The Beanery:

Found in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, one can find Ed Kienholz’s instillation The Beanery. His installations are grim, often composed of things he would find in junkyards or at flea markets. Incorporating traces (and trash) of consumerism, his works were mainly a critique of society. The Beanery” is a reconstruction of a real pub. The piece was made in 1965. It’s a walk-in installation and although it’s three times smaller than the real pub at that time, its interior is an exact replica of the original. The piece is about time – objective and subjective time, losing, killing, and wasting time.

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The guests are caught in different stages of private interactions. The sound you hear inside is the original sound of “The Beanery” (the recording was made by Kienholz himself and is now digitalized). It even has the smell of the real pub. The mixture of scents is regularly made according to the artist’s recipe.

People’s heads are clocks, always reading 10:10. While the time outdoors is getting turbulent, the time in the pub is subjective and standing still. And is not standing at all, respectively.Kienholz painted his installations with a kind of synthetic resin that he mixed himself. That resin is slowly eating through “The Beanery” and making it degrade and decay. Some materials have already deteriorated, way faster than they would normally do – really emphasising the reason for the instigation- the passing of time. The way the artist has incorporated elements to depict aging and the passing of time is so cleverly thought out.

Looking at this surreal instillation has forced me to explore the image further. I can see the attention to detail the artist has put into it. The labelled bottles, the clocks surrounded by different objects, the different coloured lights creating that pub feel, the half-filled glasses, allowing a frozen-in time scenario. Like we’ve walked into an alternate universe. The attention payed to these parts of the instillation has opened my eyes a little bit to the other things I’m going to include within my instillation – thinking about lighting and what look I am going for within the instillation, do I want a particular smell to come from the room, a certain noise? All things to take into account.