ART REVIEW
'Squeezed and Tied'
By Janet Goleas
 “A (Stuffed Dog 10),” 1969-1970, by John Chamberlain
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(06/26/2007) John Chamberlain first started assembling crushed automobile parts into expressive sculptural forms in 1959, and by 1962 he was already exhibiting regularly at New York’s famed Leo Castelli Gallery.
In 1966, the indefatigable Mr. Chamberlain, who was known chiefly for these edgy scrap metal compositions, embarked on a period of experimentation that would lead to a hiatus from metal work stretching over seven years. A selection of these little-known radical and inventive sculptures is on exhibit at the Dan Flavin Art Institute in Bridgehampton. “John Chamberlain, Squeezed and Tied: Foam and Paper Sculptures, 1969-70” can be seen through Oct. 14.
In a word, he wanted to test his chops. Mr. Chamberlain needed to know if he was destined to be an artist of a single medium or if he was good enough to find his art in other materials.
So he left New York to live briefly on California’s Malibu Beach, where he scavenged the Pacific shoreline for the type of secondhand leftovers he could recycle into art supplies, albeit unorthodox ones. His explorations led to countless permutations that included foam rubber, paper bags, melted plastic, and aluminum foil.
This startling level of innovation has resulted in nearly five decades of work that includes filmmaking, photography, painting, and environmental art.
Visceral and abstract, his crushed metal forms were interpreted in the 1960s as the sculptural equivalent of Abstract Expressionism, and were often compared to the swashbuckling paint style of Willem de Kooning. The use of elements such as candy-colored automobile hoods and discarded fenders also had keen associations with Pop Art.
In a triumph of intuition and artistry, throughout his distinguished career Mr. Chamberlain has utilized classic modernist idioms and at the same time managed to turn them on their heads. His assembled automobile scraps articulate not only volume and movement and color and form but pure, unadulterated process.
He has cinched and bundled foam rubber, wadded and squeezed paper and foil, and with his Widelux panoramic camera he has bent the photographic process to create images that are seductive, surreal, and slightly elusive.
Even his most reductive works are painterly, but they inhabit an arena that is neither abstract nor representational. Most significantly, the artist’s actions are so truthful and his sculptures so candidly unembellished that what they depict, in sum, is process itself. And therein resides the true subject matter of these important works.
John Chamberlain grew up in Chicago and after three years in the Navy used the G.I. Bill to study in the unlikely field of hairdressing. It was not until his education credits were nearly used up that the young artist-in-waiting made a sudden detour away from beauty school and wound up at the Art Institute of Chicago.
He studied there briefly before moving to North Carolina to attend Black Mountain College. There the artist took classes with and befriended the poets Robert Creeley and Charles Olson, whose influences can be clearly linked to Mr. Chamberlain’s sense of process, candor, and frank physicality.
In 1956 he moved to New York, where he immersed himself in the bohemian culture of the legendary Cedar Bar. As it was for the previous generation of artists who had defined an emerging postwar American art, boozing and cavorting between studio hours was de rigueur for this pioneering art crowd.
In 1965, his friend Mickey Ruskin opened the infamous Max’s Kansas City, where Mr. Chamberlain and his circle were soon fixtures. The avant-garde was good for business and Mr. Ruskin wanted them seated front and center. His offer to accept art for a running tab kept them there. The notorious nightclub drew in the jet set — glamorous celebrities, rock ’n’ roll stars, Andy Warhol’s entourage, and an endless stream of onlookers who came to watch.
In 1966, when the restless Mr. Chamberlain decided to test his gifts by invoking a spectacular shift in materials, the results were extreme. During this “laboratory period” he took a complete sabbatical from scrap metal. Instead, he wadded, twisted, and crushed paper bags, tied and squeezed slabs of urethane foam, melted plastic boxes, and crushed and rolled aluminum foil.
One of the best sources of information about the artist is the 2006 documentary made by his wife’s teenage daughter, Alexandra Fairweather. The film, “John Chamberlain and Miss Lady Pink,” follows the artist from his Shelter Island studio to various locations, including the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Tex., where his foam rubber sculptures were exhibited in 2005.
Speaking there at a symposium on his art, the artist remarks, “The results of tying and squeezing the foam were so instant and so complete — I thought it wouldn’t take too long for anyone to get it. I was wrong — it took 40 years!” Mr. Chamberlain laughed, commenting on a body of work that has only recently found its audience.
At some point many of us have tried to cut seat cushions from that leftover foam in the basement. It’s a little like trying to part the seas. If you slice on one side the other side slips away. If you score it, the foam shreds into unruly striations of polyurethane.
Scissors are of little help. In fact, on the Internet there are entire blogs devoted to the ongoing riddle of cutting foam rubber. Electric carving knives are a popular solution, and there are myriad professional devices available. Or you can try one of the truly inventive methods: Wet it, freeze it, and slice it.
One thing is certain, the resulting irregular cuts typical of urethane foam create a topography that is abstract, evocative, and elastic in its potential meaning.
The film interview went on. “They’re very erotic,” Mr. Chamberlain said. “When you squeeze it here,” he continued, moving his index finger from points in the air, “it opens here.” Indeed, the supple curves of the 12 foam sculptures included here are swollen and sweeping.
They swerve around their own exteriors and then dive inside as if seeking an ultimate interior core. The artist splashes them with paint before manipulating the rubber. “I throw color at it first,” he said. “I don’t put it together and then paint it — that’s the worst thing you could do.”
The ground-floor gallery at the Dan Flavin Art Institute is dimly lit. As one enters the room, one’s eyes gradually adjust to the seductions of these fluid sculptures that rest on tall pedestals. Slightly lascivious, they are pinched and wadded, clutched and bound — so physical they seem to beg to be touched. In fact, it almost feels as if the hand of the artist were here, gripping at the cinched waists of these voluptuous forms. They beg to be touched, as if the hand of the artist is here, gripped at the waist of these voluptuous forms.
In a vitrine on the north wall stands a suite of crushed brown paper bags. Each of these 1969 sculptures carries the title “Penthouse,” and they are numbered from 46 to 50. They are modest in size, but maintain a monumentality that defies scale. Slathered with resin and paint, they have a simplicity within which lie a fierceness and a deep sensuality that exude the intellect and passion of this remarkable artist.
The Ross School will host an Evening With John Chamberlain, a benefit featuring the artist as well as Ms. Fairweather’s documentary, on Aug. 10 at
7 p.m. The event will launch the
new Chamberlain/Fairweather Family Scholarship Fund at the Ross School.
The Flavin Art Institute, part of the Dia Art Foundation, is on Corwith Avenue in Bridgehampton.