• Made at the time of the1960s Civil Rights Movement
• Reflecting the situation in the South.
• Racial prejudice and hatred

The Illegal Operation (1962)

Depicts the scene of an abortion at a time when the procedure was practiced in secrecy, often in dangerous and unregulated conditions.

Made nearly a decade before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion in the United States

Created out of found objects including  a wooden stool, a standing lamp, polyester resin, pigment, shopping cart, wooden stool, concrete, lamp, fabric, basin, metal pots, blanket, hooked rug, and medical equipment – The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Made from Kienholz’s  experiences working in a state mental hospital in the 1940’s

He was commenting in the neglect and mistreatment of the institutionalised

The fishbowls as their heads emphasises the patients’ isolation and entrapment

The thought bubbles possibly representing schizophrenia talking to ones self as the figures look almost identical

His sculpture portrays a youthful couple engaged in sexual activity in an old 1938 Dodge coupe. Based on his own early sexual experimentation.

The woman, cast in plaster, lies across the seat with the man, formed out of chicken wire

It caused an uproar, some local authorities called pornographic and asked for its removal from the exhibition.

The viewer becomes a voyeur activating such feelings of discomfort, revulsion, interest, and curiosity reflecting the mid-twentieth century American public’s attitudes towards sexuality.