A Fully Bedazzled Kitchen Is On View at the Whitney Museum Right Now - Architectural Digest

Recently the Whitney Museum of American Art opened its latest exhibition, "Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019." The show, which will stay on view through January 2021 and includes works by the likes of Eva Hesse, is a long overdue boon for any ardent supporter of this previously maligned visual field. The exhibition also presented a chance for the Whitney to purchase works on its wish list and to showcase a handful of special pieces already within its collection. One gem that resurfaced was Liza Lou's life-size, fully beaded Kitchen, now resplendent in its sixth-floor gallery setting. More than two decades after its completion in 1996, Lou speaks to AD PRO about the work.

AD PRO: You hand-glued each bead in Kitchen using tweezers. Why didn’t you use string to sew them on instead?

Liza Lou: They’re not beads on a string because those are more expensive—they’re designed to make a needle go through them all at once. And I wasn’t going to sew anything [laughs]. But I learned to weave through the process. The oven rack is woven. I would take it on airplanes and everything—I had to get the work done, it took five years! One time a stewardess came over and asked what I was doing. I said to myself, "I’m just going to tell the truth for once," so I said, "I’m beading a kitchen." She was just silent—and didn’t come back. Now I’m more into sewing than I was then, but every major project I’ve done has had something woven within it.

AD PRO: What made you interested in weaving in the first place?

LL: I like a challenge, and things that are going to be hellishly difficult. I like doing things as an artist that feel a little bit transgressive but in the worst possible way—sugary and sweet and crafty and so wrong it becomes right. With Kitchen, I thought to myself, How far would you have to push ladies in little sweatshirts to say "Oh, wow"?

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AD PRO: What’s your perspective on the kitchen as a room within the house today?

LL: The kitchen as a sphere can be a sexy place, in a way. It’s the center of a house. People hunker down in the kitchen. They hang out in the kitchen. There’s also nowhere else in the house with that much advertisement at full tilt. It’s where you read a cereal box half awake. I kind of wanted to celebrate that. It had a lot to do with my childhood in the suburban Midwest.

AD PRO: Would this work be your dream kitchen?

LL: No, I’m a total minimalist! I like clear surfaces and I hate clutter.

AD PRO: Maximalism—from color and pattern layering to quilted motifs, all of which are in your work—seems to be on the rise again. Do you agree?

LL: I think what you’re really talking about is an interest in the handmade. Because we’ve become so disconnected from nature, we really want to be around things like handwoven rugs. I mean, I made the kitchen before there were cell phones! But even then people thought I was completely nuts.

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December 13, 2019 at 12:26AM
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A Fully Bedazzled Kitchen Is On View at the Whitney Museum Right Now - Architectural Digest
"kitchen" - Google News
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