A review of the Bodys Isek Kingelez MOMA exhibition catalogue

The Museum of Modern Art in New York held an exhibition from 26 May 2018 to 1 January 2019 of a large collection of Bodys Isek Kingelez’s miniature buildings and layouts. Apparently it was the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Kingelez’s work to date. I recently read about his work, as well as the MOMA exhibition, and had to get a copy of the exhibition’s catalogue. It’s an excellent book: hardcover; full colour; 144 pages, 77 of which are high quality photos of his models and layouts; 5 essays on his work; comprehensive references; and some writings by Kingelez himself top it off. I’m quite impressed by the book’s design and organization, and I’m thinking some variation on it would be good to use for the E. L. Moore book.

I found the book’s most striking aspects are the collection of model photos, and the lead essay by the exhibition’s curator, Sarah Suzuki, the MOMA’s curator of drawings and prints. Suzuki’s essay gives an excellent overview of Kingelez’s life and work, although one statement gave me a little concern:

Kingelez’s practice, though unquestionably appealing to curators, critics, and art historians, has presented them a maddening challenge. In collapsing the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and design, it eludes the categorization and classification on which institutional collections rely, and in its lack of known art historical precedents it evades the genealogy that we love to document and trace.

When I first saw Kingelez’s miniature buildings they immediately struck me as being well within the long folk art tradition of miniature building construction. I’m not saying any of the analysis in the catalogue is wrong, only that the practice of folk art miniature buildings is another lens through which Kingelez’s work can be viewed. It helps resolve the categorization issue Suzuki raises, and places Kingelez’s work in what I think is a global art.

Long time readers of the blog will know that I think E. L. Moore is a figure in that tradition, and that my thoughts on this coalesced when I read a 2014 New York Times article on the American folk art buildings collection of Steven Burke and Randy Campbell. Burke and Campbell have also documented their collection in their own catalogue, which when viewed in parallel with Kingelez’s makes for an interesting bit of comparative reading. 

Ok, so why do I think Kingelez’s work can be viewed as part of the folk art miniature buildings tradition? First, let’s look at some of the characteristics of work in this field and their creators.

1. The models are made from fairly simple materials and tools that are readily found around the home. Cardboard, wood, paper, foam board, and paint are mainstays. Cast-offs, junk, and recycled materials are also often incorporated. Chosen materials usually evolve with the artist, but don’t stray too far from their roots. Simple tools are used. Modern craft and hobby lingo would call this a basic form of scratchbuilding.

2. This is often a lifetime activity, or one that has been part of the artist’s life for decades and only ends when the artist dies. It’s not unusual for the artist to start as a child, but coming to the art when older isn’t unheard of - for a few it’s started in middle age. It’s generally not something an artist picks up for a commission or two and then moves on to something else as if it were just another assignment in the corporate world.

3. It’s a compulsion. A compulsion to create something that expresses something important to them, and that something has buildings as its core means of expression. This doesn’t mean the works ignore the market and the artists live in poverty, only that the work isn’t created solely based on market demands. Commissions, sales of works, articles and stories, even at times commodification, and so on, aren’t unusual. The artists haven’t taken vows of poverty or exclusion from the world, it’s just that the work, to a large degree, is self-propelled. 

4. I don’t like the term ‘folk art miniature buildings’ as it carries all sorts of unconscious associations about the works and their creators. It’s easy to find pieces that have been cunningly created to cash in on subconscious assumptions about folk art buildings; these are imposter works. For example, one stereotypical aspect is that of crude construction. Just because the materials are unassuming, cast-offs, or junk, doesn’t mean they’ll be used without skill in a clumsy and unthoughtful manner. Manufacturers of knock-offs will often focus on what they think is folksy crudity to signal to uninformed buyers that they’re getting real folk art.

5. The artists in this field tend not to be professionally trained in the arts. This doesn’t exclude those with arts training, it just means that it’s an activity that’s usually undertaken by non-professionals, which may have lead to the categorization problem Suzuki alludes to. 

I’ve written about a few people I consider to be in the tradition, but Burke and Campbell note in their book that many works from past ages are anonymous, so historical documentation is often almost impossible to find. They also speculate that the art in America more-or-less died out after World War II, thereby ending a long run that possibly started sometime after the Civil War. I think in the post-WWII era it was subsumed into other arts, crafts, and hobbies, although many of its characteristics did die away in the process. It’s indeed a rare thing to see today, and I think the internet will speed the demise of whatever is left.

Here’s a list of a few artists I’ve written about that I think can be argued to be in the field, or did some work in it.

1. Laurence T. Gieringer. His work and origin story is a classic.

2. E. L. Moore. Most of my writing at this blog has been about his work. He’s also a good example of a person who had he lived his entire life in the pre-WWII era, might have been thought of as a true folk art building artist, but it turns out he’s one who’s work has all the characteristics of folk art, but was subsumed into post WWII model railroading, which I think he did so he could earn some money in the industry’s publications.

3. Roye England. He’s Pendon’s founder. I haven’t written about him here, but his story and work in the creation of the Pendon Museum is squarely in the wheelhouse.

4. Michael Paul Smith. He had arts training and worked in some arts related jobs, but his personal work is purely in the field. I highly recommend the 2015 book, Elgin Park: Visual Memories of Midcentury America at 1/24th scale, about about his projects that was written with Gail K. Ellison.

5. Mark Hogancamp. I’d say his work and personal history skirts the field, but I’d feel remiss about not mentioning him. One thing I’d recommend is watching Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary about him, Marwencol, and then watching the 2018 Robert Zemeckis film, Welcome to Marwen, based on Hogancamp’s experiences and world. Pay special attention to how Zemeckis and team have reimagined Hogancamp’s miniature city for purposes of the movie against Hogancamp’s orginal. 

6. Seth. The famous cartoonist is clearly a mainstream artist; however, his personal long-term project of making buildings for his imaginary city of Dominion is definitely in the field. Surprisingly, when I saw Kingelez’s vibrantly coloured buildings I immediately thought of how they contrasted with Seth’s rather grey and monochromatic ones. Although, both Seth and Kingelez only use real buildings as starting points, if at all, and don’t concentrate on creating replicas.

7. Kim Adams. I much admire his work, but it’s another that skirts the field. When it comes to exuberance, his work is certainly up there with Kingelez’s, but Adams’ work is based on kitbashing as opposed to scratchbuilding, which I think is modern craft lingo for what happens in folk art miniature buildings. This opens up questions about how far a folk artist can go with using found objects and still be called a scratchbuilder instead of a kitbasher. Kingelez wasn’t a kitbasher.

8. George Iliffe Stokes. Although ostensively in the model railway field, his miniature buildings transcend it and document a serious love of English architecture. 

No doubt there’re more. This is all a work-in-progress and I’ll write about those I find.

From Suzuki’s essay and the model photos Kingelez’s work checks the field’s major boxes, but like all the field’s practitioners he brings things to the table that are uniquely his own. Kingelez, unlike most, didn’t make replicas of existing buildings, even though as Suzuki points out, a few of Kinshasa’s buildings may have influenced his early work. And as his work developed, it grew in expressiveness and complexity. His work was about ideas and designs that were uniquely his own. Often artists in the field stick with replicating, to various degrees, things that are meaningful to them that already exist in the world. That wasn’t Kingelez’s style. The thing to remember is that doesn’t exclude him from the field.

Before wrapping up, I should note there does seem to be a little railwaying in Kingelez’s work. Take a look again at the book’s cover. I spread it open for a reason: front and centre is a railway station with tracks entering on the right and leaving out the back on the left, that then rise up to meet some elevated track. The cover photo is one of a section of an approximately 19’ x 8’ layout called Ville Fantome, presented in plate 28 on page 116, which shows the elevated track, once down range from the station, making a hard 90-degree turn, and then dropping down to ground level to run parallel to what looks like a canal. It appears the layout is built from side-by-side placed modules, although personal inspection would be needed to confirm this. Scale? Hard to tell if there is one, but I’d hazard to guess if there was any explicit scaling it wouldn’t be larger than Z. Ville Fantome is a layout, a non-functioning one by the standards of the model railway hobby, but a layout nevertheless.