Raise the red lantern

When 2 of my favourite cities meet, THIS is what you get?! O dear... so much for me ranting about how Amsterdam is more than just the red light district.

Art in the glow of Amsterdam red lights
Gallery hopes 'canal of the whores' will connect with more traditional works

By: Charlotte Higgins
The Guardian, Wednesday September 17 2008

Never have its gracious enfilades and echoing halls witnessed anything like it: the National Gallery, repository of the nation's finest Old Masters, is to re-create a red-light district, complete with scantily clad prostitutes, sinister alleyways and shop windows filled with human wares. This walkthrough installation is Ed and Nancy Kienholz's work Hoerengracht - Dutch for "whores' canal" - which will take its place in the gallery next autumn.

The idea is to make connections with the Dutch 17th-century paintings in the gallery's collection, which, despite their appearance of gentility, are set in the brothels for which Amsterdam is famous. Paintings such as Jan Steen's Interior of an Inn, Schalcken's A Man Offering Gold and Coins to a Girl and De Hooch's Musical Party in a Courtyard will be hung near the entrance to the installation, which the Kienholzes created in the 1980s.

The New York Times has described the effect of Hoerengracht thus: "In excruciating detail, a woman washes herself at a grungy sink; another, more scantily clad, sits in a chair scanning a magazine amid the kitschy trappings of her cubicle ... Still another professional, in leopardskin pants, high boots and a sequiny top, stands poised in a doorway behind an iron grille, mouth open in a sexy pout, fingers holding a cigarette."

Asked whether the installation would carry a warning for families, Colin Wiggins, the National Gallery's head of education, said: "In the paintings of De Hooch there are dodgy things going on, but we don't put warnings outside our Dutch 17th-century rooms. "Our aim is to stop people in their tracks and make them think, 'Crikey, this is unprecedented for the National Gallery.' Would you warn your child against it? Well, it depends who you are. Sarah Palin would probably warn her children. But we have Soho just down the road where you can see young ladies in leopardskin miniskirts."

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(Picture: 'Hoerengracht' (detail of street corner with photo montage and mannequin), 1984-88 by Ed and Nancy Kienholz)