placement of the girl–it all suggests that there may be a struggle or at least some anxiety on on her part. While it’s not a piece that shocks most people now, it still makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s ambiguous–I don’t know how either party feels, and I feel strange for spying on them. I think it’s important to realize that while there was some reactionary response in the 60s to this work, that was partly because Kienholz’s brilliant work does in fact invoke strong (and often disturbing) emotional responses, even today.

]]>