I thought I'd post this article written for ArtUS to mark my favourite show of last year...
John Chamberlain (1927-2011) lived just long enough to help plan
his retrospective at the Guggenheim, New
York (Feb 24 – May 13, 2012) and it proved exemplary.
First, it looked good spiralling up the ramps, where its chronological ascent
made sense. Second, the ‘Choices’ – a title designed to emphasise that
Chamberlain selected his materials, rather than simply finding them - were
broad and strong. Third, it demonstrated a wider range and clearer narrative of
development than less structured encounters with the work tend to suggest.
Chamberlain’s most obvious strength is to achieve a seemingly
effortless and natural fusion of the major movements of the 50s and 60s. The
first automotive works (1958) arose against the personal and temperamental
background of abstract expressionism: Chamberlain, a Cedar Bar regular, was inspired
by de Kooning in particular and has been seen (by Donald Judd, most famously)
as his sculptural equivalent.
One can equally point up the minimalist in Chamberlain. A
comparison with Dan Flavin, for example, makes some sense. Flavin summarised
his own practice as ‘decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture
in architecture with acts of electric light defining space’[1],
used found colour, and was insistently opposed to any symbolic or
transcendental reading. Chamberlain shared those tastes, and one might characterise
his practice as ‘decisions to combine traditions of painting and sculpture through
acts to fit chosen elements together in space’.
Then again, the use of cars – and the less often noticed bits of
planes, fridges and home décor - chimes with Pop Art’s focus on consumer items,
a reading which was encouraged by Leo Castelli’s representation of Chamberlain in
the sixties. He didn’t like where that
led, especially if a crass equation was made between his work and Warhol’s car
crash series (to see where car crushing with that agenda might take you, better
to look at Cesar). Chamberlain consistently resisted any suggestion that the junked
automobiles might stand in for economic problems, social conflict (at the time
of the civil rights movement) or a negative view of the booming consumer
society in which automobiles were central. Indeed, it’s been suggested that’s
why he turned away from his signature material during 1966-72. “Do you ask a painter about the kind of
paint he uses?” [2] he
railed, saying also that he switched “in order to find out if I was going to be relegated to one kind
of material”[3].
Chamberlain protests too much here: meanings need not be intentional, and if an
artist chooses an unusual material, then that choice becomes a part of the work
in a way in which the use of paint need not. The sculptures can’t help
referring to cars and the role they play, however little Chamberlain may mean
them to signify that.
Chamberlain’s work chimed less problematically with the process-based
art emerging in the late sixties. The wrestling, hammering and crushing of
shapes into form make up a large part of the sculptures’ dangerous glamour, and
it’s easy to put that in the context of, say, Richard Serra’s early use of splashed
lead and videos of sculptural actions.
 |
| Peaudesoiemusic, 2010 |
 |
Quida, 1985 |
Thus, his instinctual addition of colour to the found automotive
elements from 1972 onwards emphasises the abstract expressionist aspect as well
as making graffiti references. The adoption of chrome and white palette
provides a degree of minimalist restraint. The occasional inclusion of found
imagery (as in ‘Quida’, 1985), feels like a pop move, though he goes
that way least often. Alternatives to automotive components tend to foreground
the process. And the titles, collaged from favourite words thrown together by
chance, have a surrealist tinge.
Chamberlain’s first move away from car parts was his use of steel
boxes in the late sixties, which he mechanically crushed into shape analogously
to his party trick of squashing cigarette packets into surprising forms. He
explored a range of non-metallic materials in 1966-72, including resin-covered
paper, plastics and most notably foam. The Guggenheim showed one of his
‘barges’ – adventurously-shaped sofas with loose coverings, proposing communal
experiences – and several of the ‘instant sculptures’ in which the form is
defined largely by how cord is tied around foam (several of which were notoriously
ruined post-transit some years ago when the cords were cut, having been mistaken
for a means of packing).
 |
| Ultima Thule, 1967 |
 |
| Balzanian, 1988, |
From the 1980’s Chamberlain often worked with selected parts of
cars only, for example the bumpers and fenders of 'Balzanian', 1988 or ‘Talkshowamble’, 2009. The patterning
from that repeated use reduces the works’ internal variation and makes them more
intricate and less brutal. That chrome often features, and that it has become
anachronistic in terms of car production, adds a nostalgic element which
contributes to these works seeming less edgy.
 |
| C'estzesty, 2011 |
Much of the late work becomes very big – the persuasive ‘C’estzesty’ (2011) towered 18 feet outside the gallery – but Chamberlain also created his effects successfully on a smaller scale in the early 80’s ‘Tonk’ series, by using toy cars which he bought en masse from a disused Tonka Toy factory. He worked with twisted tin foil, too; though only at the end of his life did he find a way to monumentalise the somewhat doodle-like results. They’re interesting, but perhaps inevitably seem a little fussy up against the vigorous melding of cars – as indeed can some of the later automotive sculptures, which became increasingly convoluted. What is apparent, though, is the restless variation in means built into what might superficially be mistaken for a uni-directional oeuvre.
 |
| Rosetuxedo Two, 1986 / 2009 |
That account might suggest that Chamberlain was very much a
formalist, exploring new materials for their own sake, seeing any symbolic
resonances or figurative echoes as purely coincidental. Yet Chamberlain himself
did make comparisons, including – not to take himself too seriously – with
lasagna, used toilet paper and especially with sex: he often made explanations
along the lines that ‘the assembly is a fit, and the fit is sexual’, and
compared the ‘articulate wadding’ technique of his paper and resin works with
the twisted bedsheets resulting from a night of passion[4].
He thought the foam works, too, were “pretty erotic” and complained in 2005
that people had taken forty years to catch on to how “they’ve got all these
folds and everything, you know? Like, when you squeeze here, it opens there. I
mean, what can you say?” [5]
 |
| Mannabend Ra, 1966 |
The straightforward matter of ‘fit’ aside, critics have tended to
pass over the sex references as knock-about stuff consistent with Chamberlain’s
theatrical and teasing personality (though David Getsy[6]
uses them to derive a somewhat eccentric
account of the work as exemplifying an exploration of transgender issues). It’s
true that there’s humour here, and one could take Chamberlain to be parodying the
virile self-image of the prototypically macho abstract expressionist – which
would make it a simultaneous self-parody.
 |
| Kiss #12, 1979 |
Yet taking the coupling more seriously might also attribute phenomenological
intent to the work, leading to a fuller sense in which a sexual encounter is
represented (not that there’s a restriction to the two bodies implied by
‘coupling’: the more baroque later work such as ‘Divine Ricochet’, 1991, might
be seen as orgiastic). There’s an analogy with sculptural thought, too, the
combination of car bodies paralleling one act of creation through another. That
sits well with the coupling of alluring colour with menacing sharpness, and the
sense that the work is hot whilst remaining in other ways cool. It also suits Chamberlain’s
most characteristic and convincing conjunctions: violent and tender, serious
and playful, selective and spontaneous.
 |
| Divine Ricochet, 1991 |
Furthermore, the formal qualities of the coupling are mirrored in Chamberlain’s
titling process. That, consistent with his Black Mountain School background,
typically jams together two disparate words with the idea that something beyond
the sum of their individual senses will emerge, so they verbally enact what the sculptures achieve at
their best. ‘Blonde Day’ is an example which Chamberlain discusses, saying “I’d
never thought of a day being blonde. I still haven’t, but I liked the way that
connection functioned”[7].
It seems reasonable, then, if one is looking for content in Chamberlain’s
work, to take him at his word and look fairly straightforwardly at the nature
of coupling. The term I’ve been trying to avoid to catch all that, and maybe
still should, is ‘abstract sexpressionism’ – but it does seem, as Chamberlain
would say, to fit.
[1] Dan Flavin. "'...in daylight or cool white': an
autobiographical sketch,"
Artforum December 1965
[2] Quoted by Randy Kennedy in ‘A Crusher of Cars, A
Moulder of Metal’, New York Times 2011
[3] John Chamberlain in
conversation with Klaus Kertess, Chinati Foundation 2005
[4] In Julie Sylvester: ‘Auto/Bio: Conversations with John
Chamberlain’, 1986
[5] John Chamberlain in conversation with Klaus Kertess,
Chinati Foundation 2005
[6] David J Getsy:
‘Immoderate Couplings: Transformation and Genders in John Chamberlain’s
Work’, 2009
[7] In Julie Sylvester: ‘Auto/Bio: Conversations with John
Chamberlain’, 1986
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