Rosetta Brooks, Monte Factor, Jurgen Harten, Walter Hopps, Richard Jackson, Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Alberta Mayo, Thomas McEvilley, Marcus Raskin, New York, 1996. 

Hardcover, 300 pp., 158 color, 262 b/w illus. two small tears in d.j.

The tableaux, environments, and conceptual pieces of Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz are direct, powerful, and uncompromising. The works span four decades, beginning with Edward's pieces from the 1950s and continuing with those produced jointly with Nancy Reddin Kienholz from 1972 until Edward's death in 1994.

Emerging from the Beat aesthetic of the early 1950s, the Kienholz oeuvre embraces the honest spontaneity of jazz, the emotional intensity of Abstract Expressionism, and the homemade approach of do-it-yourself modernism.  At the same time, it is also socially conscious realist sculpture by artists resolutely engaged in an ongoing critique of the world around them.  The Kienholzes probed the dark edges of post-war society, confronting war, racism, institutional indifference, sexuality, and cruelty.

The work of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz has had an enormous impact on the development of contemporary sculpture. This book provides the fullest documentation to date of their oeuvre: an essential visual reference for students, scholars, and art historians.