Edward Kienholz Five Car Stud

Description

Edward Kienholz’s Five Car Stud is one of the most unsettling and important installations of late-20th-century American art—a piece so incendiary it was never shown in the U.S. upon completion. Conceived between 1969–72 and long hidden in a private Japanese collection, the work resurfaced only in 2011 after a full restoration for exhibitions at LACMA and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. This volume documents that return: the cars arranged in darkness, headlights scorching the scene, and the raw confrontation with race, violence, and American mythology that made Kienholz a singular force in assemblage art.

Edited by Michael Juul Holm, the book gathers essays by Roberto Ohrt and Thomas McEvilley, plus a conversation with Paul McCarthy—artists and thinkers attuned to the uncomfortable power of Kienholz’s vision. Richly illustrated with Tom Vinetz’s photographs of the restored installation, it stands as the most complete examination of Five Car Stud, situating it within both art history and the unfinished business of American memory.

An essential volume for collectors of Kienholz, postwar American art, and politically charged installation work.