Reviewing and Realising

Extract

I was in Dublin a month ago when the city was galvanised by an exhibition of tableaux by Edward Kienholz. I use the verb deliberately. The tableaux were shocking, composed as they were in threedimensional assemblages to present a particular concept, and that concept worked out to the smallest detail. One of the most shocking was ‘The State Hospital’, and the following extract from Kienholz’s blueprint of the work gives some idea of the nightmarish experience undergone by the viewer, who has to peer in through a small grille:

“This is a tableau about an old man who is a patient in a State Mental Hospital. He is in an arm restraint on a bed in a bare room. (This piece will have to include an actual room consisting of walls, ceiling, barred door, etc.) There will be only a bed pan and a hospital table (just out of reach). The man is naked. He hurts. He has been beaten on the stomach with a bar of soap wrapped in a towel (to hide tell-tale bruises). His head is a lighted fish bowl with water that contains two live black fish. He lies very still on his side. There is no sound in the room.

Above the old man in the bed is his exact duplicate, including the bed (beds will be stacked like bunks). The upper figure will also have the fish bowl head, two black fish, etc. But, additionally, it will be encased in some kind of plastic bubble (perhaps similar to a cartoon balloon), representing the man’s thoughts.

His mind can’t think for him past the present moment. He is committed there for the rest of his life.”