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Sawdy, 1971, is a multiple developed from one of Edward Kienholz’s well-known tableaux. Framed by a Datsun car door is a silkscreen print from a photograph of Five Card Stud, a sculptural installation that the artist has said is “symbolic of minority strivings in the world today.”¹ The scene is of a racial incident in which a gang of white men attack a black man caught drinking alone with a white woman.

By using a black and white photographic image for Sawdy, Kienholz both objectifies the scene and makes reference to photography’s common use as evidence—especially in connection with violence involving automobiles. Thus, though the episode is entirely invented, the photograph gives the tableau a credibility not to be found in the deliberately stilted sculptural figures of the “original.”

Sawdy goes far beyond merely picturing an event (via the photograph), however. The piece as a whole includes and implicates us. We may be at a distance, protected behind a metal door, but we are inside the Datsun observing the incident. If we try to screen ourselves by rolling up the window we are confronted by our own reflected image—the window glass is mirrored. Caught at the wrong end of Kienholz’s telescope, we find ourselves reduced, drawn into a constructed environment of less and less trustworthy images: “real” car door altered and recontextualized; “actual” scaled-down photograph of a full-scale fictional scene; reflected images in a normally transparent window.

Kienholz has made extensive use of photographs in his assemblage sculpture, particularly since he began collaborating with the photographically astute Nancy Reddin (now his wife) in 1972. The Opti-Can Royale, 1979, is such a collaboration. It offers the viewer a selection of six static images (a seventh may be chosen by the owner of the work) given heightened importance by virtue of their presentation in a vaguely television-derived format.

Even before the partnership, however, Ed Kienholz made a stunning commentary on the shamanistic power of photographic portraits in a large piece called The Wait, 1964-1965. No matter that the photographs were purchased at thrift stores, and that their original subjects no longer have any connection with the generic emblems presented in the work. Or perhaps it does matter, very much.

1. Edward Kienholz, Documentation Book for Five Card Stud Tableau and the Sawdy Edition (Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1971), n.p. ↩︎