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Lot Essay
"The early colored sculptures came about when I ran out of the material I'd been working with before, iron rod. For about six months I did some drawings and things like that. I was looking for another material. I was looking for the next way to go. This was in 1957 or 1958. Then, all of a sudden, it occurred to me one day that all this material was just lying all over the place. I saw the material as other people's idea of waste. Shortstop was made at Larry Rivers's house, and only years later dis it occur to me that I had taken the material from an antique car of his-it was material from a 1929 Ford. So it was an antique, it wasn't throw-awy junk. It was years later that I figured out what I had done was a little presumptuous: to use material of his that very likely had some value to him. Nevertheless I took a fender. I didn't want to use it as a fender, so I drove over it a few times to rearrange its shape, which was the beginning of what I now know as process.
In the early scultures I used anything made of steel that had colour on it. There were metal benches, metal signs, sand pails, lunch boxes, stuff like that. For instances, there is a sculpture, Zaar, that was titled after a permanent wave. It was made from a green metal bench with a red stripe on the side of the seat. I used a variety of parts. Body shops would cut parts away, and I would choose what I wanted from whatever was in their scrap pile. I remember one junk dealer in Rockland Country who had a pile of scrap that seemed like it would never end. As soon as I took some of it away to do something with it, he became concerned that he wasn't getting his due. I wasn't interested in the car parts per se, I was interested in either the colour or the shape or the amount. I didn't want engine parts, I didn't want wheels, upholstery, glass, oil, tires, rubber, lining, what somebody'd left in the car when they dumped it, dasboards, steering wheels, shafts, rear ends, muffler systems, transmissions, fly wheels, none of that. Just the sheet metal. It already had a coat of paint on it, and some of it was formed. You choose the material at a time when that's the material you want to use, and then you develop your processes so that when you put things together it gives you a sense of satisfaction. It never occured to me that sculpture shouldn't be coloured. (J. Chamberlain, quoted in: J. Sylvester, John Chamberlain, a Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954-1985, New York 1986, p. 15).
In the early scultures I used anything made of steel that had colour on it. There were metal benches, metal signs, sand pails, lunch boxes, stuff like that. For instances, there is a sculpture, Zaar, that was titled after a permanent wave. It was made from a green metal bench with a red stripe on the side of the seat. I used a variety of parts. Body shops would cut parts away, and I would choose what I wanted from whatever was in their scrap pile. I remember one junk dealer in Rockland Country who had a pile of scrap that seemed like it would never end. As soon as I took some of it away to do something with it, he became concerned that he wasn't getting his due. I wasn't interested in the car parts per se, I was interested in either the colour or the shape or the amount. I didn't want engine parts, I didn't want wheels, upholstery, glass, oil, tires, rubber, lining, what somebody'd left in the car when they dumped it, dasboards, steering wheels, shafts, rear ends, muffler systems, transmissions, fly wheels, none of that. Just the sheet metal. It already had a coat of paint on it, and some of it was formed. You choose the material at a time when that's the material you want to use, and then you develop your processes so that when you put things together it gives you a sense of satisfaction. It never occured to me that sculpture shouldn't be coloured. (J. Chamberlain, quoted in: J. Sylvester, John Chamberlain, a Catalogue Raisonné of the Sculpture 1954-1985, New York 1986, p. 15).