BIOGRAPHY
A painter, sculptor, installation artist, performance artist and filmmaker, Charles Rogers Grooms was born in Nashville, TN, in the middle of the Great Depression. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then the New School for Social Research in New York, he attended a summer institute under Hans Hofmann (an influential Abstract Expressionist) in Provincetown, MA. Here, while making ends meet as a dishwasher, he was given the nickname 'Red,' for his red hair.
Together with Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and others, Red Grooms was briefly an instrumental figure in the history of performance art in New York during the late 1950s with the 'Happenings' he presented, most famously The Burning Building (1959), which took place in his loft at Delancey Street. The energy of these performances--their narrative flow, and their elements of absurd comedy--were soon redeployed into films, beginning with Shoot the Moon (1962), a reworking of the silent film A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Directed with cinematographer Rudy Buckhardt, these films gave ample scope for Grooms' playful sense of humor. The focus of his subject matter on urban life and humanity, already central to his 'Happenings', was likewise transferred into the paintings and painted constructions using found materials, such as Policewoman (1959).
By the mid-1960s, in works such as Maine Room (paint on wood, paper and cardboard, in plexiglass box, 1965), Grooms had already developed the concept of miniature interiors crammed with human incident and amusing detail for which he was later to become best known. Favoring a rough humor, a homemade look and a naive style, he set himself the challenge of making life-sized painted environments that invited the spectator to experience the pulsating dynamism and chaotic vitality of city life. One of the most ambitious of these projects, made in collaboration with his wife, Mimi Grooms, was Ruckus Manhattan (1976), a sprawling mixed media construction that paid homage to his adoptive New York City through such everyday scenes. As his deranged comic-book style became more pronounced in the late 1970s and 1980s (see Gertrude, 1975), the arrival of a younger generation of artists including, above all, those associated with graffiti art, helped recontextualize his work. However stubbornly individualistic his art remains, Red Grooms continues to inspire.
Together with Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine and others, Red Grooms was briefly an instrumental figure in the history of performance art in New York during the late 1950s with the 'Happenings' he presented, most famously The Burning Building (1959), which took place in his loft at Delancey Street. The energy of these performances--their narrative flow, and their elements of absurd comedy--were soon redeployed into films, beginning with Shoot the Moon (1962), a reworking of the silent film A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Directed with cinematographer Rudy Buckhardt, these films gave ample scope for Grooms' playful sense of humor. The focus of his subject matter on urban life and humanity, already central to his 'Happenings', was likewise transferred into the paintings and painted constructions using found materials, such as Policewoman (1959).
By the mid-1960s, in works such as Maine Room (paint on wood, paper and cardboard, in plexiglass box, 1965), Grooms had already developed the concept of miniature interiors crammed with human incident and amusing detail for which he was later to become best known. Favoring a rough humor, a homemade look and a naive style, he set himself the challenge of making life-sized painted environments that invited the spectator to experience the pulsating dynamism and chaotic vitality of city life. One of the most ambitious of these projects, made in collaboration with his wife, Mimi Grooms, was Ruckus Manhattan (1976), a sprawling mixed media construction that paid homage to his adoptive New York City through such everyday scenes. As his deranged comic-book style became more pronounced in the late 1970s and 1980s (see Gertrude, 1975), the arrival of a younger generation of artists including, above all, those associated with graffiti art, helped recontextualize his work. However stubbornly individualistic his art remains, Red Grooms continues to inspire.
REFERENCES
Biography adapted from Marco Livingstone, "Grooms, Red." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T097104>.
Artwork behind title: Red Grooms's Joseph's Bridge (detail)
Biography adapted from Marco Livingstone, "Grooms, Red." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T097104>.
Artwork behind title: Red Grooms's Joseph's Bridge (detail)
