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Red Grooms’ Homemade Theatre: Hippodrome Hardware

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2021

Ronald Argelander
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Extract

Red Grooms is an artist whose creative activities have been numerous and varied in arts peripheral to (but making use of) painting, such as film, sculpture and performance.

In 1963, Grooms began to have one-man shows regularly in New York. These took place at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on 57th Street. At least two of his five art exhibits in this gallery included films—Fat Feet (1966) and Tappy Toes (1970). Prior to 1963, Grooms had “performed” an action-painting entitled “A Play Called Fire” (1958), a proto-Happening called The Burning Building (1959), and a Happening-like work dubbed The Magic Train Ride (1960).

While Grooms’ art includes a wide range of mediums, there appears to be no sharp stylistic differentiation between them. His paintings, films and performance pieces all exhibit a highly personal, if not idiosyncratic, way of working. Many of his friends appear as performers in his films and theatre pieces, and as cutouts in his constructions.

Type
Visual Performance
Information
The Drama Review , Volume 17 , Issue 2: Visual Performance Issue , June 1973 , pp. 92 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © 1973 The Drama Review

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References

All performance photographs with this article are by Jennifer Merin.

* “The Big 6 Units Show” was presented in a large store at 85 Walker Street in New York. It included works by Jim Anderson, Charles Atlas, Jed Bark, Robert Israel, “Kosmo” Kelly, and Robert Whitman, in addition to Grooms. The evening lasted approximately five hours (depending upon the number of units actually presented) and included an intermission for dinner.