No Schmoz Ka Pop

John Chamberlain often used the word “fit” to describe what he was trying to achieve with his sculptures, particularly those works that used automotive parts as their raw material—an approach that constituted the majority of his efforts. The artist spoke of “the idea of the squeeze and the compression and the fit. (quoted in D. Waldman, John Chamberlain: A Retrospective Exhibition, New York, 1971, p. 7). The right fit was achieved with the successful merging of scrap metals and individual parts resulting in the sculpture that Chamberlain desired.

The current lot, No Schmoz Ka Pop, is a superb example of what the artist meant when he used the word fit to describe his efforts. The many complex folds throughout the sculpture suggest an organic whole, rather than merely a group of separate pieces brought together. At the same time, the salvaged and reused, frankly industrial nature of the materials is always apparent, never hidden: It is present in the corrugated layers; in the bright chromium-plated shine as distinct from the subtly different reflective quality of the stainless steel; and in the densely compressed creases, reminiscent of folded fabric, but still quite obviously metallic.

“Perhaps not intentionally, Chamberlain’s sculptures, with their deep folds, resemble Renaissance drapery studies that imply the underlying presence of a figure, or conversely, a void. His works throughout the 1990s and first years of the twenty-first century became increasingly volumetric, if not almost Baroque in their massing of form.” (J. Chamberlain and S. Davidson, John Chamberlain: Choices, New York, 2012, p. 26). Chamberlain is considered one of the great colorists in contemporary art for his wonderful handling and juxtaposing of color-on-color. But here, with the present lot, he works against the grain of his own colorist tendencies (he would do this with other sculptures throughout his career, too) and presents a sculpture with a more muted, subtle color palette.

Although he made aesthetically pleasing and intriguing sculptures from a wide range of different materials during his long career as an artist, Chamberlain is best known for sculptures that he fashioned from industrial steel: the painted, chrome plated, and stainless steel used to manufacture the iconic American automobile. By the time he created the current lot, he had already been fitting, bending, compressing, shaping and assembling automotive steel into his instantly recognizable art for some three decades. Never interested in referring to automobiles, as such, as the explicit subject of his work, he once joked, “it seems no one can get free of the car-crash syndrome. For 25 years I’ve been using colored metal to make sculpture, and all they can think of is, ‘What the hell car did that come from?’ ” (J. Chamberlain, quoted in R. Kennedy, “John Chamberlain, Who Wrested Rough Magic From Scrap Metal, Dies at 84,” New York Times, December 21, 2011). Consistent with the assemblage aesthetic with which he was sometimes associated, his real interest was in reusing and ultimately transforming everyday materials through his art practice.

Chamberlain was well known for his robust, irreverent humor, which he clearly projected in his art and personal relationships. The title of the current lot, for example, as do so many of his titles, indulges his enjoyment of quirky and amusing wordplay. It was inspired by the enigmatic catchphrase “Nov shmoz ka pop?” uttered by a character in the popular American comic strip “The Squirrel Cage” by cartoonist Gene Ahern. “The provocative and entertaining titles the artist bestows on his sculptures, evidence of a literary curiosity, frequently offer the promise of meaning to his abstract forms...Many contain puns or wordplay…In this process also he is a collagist, and chance is at play, despite Chamberlain’s insistence that it is poetry and not probability that joins the words into titles” (J. Chamberlain and S. Davidson, John Chamberlain: Choices, New York, 2012, p. 27).

Chamberlain exhibited widely, participated in numerous major exhibitions and is represented in significant museum collections. He was included in the 1961 group exhibition “Art of Assemblage, a landmark group show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York showcasing the approach to sculpture that he helped champion. Chamberlain was offered two career retrospectives by the Guggenheim Museum, a mid-career show in1971 and a late-career retrospective in 2012. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1967 and participated in Documenta 7 in Kassel, Germany, in 1982. His works are on permanent display at Dia: Beacon and with the Chinati Foundation. He had more than 100 solo exhibitions around the world, and his works are included in dozens of museum collections, including the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.