Brothel biz and art mingle in Reno area

RENO -- In Reno, it's art. Fifteen miles away at the Mustang Ranch brothel, it's business.

At the center of both are the prostitutes. In each setting, they make eye contact, but the eyes actually focus somewhere behind you.

"The Hoerengracht," a room-sized tableau of Amsterdam's red light district, is in its second American presentation at The Nevada Museum of Art. It was last seen in San Diego in 1993, the year before artist Edward Kienholz died.

The mood is dark. The symbolism is vivid.

The 11 life-size plaster castings of prostitutes are surrounded by weathered wood exteriors. Dry leaves dust the walkway around the buildings, adding to the autumnal tones of faded gray and brown. A bicycle without wheels sits outside a brothel, its chain lying limp on the ground.

The heads of the mannequins are enclosed in clear boxes with lids that can be shut to hold thoughts and dreams inside while the rest of their bodies belong to the next bidder.

"Even for Nevadans, who live in a state with legalized prostitution, the exhibit represents a lifestyle they probably couldn't imagine," said Steven High, executive director of the museum. " 'The Hoerengracht' seeks not to criticize prostitution, but to signal its presence."

Nearly five years after his death, Kienholz still gives a playful nudge with his exhibit. Even its name.

Abutting one of Amsterdam's many commercial waterways, it refers to a street named "Herengracht," Dutch for "gentlemen's canal."

That's actually in an affluent area apart from the red lights of his artwork. But Kienholz couldn't resist inserting an "o" to create Hoerengracht, meaning "whore's canal," as the show's title.

"It represents how prostitution is dealt with in Amsterdam," High said. "In most places, it's illegal, criminal. There, the police protect the women. It's relatively safe. It's a business. We wanted to put it in the context of Nevada brothel politics."

Nevada has three dozen brothels, mostly in rural areas. They are forbidden around Las Vegas, Carson City and Reno. The Mustang Ranch in Storey County, half an hour east of Reno, is legal.

"The Hoerengracht" was Kienholz's second artistic foray into prostitution during a career that never shied from thorny social issues such as illness, madness, abortion, sexuality and neglect of the aged.

His 1961 "Roxy's" was his first assemblage and a far grittier work based on a brothel near Las Vegas he visited in 1943 when he was 16. Kienholz, who grew up in a town near Spokane, Wash., lived with his wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz, in Idaho and Berlin, Germany.

"It was a work more negative. Women were represented in a different way -- more abstract. This contrasts with that piece," High said.

Robert L. Pincus, an art critic with the San Diego Union-Tribune, calls "Roxy's" shocking with a sort of grim humor to it, and sees "Hoerengracht" as more haunting.

"I think that he always felt that art should be somehow able to communicate its images to people who didn't look at that much art," he said.

"Part of that is to loosely resemble the real world. You're walking into the painting, but walking around in a sort of everyday surrounding."

Joanna Frueh, a professor of art history at the University of Nevada, Reno, pointed to Kienholz's distinctive use of drizzled resin on the models' faces and bodies.

"You feel that it's raining tears," she said. "It's very clear what it's about, but it's not like banging you over the head. It's subtle and it's poetic."

In an interview shortly before his death at 66, Kienholz told the Los Angeles Times he was drawn to Amsterdam's red light district in 1970 because the streets explode with color.

"Another reason I wanted to do the piece is that I simply like whores," he said. "You can learn more from them than you can from most people because they've experienced a ... lot more than most people. And, of course, the subject appeals to the voyeur in me."

It's a voyeuristic stroll through the streets where the women stand on display under the red bulbs or sit and wait. One touches up her lipstick, a tiny television and half-empty pack of cigarettes on the table behind her.

Bric-a-brac and tacky figurines clutter shelves. White light fills the cribs. A radio plays. A minute timer sits next to a romance magazine.

Nancy Reddin Kienholz, who was born the year her late husband visited Roxy's and collaborated with him on "Hoerengracht," didn't share his admiration of the girls.

"What he's describing is totally a male fantasy. Amsterdam's red light district looks like a tough day on the job to me," she said in the Times interview.

The plaster bodies are castings of friends that Kienholz and his wife borrowed during the 1984-88 construction of the work.

Pincus said the couple inspired his master's thesis, doctoral dissertation and book, "On a Scale That Competes With the World: The Art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz."

"Nancy always said this was a piece that came primarily from him," Pincus said. "His common thread always seemed to be an interest in people at the margins of society -- people society has seen as marginalized people."

"The Hoerengracht" is on display through June 27 at the Nevada Museum of Art. It is on loan by Nancy Reddin Kienholz and the Louver Gallery in Venice, Calif., which is its permanent home.

archive