VAM galleries including this work:
The Kentucky Center | How’d They Do That? | What’s the Point? | What’s in a Name? || VAM Home

In The Coloured Gates of Louisville, compressed, compacted, and rolled car bodies are arranged to create shifting configurations that vary from near flatness to billowing volumes. John Chamberlain composed this sculpture on the floor of his Florida studio, first laying down a base of chrome to reflect and enliven the sheets in front. The sculpture evolved as forms were added over the chrome and finally welded together. The ten units of the finished work are positioned diagonally on the wall, creating a buoyant visual energy that belies the rawness and weight of the materials from which it is composed. Chamberlain believes that the knowledge that art reveals is non-verbal and intuitive: “An artist makes a spiritual evaluation of the essence within a thing and then he gets it out. That is the outer appearance of inner essence, and it is the point.”

About the Artist

John Chamberlain was born in Rochester, Indiana, in 1927. He grew up in Chicago, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1951 to 1952.

Before he began using automobile sheet metal in his sculpture, Chamberlain created sculpture from welded iron rods. It was not until he was 30 that it first occurred to him to use this new medium in his work. Junked car bodies were inexpensive, plentiful, and readily available—attributes that suited Chamberlain’s free-wheeling, improvisatory attitude toward making art. He refers to himself as an “assemblagist,” and his working procedure involves creating surprising arrangements of form and color from his recycled metals. “Art is unprecedented knowledge,” Chamberlain says. “It’s telling me something I don’t know and I need to know.”

Chamberlain has created sculptures using a variety of media in addition to automobile metal, including urethane foam and Plexiglas, and has worked with photography and screenprinting. In 1993, he received both the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center, Washington, D.C.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: Describe The Coloured Gates of Louisville. What do you think of the artist’s decision to use recycled automobile parts as his medium? How has Chamberlain used the elements of art in this piece? What is your opinion of the piece? Use specific details that reference the artwork in your response.

Activities: Keep your eyes peeled for “junk” materials to use in an assemblage of your own—from old soda cans to cereal boxes. Think about an attractive design for your found materials sculpture, making it your goal to achieve a sense of motion. Use heavy adhesives (glue or tape) to bond materials. Finally, choose two or three colors and paint your artwork.

The Coloured Gates of Louisville is made out of painted automobile steel over chrome. Collect aluminum cans and make your own metal sculpture. Make sure to collect different brands so that you will have different colors in your sculpture. Take the cans outside and smash them together until they are one mass by stomping on them or bending them with pliers. When you are finished with your sculpture, think about whether what you just made should be called art. Why or why not? Do you think The Coloured Gates of Louisville is art? How does this work compare to your metal sculpture?

Links

Visit the Guggenheim Museum for a biography of John Chamberlain.
[www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_29.html]

You’ll find links to articles about Chamberlain and images of his works in the Artcyclopedia, at The-Artists.org, and at Artfacts.net.
[www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/chamberlain_john.html]
[www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=8A01F217-BBCF-11D4-A93500D0B7069B40]
[www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/1598]