Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- What, some might ask, has a large contemporary art installation depicting the red-light district of Amsterdam got to do with the National Gallery in London? The answer is, a surprising amount.

Prostitutes, or as we say these days, sex workers have been one of the great subjects of Western painting, of which the National Gallery is one of the world’s richest repositories. “The Hoerengracht” (1983-88) by the U.S. artists Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz seems much in context displayed in the Sunley Room (through Feb. 21, 2010).

It also looks good -- a whole atmospheric Dutch street recreated in the gallery, complete with molded human forms, interior and exterior decor and neon lighting. The thoroughfare in question is one of those around the Oude Kerk (Old Church) in Amsterdam that long has startled unsuspecting tourists.

The interior of the church -- where Rembrandt’s wife Saskia is buried -- is all Calvinist whiteness and purity. Outside, and along the adjoining canal, semi-dressed women offer themselves for sale like goods in shop windows (or used to, the red-light area has been reduced in recent years by the city authorities).

It’s a spectacle out of a low-life painting by Bruegel, with a touch of Rubens in the nudity. This is the location that the Kienholzes dubbed the Hoerengracht or “Whore’s Canal,” which is also a pun on Herengracht (“Gentlemen’s Canal”), one of the smartest addresses in Amsterdam.

It fascinated Kienholz (1927-1994), a West Coast artist who had moved to Berlin in the early ‘70s, and from that point made art in collaboration with his wife.

Bars and Brothels

His work consisted of chunks of reality, often political, violent and or sexual. Full-scale reproductions of a bar and a brothel in Nevada were among previous works. He had the eye for Americana of a painter like Norman Rockwell, the virtuoso of magazine covers, mixed with the savage satire of a George Grosz.

I described “The Hoerengracht” as an installation, which technically it is. It also has a lot in common with painting. Kienholz liked to describe his works as “tableaux,” a word that usually refers to three-dimensional arrangements intended to imitate pictures.

“The Hoerengracht” is packed with carefully reconstructed detail -- dingy curtains, weather-stained walls, light fittings, dress and undress -- all right for the time and place. The bodies of the women were molded from friends, with the heads of shop mannequins placed on the shoulders. They look like studies of figures in rooms -- sympathetic, almost tender vignettes.

Bordello Art

That’s one art-historical reason why Kienholz fits into the same building as Titian and Caravaggio. The other is that those two giants of painting were just a few of the old masters who at one time or another took sex workers as their subjects. The National Gallery has tentatively hung a few 17th-century Dutch paintings near the “Hoerengracht” to illustrate this point.

They could have made more of it. Painters have been interested in the bordello trade since the days of Raphael. Courtesans, prostitutes and their environment were important subjects in Renaissance Venice, and also for Hogarth, Sickert, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, who actually moved into a brothel at one point, as well as the Dutch. This would be a great theme for an exhibition, but in the meantime, “The Hoerengracht” makes a compelling one-room spectacle.

(Martin Gayford is chief art critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Martin Gayford in London at martin.gayford@googlemail.com.

Last Updated: November 17, 2009 19:00 EST