Artists Discuss Kienholz Then and Now

One of many political statements made by Ed Kienholz over his long career, Five Car Stud is an indictment of racial discrimination and violence. Created between 1969–1972, the large-scale tableau stands as the artist’s most definitive statement on American racism and the Civil Rights Movement. Moderated by Yael Lipschutz, panelists Ed Bereal, Joe Lewis, and Marcus Raskin will reflect back on Five Car Stud’s historical moment, as well as explore the new questions it asks of us today, forty years since it was last shown. 

Ed Bereal (b. 1937). Ed Bereal is an artist and was a friend of Ed Kienholz. In the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Bereal shifted his practice away from Abstract Expressionism and Assemblage toward performance and the street, forming the radical theater group, The Bodacious Buggerrilla. Among other things, Bereal will discuss his (1968-1974) sculpture, America: A Mercy Killing, which shares many of the same concerns as Kienholz’s Five Car Stud.  

Joe Lewis:  Joe Lewis is an artist and the Dean of UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of Arts.  Lewis’s recent projects such as The Word (2010) examine issues surrounding race, power and language from a conceptual angle that shares much with Ed Kienholz’s text-based works, such as The Non-War Memorial (1970).

Yael Lipschutz:  Yael Lipschutz is the Archivist of the Noah Purifoy Foundation and a doctoral student in Art History at the University of Southern California.

Marcus Raskin: Marcus Raskin is a philosopher and social scientist, and was a seminal figure in the postwar counterculture.  In addition to being a friend of artists such as Ed Kienholz, he also worked with curator Walter Hopps on art programs such as the Washington D.C.-based project, “Artists in Communities.”

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Image: Edward Kienholz, Five Car Stud, 1969–72. Copyright Kienholz. Collection of Kawamura Memorial Museum of Art, Sakura, Japan. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA and The Pace Gallery, New York.