Hot Bottoms 2005

Kenneth Price made this watercolor painting, "Hot Bottoms", whose date is unknown. The image presents a dialogue between the organic and the manufactured, a common theme in postwar Californian art which questioned dominant American values. Here, we see two biomorphic forms set against a stark desert landscape. Price was interested in the interplay between nature and culture, often setting his sculptures in desert settings reminiscent of his native Los Angeles. The bold outlines and saturated colors create a sense of artificiality, challenging traditional landscape painting. Price’s shapes also echo the prevailing influence of psychoanalysis in the mid-20th century. The forms are suggestive, but ultimately unreadable, evoking the ambiguities of the unconscious. To understand Price's work, scholars draw on his biography, alongside histories of Californian art, popular culture, and the psychoanalytic movement. The meaning of a work like this resides in its social and institutional context.