Red Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms on June 7, 1937) is an American

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to tradit ...

artist best known for his colorful pop-art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life. Grooms was given the nickname "Red" by Dominic Falcone (of Provincetown's Sun Gallery) when he was starting out as a dishwasher at a restaurant in

Provincetown Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...

and was studying with Hans Hofmann.

Background and education

Grooms was born in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

during the middle of the Great Depression. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then at Nashville's Peabody College. In 1956, Grooms moved to New York City, to enroll at the New School for Social Research. A year later, Grooms attended a summer session at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...

. There he met experimental animation pioneer

Yvonne Andersen Yvonne Andersen (born September 7, 1932) is an American animated filmmaker, author, and teacher. She is most well known for co-creating the Yellow Ball Workshop with her husband, Dominic Falcone. The Yellow Ball Workshop was a school for both ...

, with whom he collaborated on several short films. Red Grooms belongs to a generation of artists who, in G. R. Swenson's words, "took the world too seriously not to be amused by it." As Judith Stein notes, "At times Grooms's humor has an absurdist streak, full of the impetuous energy and preposterous puns of the Marx Brothers. He shares a comic sense with

Bob and Ray Bob and Ray were an American comedy duo whose career spanned five decades, composed of comedians Bob Elliott (1923–2016) and Ray Goulding (1922–1990). The duo's format was typically to satirize the medium in which they were performing, suc ...

whose straight-man/funny-man teamwork plays off against the mundane conventions of daily life. As an empiricist with a keen political sense and a retentive memory for visual facts, Grooms follows in the tradition of

William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like ...

and

Honoré Daumier Honoré-Victorin Daumier (; February 26, 1808February 10, 1879) was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, whose many works offer commentary on the social and political life in France, from the Revolution of 1830 to the fall of the second N ...

, who were canny commentators on the human condition."Judith Stein, "All Around the Cobbler's Bench", ''Red Grooms: A Retrospective'' (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985) In 1969,

Peter Schjeldahl Peter Charles Schjeldahl (; March 20, 1942 – October 21, 2022) was an American art critic, poet, and educator. He was noted for being the head art critic at ''The New Yorker'', having earlier written for ''The Village Voice'', ''ARTnews'', and ...

compared Grooms to

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

, because both embodied "a movement of one man that is open to everybody."Peter Schjeldahl, "Red Grooms: He Dares to Make Art That Is Fun", ''New York Times'', June 15, 1969, sec. 2, p. 25.

Career

Early work

In the spring of 1958, Grooms,

and Lester Johnson each painted twelve-foot by twelve-foot panels, which they erected with telephone poles on a parking lot adjacent an amusement park in Salisbury, MA.."Judith Stein, "The Early Years: 1937-1960," ''Red Grooms: A Retrospective'' (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985) Inspired by artist-run spaces such as New York's Hansa Gallery and Phoenix, and Provincetown's Sun Gallery, Grooms and painter

Jay Milder Jay Milder (born 1934) is an American artist and a figurative expressionist painter of the second generation New York School. Themes from the Hebrew Bible such as Jacob's Ladder and Noah’s Ark, and the esoteric mystical beliefs of the Kabbala ...

opened the City Gallery in Grooms' second-floor loft in the

Flatiron District The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally, the Flatiron District is bounded by 14th Street, Union Square and Gre ...

. When Phoenix refused to show

Claes Oldenburg Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...

, Grooms and Milder dropped out of Phoenix and City Gallery presented Oldenberg's first New York exhibition, as well as that of

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, l ...

. Other artists who showed at City Gallery include Stephen Durkee,

Mimi Gross Mimi Gross (born 1940) is a New York City born American artist. Biography Early life Gross was born in New York City in 1940. She is the daughter of the sculptor Chaim Gross. She grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan among the artist commu ...

, Bob Thompson, Lester Johnson, and

Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...

. Grooms recalls, "We were reacting to Tenth Street. In '58 and '59, Tenth Street was sort of like SoHo is now, and it was getting all the lively attention of everyone downtown....We were just kids in our twenties..and had a flair for attracting people to our openings." During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Grooms made a number of " Happenings". The best known was ''The Burning Building'', staged at his studio (dubbed "The Delancey Street Museum" for the occasion) at 148 Delancey Street in New York's Lower East Side between December 4 and 11, 1959. Inspired by George Méliès's 1902 film ''A Trip to the Moon'', Grooms' early film ''Shoot the Moon'' (1962) features celebrants played by Edwin Denby,

and Grooms seen shredding library books to make confetti." Other Grooms films include:''The Big Sneeze'' (1962), a hand-drawn comic filmed by

Rudy Burckhardt Rudy Burckhardt (April 6, 1914 – August 1, 1999) was a Swiss-American filmmaker, and photographer, known for his photographs of the hand-painted billboards that began to dominate the American landscape in the 1940s and 1950s. Life Burckhardt was ...

; ''Before an' After'' (1964), a sadomastic comedy that casts

as part dominatrix/part healthclub operator; ''Fat Feet'' (1966), a collaboration with

and Dominic Falcone that begins where ''Shoot the Moon'' ends; ''Tapping Toes'' (1968-70), which uses his first sculpto-pictorama ''City of Chicago'' (1967) as its set; ''Conquest of Libya by Italy (1912-13)'' (1972-3), a black and white animation that spoofs that era's newsreels; ''Hippodrome Hardware'' (1973), based on Grooms' 1972 live performance of the same name, whose main character Mr. Ruckus is played by Grooms; ''Grow Great'' (1974), a live-action short that features

as the household consumer; ''Little Red Riding Hood'' (1978), which features his daughter Saskia; and ''Man Walking Up'' (1984).Janet Cutler, "The Films of Red Grooms," ''Red Grooms: A Retrospective'' (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985) Today Grooms is recognized as a pioneer of site-specific sculpture and installation art. ''City of Chicago'' (1967), a room-sized, walk-through "sculpto-pictorama," features sky-scraper-proportioned sculptures of Mayor Daley and Hugh Hefner "joined by such historical figures as Abraham Lincoln, Al Capone, and fan-dancer Sally Rand, accompanied by a sound track featuring gunfire and burlesque music. Grooms's genius for rendering the intricacies of architectural ornament is vividly apparent in several three-dimensional vistas of Chicago's famous buildings. Evident here and in the numerous other cityscapes Grooms has created is his extraordinary ability to capture a sense of place with a great sensitivity to detail." Another sculpto-pictorama, ''Ruckus Manhattan'' (1975) exemplifies the mixed-media installations that would become his signature craft. These vibrant three-dimensional constructions melded

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

and

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

, to create immersive works of art that invited interaction from the viewer. The pieces were often populated with colorful, cartoon-like characters, from varied walks of life. His satirical environmental installation ''The Discount Store'' was shown at VCU's Anderson Gallery in 1979. One of his biggest themes is the use of painting people, often using other artists or their styles to show his appreciation for their works.

Mature work

Regarding his large wall relief, ''William Penn Shaking Hands with the Indians'' (1967), based on a similarly titled painting by Benjamin West, Grooms remarked, "To tell the truth I did

he work He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

more because of Mr Benjamin West than Mr. Penn. Benjamin West is a hero for American Art. ... As I understand he set up the whole tableau for ''The Treaty'' on his estate using actors from a touring Shakespeare company Then he had an easel installed in the basket of a hot air balloon tethered at 60 feet, and with the help of sandwiches and birch beer hauled up to him by his wife, painted this great masterpiece in six days. To me, this is exemplary American behavior." Grooms's two most notable installations—''The City of Chicago'' (1967) and ''Ruckus Manhattan'' (1975)—were enormously popular with the public. These works were executed in collaboration with then-wife, the artist

. Along with Gross, he starred in Mike Kuchar's ''Secret of Wendel Samson'' (1966), which tells the story of a closeted gay artist torn between two relationships. In the 1990s Grooms returned to his

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

roots, creating likenesses of 36 figures from Nashville history for the Tennessee Foxtrot Carousel (1998). Grooms' sculpture ''The Shootout'', which depicts a cowboy and an Indian shooting at one another, drew protests by Native American activists when it was unveiled in

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

in 1982. The sculpture was evicted from two locations in downtown Denver after protesters threatened to deface it. In 1983 the sculpture was moved to the grounds of the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between ...

, and now sits on the roof of the museum restaurant. Grooms commented "Denver is beginning to rival Grumpsville, Tennessee, as one of the great sourpuss towns."

Other media

Besides painting and sculpture, Grooms is also known for his prolific printmaking. He has experimented with numerous techniques, creating woodblock prints, spray-painted stencils, soft-ground

etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

s, and elaborate three-dimensional lithograph constructions. His 1973 purchase of a hot-glue gun facilitated several masterpieces of paper sculpture; for example, ''Sam'', a portrait of Sam Reily who appeared in ''Fat Feet''; and ''Gretchen's Fruit'', a tour-de-force still life. In 1979, Grooms spent a week teaching at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, where he first started working in bronze. Regarding the several western and football themes made in metal, Grooms told

Grace Glueck Grace Glueck (July 24, 1926 – October 8, 2022) was an American arts journalist. She worked for ''The New York Times'' from 1951 until the early 2010s. Early life Glueck was born in New York City on July 24, 1926. Her father, Ernest, worked ...

: "It looks just like my regular stuff, but it's for the ages. . . It turns out to be easier to work with than less durable materials." The monumental ''Lumberjack'' (1977–1984), cast from a whimsical woodsman Red made as a gift for artist Neil Welliver, demonstrates his facility with the lost-wax method of casting.

Collections and honors

Grooms' work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States, as well as Europe, and Japan. His art is included in the collections of thirty-nine museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York, the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art Cheekwood is a historic estate on the western edge of Nashville, Tennessee that houses the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens. Formerly the residence of Nashville's Cheek family, the Georgian-style mansion was opened as a botanical garden and art muse ...

in Nashville, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

, the

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art, is an art museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was at what is now the Main Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsbur ...

, and the

Knoxville Museum of Art The Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA), is an art museum in Knoxville, Tennessee. It specializes in historical and contemporary art pieces from the East Tennessee region. According to its mission statement, the museum "celebrates the art and artists ...

. In 2018 a gift from Walter and Sarah Knestrick of Nashville of 238 graphic works by Grooms will be installed in new galleries of the

Tennessee State Museum The Tennessee State Museum is a large museum in Nashville depicting the history of the U.S. state of Tennessee. The current facility opened on October 4, 2018, at the corner of Rosa Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street at the foot of Capitol Hil ...

. In 2003, Grooms was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...

Personal life

Grooms currently lives and works in New York City in a studio in lower Manhattan at the intersection of Tribeca and Chinatown, where he has lived for around 40 years. He has one daughter, Saskia Grooms.

References

External links

Review of Grooms' Whitney Museum show
in Time Magazine

on

Nashville Public Television WNPT may refer to: *WNPT (TV) WNPT, virtual channel 8 (Very high frequency, VHF digital terrestrial television, digital channel 7), is a PBS network affiliate#Member stations, member television station city of license, licensed to Nashville, Te ...

's Carousel of Time website.
Grooms' lithographs
Shark's Ink. publishers of Red Grooms' prints since 1981. {{DEFAULTSORT:Grooms, Red 1937 births Living people American printmakers American contemporary artists Art Students League of New York alumni Artists from Tennessee Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters National Academy of Design members People from Nashville, Tennessee American pop artists School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni