Finding aid for the Getty Research Institute Collection of Materials Relating to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis project, 1994-2000

Beth Ann Guynn


Descriptive Summary

Title: Getty Research Institute collection of materials relating to Robert Heinecken's...wore khakis project,
Date (inclusive): 1994-2000
Number: Heinecken.Combined
Creator/Collector: Heinecken, Robert, 1931-2006
Physical Description: 4.33 Linear Feet (4 boxes)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: This finding aid describes four separate collections acquired by the Getty Research Institute in 1997 and related to Robert Heineckens's project...wore khakis, a five-year endeavor centered on the GAP's 1990s khaki pants advertising campaign.
Request Materials: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the links included in each series. Click here for the access policy  .
Language: Collection material is in English.

Biographical/Historical Note

The artist and teacher, Robert Heinecken (1931–2006), was a pivotal figure in the postwar Los Angeles art scene. The son of a Lutheran minister, he was born in Denver, Colorado, and raised in Riverside, California. He interrupted his studies at UCLA to spend the three years from 1953 to 1957 as a Marine fighter pilot, after which he returned to the university, graduating with an M. A. in art in 1960 with a specialization in printmaking, which he had already started to combine with other media such as sculpture and photography. Heinecken stayed at UCLA for the next thirty years, teaching in the art department and founding its photography program in 1963. He was a founding member of the Society of Photographic Education (1964), and chaired this organization of college teachers in 1970 and 1971. In his teaching, as with his own work, Heinecken championed wide-ranging media and stylistic experimentation. Many of his students – among them Uta Barth, Jo Ann Callis, Eileen Cowan, Darryl Curran, John Dovola, Robert Flick, Patrick Nagatani, and Sheila Pinkel – established themselves as important artists and instructors in the Los Angeles art scene and beyond.
Despite being intimately identified with photography as both an artist and a teacher, Heinecken was less frequently a user of the camera than a user of its products. A self-described "para-photographer," he felt that his recontextualization of existing images put his work "beside" or "beyond" traditional photographic practices. Through collage and assemblage, photograms, darkroom experimentation, and re-photography and manipulation, Heinecken repurposed imagery gleaned from popular culture sources including advertisments, newspapers, magazines, pornography, and television to create new, deeply-layered works with complex, and often witty, levels of meaning.
In a real sense, the phenomenon of cultural iconography is the overarching theme of Heinecken's work. He used "found images" to delve into and dissect popular culture and the societal norms ever-present in the entangled themes of advertising and commercialism; sex, sexualization and the nature of desire; the body and gender; cultural icons; and the media and the permeation of television into American society. In Are You Rea (1964-1968), Heinecken created 25 photograms from magazines such as LifeLife, Time and Woman's Day by photographing the pages on a light table so that both sides of a page combine to create a new, single image. He later incorporated Are You Rea into his portfolio Recto/Verso (1989) of 12 photograms each accompanied by a text by a different writer.
The relationship between the original and the copy is, naturally, an underlying preoccupation that runs throughout Heinecken's work, as is the relationship of his artistic production to the aesthetics of "conventional" photography. Heinecken's hybridization of photographs with other print processes was a direct challenge to the hegemony of American fine art photographers. Kodak Saftey Film/Taos Church(1972), presents a view of the adobe church, now surrounded with the detritus of modern-day culture, that was famously photographed by Ansel Adams and Paul Strand, and painted by Georgia O'Keefe and John Marin. Here, the finished work, manifested as a photographic negative, simultaneously addresses the notion of photography as subject, questions the parameters of photography, challenges the American artist canon, and exposes the modernist cultural icon these artists created.
In the 1970s Heinecken turned to new photographic processes such as instant photography, and used Polaroid's new SX-70 camera to create works such as He/She (1975-1980) and Lessons in Posing Subjects (1981-1982). In the 1980s he produced what he called "videograms" by placing photographic (i.e. light sensitive) paper directly onto a television screen to capture screen shots of key broadcast television moments such as President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration.
Heinecken had three children with his first wife, Janet M. Storey. They figured in such works of his as Visual Poem/About the Sexual Education of a Young Girl (1965) and Kodak Safety Film/Christmas Mistake (1971). His second wife, Joyce Neimanas taught at UCLA and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Heinecken retired from UCLA and joined Neimanas in Chicago in 1996. In 2004 the couple moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where after long suffering with Alzheimer's disease, Heinecken succumbed to pneumonia in 2006. During his lifetime his career was the subject of two retrospectives: one at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1998), and the other at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson (2003). A posthumous retrospective held at MOMA (2014) traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles the following year. Heinecken's archive is held at the Center for Creative Photography.
Sources consulted:
"Robert Heinecken: Paraphotographer," Arthur Ou speaks with Eva Respini, Aperture, March 15, 2014, http://aperture.org/blog/robert-heinecken-paraphotographer.
Gundberg, Andy, "Robert Heinecken, Artist Who Juxtaposed Photographs, Is Dead at 74," The New York Times, May 22, 2006, page B6, NY edition.
The Museum of Modern Art, Department of Communications, "The Museum of Modern Art Presents a Retrospective of Robert Heinecken in Robert Heinecken: Object Matter," press release, 2014?, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_press-release_386896.pdf.

Administrative Information

Conditions Governing Access

Open for use by qualified researchers.

Publication Rights

Acquisition information

The four series presented in this finding aid were acquired separately in 2017. See individual entries below for acqusition-specific information.

Processing History

Beth Ann Guynn processed the collection and wrote the finding aid in 2017.

Related Archival Materials

The repository holds two collections related to Robert Heineken's portfolio Recto/Verso.
Robert Heinecken production materials for Recto/Verso, 1986-1990, accession no. 2017.M.41, includes the maquette for the portfolio, along with papers related to the design and printing of the project. Recto/Verso : A Portfolio of Twelve Photograms , 1989, accession no. 2012.M.38, comprises an editioned copy of the portfolio.
Robert Heinecken's archive is held at the Center for Creative Photography.

Scope and Content of Collection

This finding aid provides a single access point for four separate collections related to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis project, a five-year endeavor centered on the GAP's 1990s khaki pants advertising campaign. Heinecken dissects, with the deft precision of his X-acto knife, the narrative proffered in the advertisements, which feature vintage photographs of celebrities wearing khaki pants, and bear the slogan "[famous name] wore khakis." By cutting through 28 of the advertisements and binding them together to reveal numerous layers of famous people wearing khakis, Heinecken twists the ad campaign's implied intimacy between celebrity and consumer. By these actions the viewer no longer simply shares a one-on-one connective moment with a single personality, but rather is confronted with multiple personalities whose body parts have been recombined to create new hybrid individuals, much as in the way the pages in children's flip-flap books can be endlessly rearranged to create figures with amusingly mismatched heads, torsos and feet. It is within these layered relationships created by Heinecken's manipulations that the viewer is ultimately left to reconsider one's real and suggested connections to both the individual celebrities depicted, and to a vast, uniformly khaki-clad population.
Each of the first three acquisitions in the collection comprises as single, discrete iteration of Heinecken's …wore khakis: Series I (accession number 2017.M.30), GAP/NY Headaches, is a revised magazine that represents the first stage of the project; Series II (accession number 2017.M.31), contains the prototype for Heinecken's final publication …wore khakis ; and the publisher's proof is found in Series III (accession number 2017.M.32). Finally, Series IV (accession number 2017.M.33) comprises Nazraeli press records related to …wore khakis, including correspondence between publisher Chris Pichler and Robert Heinecken; original materials relating to the various components of the project; documentation of the project; and related ephemera, as well as legal correspondence related to the GAP's objection to Heinecken's use of their advertising campaign.

Arrangement

Arranged in four series, each representing a separate acquisition: and Series I. Revised Magazine: Gap/NY Headaches, (Accession number 2017.M.30), between 1994 and 1999; Series II. Prototype for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.31), 1998; Series III. Publisher's proof for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.32), 1999; Series IV. Nazraeli press records related to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.33), 1994-2000.

Indexing Terms

Subjects - Names

Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973 -- Portraits
Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969 -- Portraits
Lombard, Carole, 1908-1942 -- Portraits
Bogart, Humphrey, 1899-1957 -- Portraits
Earhart, Amelia, 1897-1937 -- Portraits
Davis, Miles -- Portraits
Pagel, David
Clinton, Bill, 1946- -- Caricatures and cartoons
Heinecken, Robert, 1931-2006 -- Correspondence
Pichler, Chris -- Correspondence
Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-1957 -- Portraits

Subjects - Corporate Bodies

GAP, Inc.
Nazraeli Press

Subjects - Topics

Celebrities -- Portraits
khaki
Advertising campaigns -- United States
Advertising -- Clothing and dress

Subjects - Places

Cartoons (humerous images) -- United States -- 20th century

Subjects - Titles

New York (New York, N.Y.)

Genres and Forms of Material

Artists' books -- United States -- 20th century
Photomechanical prints -- United States -- 20th century
Altered books -- United States -- 20th century
Photographs, Original
Inkjet prints -- United States -- 20th century
Printers proofs -- United States -- 20th century
Black-and-white slides -- United States -- 20th century
Color slides -- United States -- 20th century
Diffusion transfer prints -- United States -- 20th century
Gelatin silver prints -- United States -- 20th century
Xyrographic copies -- United States -- 20th century
Correspondence -- United States -- 20th century

Contributors

Heinecken, Robert, 1931-2006


 

Series I. Revised Magazine: Gap/NY Headaches (Accession number 2017.M.30), between 1994 and 1999

Physical Description: 1.1 Linear Feet (1 box)
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this series through the catalog record   for this acquisition. Click here for the access policy .

Scope and Content Note

One of five unique copies, Robert Heinecken's Revised magazine: GAP/NY headaches , represents the first state of the artist's multifaceted, five-year project centered on the GAP's 1990s khaki pants advertising campaign. Heinecken dissects, with the deft precision of his X-acto knife, the narrative proffered in the advertisements, which feature vintage photographs of celebrities wearing khaki pants and bear the slogan "[famous name] wore khakis." By cutting through 28 of the advertisements and binding them together to reveal numerous layers of famous people wearing khakis, Heinecken twists the ad campaign's implied intimacy between celebrity and consumer. In doing so the viewer no longer simply shares a connective moment with, for example, Allen Ginsberg sitting cross-legged with his hands folded in his lap, since the part of Ginsberg's shirt showing inside his suit jacket has been cut away to create the appearance that Jack Kerouac, whose image is on the following page, is sitting in Ginsberg's lap; nor with Pablo Picasso seated in his studio, where the cutout makes him appear to be bemusedly holding a small, standing Amelia Earhart in his hands. Rather, within these layered relationships the viewer is left to reconsider one's real and suggested connections to both the individual celebrities depicted, and to a vast, uniformly khaki-clad population.
In this first iteration of the project the photocopied GAP advertisements have other unrelated fashion advertisements and magazine images pasted to their versos. The GAP Khakis logo remains untouched on the bottom corner of the pages, but the slogan "[famous name] wore khakis" is infrequently, and often only partially, present. In some instances Heinecken has experimented with collage, as seen in the image of Humphrey Bogart standing on the deck of a boat where he has given Bogart three bobbing heads, two pairs of legs and three outstretched arms, so that he seems to be moving towards Carole Lombard, who is standing with her hands in her pockets on the next page.
The magazine is bound in a reproduced cover of New York magazine for 21 February 1994 with the mailing label addressed to Heinecken present in the lower left corner, and featuring a cover story about infant AIDS treatment, along with a running banner along the top edge reading: What the Trumps want / Condé Nast's newest dame. The back cover is a collage of two advertisements for Kool cigarettes. Heinecken has added a man standing behind the woman in the ad who sits on the word "KOOL," both with cigarette in hand. He has also added, perhaps as an ironical reference to his project, the word "all" to the slogan so that it reads: All / this is KOOL / no doubt about it.
Pencil annotation on verso: GAP magazine / #4 (of 5) / Heinecken 1994-1999. Chris Pichler received this copy of GAP/NY Headaches from Robert Heinecken when the two men were collaborating on the ...wore khakis project.

Arrangement

In orginal order.

Acquisition information

Acquired in 2017.

Preferred Citation

Revised magazine: Gap/NY headaches, between 1994 and 1999, The Getty Research Institute, accession no. 2017.M.30.
box Box2017.M.30.bx1

Revised Magazine GAP/NY Headaches

 

Series II. Prototype for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.31), 1998

Physical Description: 1.1 Linear Feet (1 box)
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record  for this collection. Click here for the access policy .

Scope and Content Note

In the handmade prototype for his artists book, ...wore khakis, Robert Heinecken dissects, with the deft precision of his X-acto knife, the narrative proffered in the GAP's 1990s advertising campaign featuring vintage photographs of celebrities wearing khaki pants and bearing the slogan "[famous name] wore khakis." By cutting through 28 of the advertisements and binding them together to reveal numerous layers of famous people wearing khakis, Heinecken twists the ad campaign's implied intimacy between celebrity and consumer: the viewer no longer simply shares a connective moment with, for example, a seated and cross-legged Allen Ginsberg, since Ginsberg's torso has been spliced away to create the appearance that Jack Kerouac, whose image is on the following page, is sitting in his lap. But flip back a page, and Kerouac now seems almost to be crouching beside the piano at which a laughing Bobby Short sits. Within these layered relationships, the viewer is left to reconsider one's real and suggested connections to both the individual celebrities depicted, and to a vast, uniformly khaki-clad population. In the final illustration, Heineken himself stands uncut next to an airplane in his khaki Marine fighter pilot jumpsuit, at once including himself in this population, while simultaneously reminding the viewer of the military origins of khakis.
Although all or part of a celebrity's name remains in the images, in a final humorous twist Heinecken mixes up the names of the celebrities appearing in the original ads to create "new" celebrities, whose names he writes on the blank pages opposite their likenesses. Thus, the portrait of Pablo Picasso seated in his studio, where the cutout makes him appear to be holding a small standing Amelia Earhart in his hands, is paired with the text: Andy McQueen wore khakis. Follwing this fashion, in the final image Heineken has tentitively renamed himself Raoul Heinecken and penciled in below his name: (or Helmut?).
Following the final cutout (Miles Davis) three pages of printed text serve as place markers for David Pagel's essay "The Gaps in the Ads: Robert Heinecken's Sabotaged GAP Ads" and Heinecken's bibliography.
The prototype has white covers with a black spiral binding. Pasted lettering on front cover reads: khakis. Pasted lettering on back cover reads: ...wore. A small yellow sticky note taped to the front cover reads: Prototype / wire - O / should be / white? The cutouts are pasted on black, gray or white art papers. The title is taken from the title page.

Arrangement

In original order.

Acquisition information

Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon.

Preferred Citation

Prototype for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis, 1998, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2017.M.31.
box 2017.M.31.bx1

Prototype for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis

 

Series III. Publisher's proof for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.32), 1999

Physical Description: 1.1 Linear Feet (1 box)
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record  for this collection. Click here for the access policy .

Scope and Content Note

In the publisher's proof for his artists book, ...wore khakis, Robert Heinecken dissects, with the deft precision of his X-acto knife, the narrative proffered in the GAP's 1990s advertising campaign featuring vintage photographs of celebrities wearing khaki pants and bearing the slogan "[famous name] wore khakis." By cutting through 28 of the advertisements and binding them together to reveal numerous layers of famous people wearing khakis, Heinecken twists the ad campaign's implied intimacy between celebrity and consumer: the viewer no longer simply shares a connective moment with, for example, a seated and cross-legged Allen Ginsberg, since Ginsberg's torso has been spliced away to create the appearance that Jack Kerouac, whose image is on the following page, is sitting in his lap. But flip back a page, and Kerouac now seems almost to be crouching beside the piano at which a laughing Bobby Short sits. Within these layered relationships, the viewer is left to reconsider one's real and suggested connections to both the individual celebrities depicted, and to a vast, uniformly khaki-clad population. In the final, uncut illustration, Heineken himself stands next to an airplane in his khaki Marine fighter pilot jumpsuit, at once including himself in this population, while simultaneously reminding the viewer of the military origins of khakis.
Although all or part of a celebrity's name remains in the images, in an additional humorous twist Heinecken mixes up the names of the celebrities appearing in the original ads to create "new" celebrities, whose names he writes on the blank pages opposite their likenesses. Thus, the portrait of Pablo Picasso seated in his studio, where the cutout makes him appear to be holding a small standing Amelia Earhart in his hands, is paired with the text: Andy McQueen wore khakis. Indeed, in the last image Heineken has renamed himself Raoul Heinecken.
Following the final cutout (Miles Davis) are three pages of printed text including David Pagel's essay "The Gaps in the Ads: Robert Heinecken's Sabotaged GAP Ads" and Heinecken's bibliography.
White archival mat board covers with the title printed in black, and a black spiral binding. Ink inscription on title page: #2 of 3 Publisher's [Print (with strike-through)] Proof 1999.

Arrangement

In original order.

Acquisition information

Acquired in 2017.

Preferred Citation

Publisher's proof for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis, 1999, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2017.M.32.
box 2017.M.32.bx1

Publisher's proof for Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis

 

Series IV. Nazraeli Press records related to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis (Accession number 2017.M.33), 1994-2000

Physical Description: 1 Linear Feet (1 box)
Physical Location: Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record  for this collection. Click here for the access policy .

Scope and Content Note

The Nazraeli Press records related to Robert Heinecken's project using the GAP's 1990s khaki pants advertising campaign comprises a binder containing detailed correspondence between publisher Chris Pichler and Robert Heinecken; original materials relating to the various components of the project; documentation of the project; and related ephemera. Correspondence spans from the inception of the project in 1995 through the final limited edition printing in 2000. Also included is legal correspondence related to the GAP's objection to Heinecken's use of their advertising campaign.
Original and production materials include 18 photocopied pages of cutouts and the front cover for Heinecken's revised magazine GAP/NY Headaches(1994-1999); a cutout template for Steve McQueen's torso; Heinecken's handwritten list of altered names, layouts and other notes for, ...wore khakis (2000); and two copies each of David Pagel's essay "The Gaps in the Ads: Robert Heinecken's Sabotaged GAP Ads" and Heinecken's bibliography, both of which were included in ...wore khakis; and the photograph of Heinecken in his khaki Marine fight pilot jumpsuit that is the final image in the book.
Documentation includes 40 page-by-page slides of GAP/NY Headaches and 34 color Polaroid page-by-page photographs of Heinecken's prototype for ...wore khakis.

Arrangement

In original order. Materials were rehoused in an archival binder and loose materials such as the Polaroid photographs were added at the end of the binder.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Chris Pilcher and Maya Ishiwata.

Preferred Citation

Nazraeli press records related to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis, 1994-2000, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2017.M.33.
box 2017.M.33.bx1

Nazraeli Press records related to Robert Heinecken's ...wore khakis