Edward Kienholz: Is He an Artist or Did Roxy’s Go Too Far?

Edward Kienholz, described his own work as that of a trail-maker and the viewer as the hunter, "At one point I as the trail-maker disappear. The viewer is then confronted with a dilemma of ideas and direction. The possibilities are then to push on further by questions and answers to a new place that I can't even imagine or turn back to an old safe place. But even on the decision is direction." (Hopps, p.147)

Edward Kienholz first began his socially critical environments in the early sixties. When they first were displayed, they shocked the public. However they did not create a large stir outside the art community, until the creation of ROXY'S in 1961. ROXY'S provoked vulnerability in the private life of the individual to intervention by the environment and social convention. Ed Kienholz' environments are art and set the president for all up and coming sculptural artists.

When creating the whore house ROXY'S, Ed worked it in two ways: the "real" part and the "art" part. He worked the environment, so it felt like a real location in a real place in time, or the "real part". The second way he worked this piece, was the "art part" which was usually messed up, clunked around, and torn apart; which, in this case, was his representation of the seven whores and Ben Brown, the towel boy. One example of this destruction is that many of the whores are covered in paint, which, no matter what color, represented blood. (Reddin-Kienholz p.12)

In order to recreate the feeling of a nineteen forties