One of my favorite Houston artists is Paul Kittelson. I first saw his work at the Contemporary Arts Museum in 1988. It was included in the first (and as far as I know, only) Texas Triennial Exhibition. I only have vague memories of the show, but I very much recall Kittelson’s eye-popping sculpture group of headless muscle builders called Mindless Competition.
This image is from Kittelson’s website. The figures are made some black foam material wrapped around an armature and made to look like they are covered with weird little muscles with some kind of string or wire pulled tight. It appealed to me at the time on three levels. The technique Kittleson used to achieve this grotesque display of way more muscles than the human body actually has felt very clever. It was a good satire of the cult of the beautiful body. And they were impressive, strangely beautiful objects, bumpy black shapes glinting in the sun.
Not any more. Over the past few years, I have watched one of Kittleson’s muscle men slowly decay in its current home in front of Mother Dog Studios. I walked by it tonight and here is what it looks like now.
Most of the black foam rubber that coated his body has degraded away in the Houston weather. You can now get a good look at the armature that underlay all the muscles.
Now when I think about Mindless Competiton, I am reminded of Robert Minor’s famous anti-war cartoon that appeared in The Masses in 1916.
Here is Paul Kittelson at his birthday party a few years ago.
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GREAT artist. Glad you wrote this.
I like the artistic statement it makes while decaying. And of course, it makes me think of the 1933 King Kong figure and other foam-on-armature puppets