Kienholz vs. Mothra : Artist’s ‘Dodge’ Beat the Censors, but Then Came the Insects

When members of the County Board of Supervisors first laid eyes on Edward Kienholz’s “Back Seat Dodge ‘38,” way back in 1966 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they saw pornography. Labeling the sculptural portrayal of a drunken, life-size couple making love in a truncated automobile “revolting,” “blasphemous” and “dastardly,” the supervisors charged that the scruffy artwork went “way beyond the limits of public decency” and strongly urged the museum to remove it.

Twenty-seven years after the brouhaha that rocked the museum but failed to close Kienholz’s exhibition, the infamous sculpture--now in LACMA’s collection--has suffered another attack. But this time the assailants weren’t two-footed politicians, they were winged moths. And when they got a load of “Back Seat Dodge ‘38,” the wayward insects didn’t see obscenity, they saw home and dinner.

Nesting in dark crevices of the mixed-media assemblage, which art conservators describe as a nightmarish challenge to their field, a family of webbing clothes moths developed a taste for the ratty old carpet on the floor of the blue-flocked car.

“They tried to eat the upholstery, but they didn’t like that. Then they sampled fabric on the door panels, which they didn’t like either. But they really enjoyed the carpet. They were having a pretty good munch,” said LACMA conservator Steven Colton who discovered the intruders during a routine inspection. After he noticed carpet damage, Colton tracked down five juvenile moths. “Then I opened the trunk and a moth flew out,” he said. “I knew we were in trouble.”

The moths have been eradicated and the sculpture remains on view at the museum, but the rescue effort that saved it is a story in itself. Using an oxygen-deprivation technique developed at the Getty Conservation Institute, conservators encased the sculpture in a giant, custom-made plastic bag, extracted oxygen from the sculpture and replaced it with nitrogen to create a climate that would kill the moths. The climate was maintained for eight days to ensure that no moths, larvae or eggs could survive.

“The project was a wonderful three-way collaboration among the County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute,” said Dusan Stulik, acting director of GCI’s scientific program. The institute (which is housed in an industrial park in Marina del Rey) provided technology and instruments, while conservators from the two museums carried out the work, he said. In addition, LACMA produced 10 hours of videotape for an educational film that will be used in GCI training programs, Stulik said.

Colton put the project in motion by notifying Pieter Meyers, head of conservation at LACMA. Meyers called Stulik, who immediately rallied scientist Vinod Daniel, a senior research fellow at GCI, and Gordon Hanlon, a conservator of decorative arts and sculpture at the Getty Museum in Malibu. “I think they were here in an hour. It was the quickest response I ever saw,” Meyers said.

Insects are endemic to museums, particularly poverty-stricken institutions that specialize in natural history and ethnographic material. Even at LACMA, a fine arts museum that maintains pristine conditions and has a sophisticated conservation laboratory, eight or 10 objects require fumigation in a typical year. But “Back Seat Dodge ‘38” is so large and complicated that it presented a mind-boggling challenge. Sending it out of the museum for treatment would risk damage to the purposefully dilapidated artwork, and subjecting it to a traditional fumigation with chemicals could destroy some of the materials.

“It’s a very complex piece because it contains a wide range of inorganic and organic materials--leather, paper, cloth, metals, synthetic resins, flocking material and a whole range of adhesives,” Colton said. “Because of that, it’s difficult to preserve. What’s good for one element is bad for another.”

But LACMA’s problem turned out to be well-timed because GCI had recently completed a study at UC Riverside on “The Feasibility of Using Modified Atmospheres to Control Insect Pests in Museums.” Among the dozen common pests studied was the webbing clothes moth, the insect that took such a shine to the Kienholz.

The study determined that it takes 48 hours to kill moth eggs and 24 hours to kill larvae and adult moths when they are exposed to a nitrogen atmosphere containing no more than 0.1% oxygen, Daniel said. The Kienholz piece was kept in wraps for a longer period to ensure that eggs in inaccessible areas wouldn’t survive the treatment, he noted.

Stulik originally devised oxygen-deprived environments at GCI as a relatively simple, inexpensive and safe method of preserving mummies in Egyptian museums. Getty conservator Brian Considine later developed a way to apply the technology to art objects in the Getty museum’s conservation laboratory and Hanlon treated several worm-infested pieces of furniture in the Getty’s collection before he worked on the Kienholz.

As awareness of toxic chemicals has risen and some gases used in fumigation have been banned or restricted, museum scientists and conservators have searched for benign ways to eradicate pests from artworks, including freezing, heating and using microwave techniques and electric voltage. The system of fumigating objects with nitrogen in sealed chambers is preferable to toxic gases because it is safer for both the objects and conservators, Hanlon said. Relatively small objects can be treated quite easily in museum conservation laboratories, he said.

Rigging up an apparatus to de-bug “Back Seat Dodge ‘38” was no easy matter, however. The conservators had to construct an immense three-layer bag from three-foot-wide strips of plastic. Seams were sealed with heat, and two bags of polyethylene were encased in a bag of highly impermeable plastic. The sculpture is attached to casters, so it could be rolled into the plastic enclosure with relative ease.

Daunted by the huge amount of space to be filled with nitrogen, the conservators filled open spaces with inflated balloons to reduce the volume. When they set up a system to pipe nitrogen into the bag, they attached tubular branches to improve circulation throughout the artwork and reduce chances of “dead spaces” where the insects could survive.

An atmosphere of 50% relative humidity had to be maintained to prevent cracking, shrinkage or warping of the artwork’s materials, so the nitrogen was fed through humidifiers before being pumped into the sealed bag. An oxygen monitor inside the bag was attached to a control panel outside, while two computers provided continuous readings of the humidity, measured by a pair of monitors. As oxygen was extracted from the closed environment, it was replaced with humidified nitrogen.

The whole operation was performed in a gallery of the Anderson building where the sculpture has been on view for several years. The gallery was closed for 10 days, but when the project was complete the equipment was simply dismantled and the car was rolled out of the bag.

“This was a big shock for us,” Meyers said of the moth attack, “but our misfortune came at a fortunate time for GCI. . . . This provided an opportunity to try out their laboratory experiments on a real-live problem.”

“We weren’t sure that we could cope on a scale of this magnitude,” Hanlon said, “but the system coped so easily that it increased our confidence.”

The institute plans to conduct additional studies to determine if the technique will work in atmospheres with varying levels of oxygen and how much time would be required to kill various insects at those levels, Daniel said. The 0.1% level used on the Kienholz is difficult to maintain. If higher levels will work, more museums are likely to use the technique, he said.

Meanwhile, Daniel has converted a fumigation vault at LACMA for use in future nitrogen treatments of relatively small objects. The vault was installed 10 years ago, for use with gases that have been restricted or banned. It has stood empty for years, but now it will be put into operation, Meyers said.

Another benefit of the moth attack, according to participants in the rescue effort, is a strengthened bond between scientists and conservators who say they tend to be isolated in their own institutions. “We always talk about collaboration, but I think we surprised each other about how good we really are at helping each other,” Meyers said.

The Rumble Over ‘Back Seat Dodge’

Here are some key dates in the life and times of Edward Kienholz’s sculpture “Back Seat Dodge ‘38” :

* Early 1964--Inspired by memories of his adolescent sexual experience, Kienholz created “Back Seat Dodge ’38.”

* Sept. 29-Oct. 24, 1964--Kienholz first exhibited the sculpture at the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles.

* Oct. 16, 1964--LACMA accepted a proposal from curator Maurice Tuchman for a major Kienholz exhibition in 1966.

* March 22, 1966--County Board of Supervisors voted unanimous support of a letter by Supervisor Warren M. Dorn charging that Kienholz’s exhibition is pornographic and urging LACMA trustees to cancel it. Only two of the board’s five supervisors, Dorn and Kenneth Hahn, had seen Kienholz’s work.

* March 22, 1966--LACMA trustees rejected the supervisors’ appeal as an infringement of the museum’s obligation to present works “that represent an honest statement by a serious artist” and issued a statement: “A great museum, like a great library, displays and studies but does not pass judgment; only society, present and future, can do that.”

* March 23, 1966--Hahn threatened to strip top museum officials of supplemental county-paid salaries because of their refusal to cancel the show, but nothing came of the threat.

* March 30, 1966--Kienholz’s exhibition of 47 works opened on schedule, with 200 people standing in line at LACMA and the door of “Dodge” closed. Guards opened the door at periodical intervals.

* 1981--”Back Seat Dodge ’38 “ purchased by LACMA.