The National Gallery seems to have turned to the ‘dark side’ for its choice of present exhibitions. Whilst haunting religious Spanish painting and sculpture is on display in its Sainsbury Wing, ‘The Hoerengracht’ occupies its Sunley Room.
Nancy and Ed Kienholz have achieved notoriety in the art world for their controversial installations. Made in the couple’s Berlin studio, ‘The Hoerengracht’ (‘Whore’s Canal’) is a life-size walk in installation of a stretch of Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District, as it appeared in the 1980s.
In and amongst narrowly spaced brick walls, eleven mannequin prostitutes are presented in garishly glowing windows and doorways that we are invited to peer into. Having taken around 5 years to create, the installation doesn’t fail on details. The spaces are filled with objects that convey the reality of the grim prostitution trade. Bicycles are parked in bicycle racks before the main passageway and curtains are drawn in some windows. Resin has been extensively and thickly applied on the mannequins’ faces and bodies, and it has formed a thick dribbling that runs down windowpanes and doorways. This resin, says Nancy, connects the things on display and makes them cohesive; to me, the resin evokes gunge, the unnerving image of tears, or indeed an altogether more unsavoury substance, gushing down the prostitutes’ faces.
The installation seemingly explores the sex-trade that in contemporary times has become synonymous with Amsterdam’s canal-side streets, but this theme in the history of art is not a new one. Albeit in a less upfront manner, a number of paintings by the Dutch masters in the 17th century present women who are ‘pictoral cousins’ of the mannequins. Further, the tradition of visually structuring paintings using framing archways, doorways and windows has arguably been an established artistic technique since the discovery of perspective. So perhaps, it is not as bizarre as first thought to have an exhibition like ‘The Hoerengracht’ in a gallery that houses paintings that date back to the 13th century.
One of the more notable aspect
s of the installation is the use of old cookie boxes that frame the faces of all the mannequins. Supposedly the idea behind this was that the women could close themselves off. To me, this conflicts with the very business they are a part of. Though perhaps we can also interpret the cookie-box frames as having a humanizing effect by making the women seem imprisoned. Either way, I feel that these are an unnecessary extra. It’s not clear to me what the motive was for this installation, but I would say its intrigue certainly stems, at least in part, from the way viewer is put in the place of voyeur. Without the cookie boxes, there would be nothing separating us from the melancholy gazes of the mannequins; the discomfort we feel looking into their own personal window spaces – that uneasiness of being on the outside looking in – might be heightened.
On his investigative work for this piece, Ed Kienholz insisted that what interested him the most was the light that pervaded the apertures and spilled into Amsterdam’s streets, illuminating the spaces in a way that rendered them comparable to ‘little paintings’ that he found beautiful. I don’t know if I agree wholly with this, but nonetheless this installation is ambitious and worth a quick visit if only to say that you visited Amsterdam’s Red Light District on wholly innocent grounds.
Three stars.
‘Kienholz: The Hoerengracht’ is on in the Sunley Room in the National Gallery, London until 21st February.
Admission is (perhaps ironically) free.
Photo: Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz – ‘The Hoerengracht (detail)’ (1983-8). © Kienholz estate, courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA.
