It’s time to look at the dark underbelly of modern art, or perhaps to put it another way, to confront modern reality. The Guardian describes Paul McCarthy’s work as a relentlessly revolting vision of modern America. He has been at it since the 1970’s. His art depicts his nation as a crumbling edifice of pop culture, of creeping fascism and depraved, uninhibited capitalism. “It’s a questioning of our condition,” says McCarthy, “our way of life. Look at America right now with its racism and its violence, and yet we have Disneyland.” He is regarded as one of the most significant American artists of the last half century.
Blockhead & Dadies Big Head, Tate Modern (2003)
Born in Salt Lake City in 1945, McCarthy was initially a carpenter and labourer who produced art at night. He describes Salt Lake City as a very patriarchal environment and with a very conditioned reality. He believed he was abnormally sensitive to the pressure of the patriarchal institution, and by about the age of 20, he realised that he was living in a “fucked up” situation where normality was not what it seemed. So he left. He sees the role of art as resistance, to push back against how reality is presented and the image of the patriarch.
Rebel Dabble Babble, a collaboration with his son, Damon
He has produced large scale video works such as the 2013 ‘Rebel Dabble Babble’ which consisted of two derelict houses built inside a vast warehouse with video screens showing hard core pornography, supposedly featuring cast members from the film Rebel Without A Cause. In 2008 he caused a sensation in Switzerland when his giant inflatable turd took leave of its moorings during a wind storm, bringing down a powerline before landing in a playground of a children’s home.
Complex Pile, Switzerland (2008)
I first became aware of McCarthy through the 1999 TV series ‘This Is Modern Art’ presented by British artist Matthew Collings. In one episode titled Shock! Horror!, Collings asks “do you like being afraid, fed up with order and harmony and the world making sense (supposedly) and being the right way up, and you want sudden noises, horror and obscenity – try modern art.” A strange introduction really, as the point of much modern art is that the world has gone completely insane. Among the artists featured in the program are Tracy Emin, Gilbert and George, The Chapman Brothers and – Paul McCarthy.
A scene from Bossy Burger (1991)
In each episode of the series, Collings begins with a reference to the past. In ‘Shock! Horror! his reference point is the incomparable Goya. And that’s the point, if we believe that some of today’s art is pointlessly shocking and has no precedent, we need to look back to Goya – or even further back to Hieronymus Bosch. To meet up with Paul McCarthy, Collings travels to Los Angeles “where there is always blue skies, pleasantness, bright colours and innocuousness.” Surely nothing horrible can happen there. Next we are confronted with McCarthy’s performance piece ‘Painter’ from 1995. Confronting to say the least – “a savage filmic assault on the values of the fine art world”, says Collings. And then there is Bossy Burger of 1991 and Santa’s Chocolate Shop of 1997. Watching these films, Collings describes them as “the Magic Roundabout meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. They were, and still are, shocking.
A scene from Painter (1995)
The themes of violence and fascism, the constant questioning of the state of things have always underlined McCarthy’s work, he simply finds new ways of expressing these themes as the decades pass. Subtlety isn’t in McCarthy’s metier. At Hauser and Wirth in London in 2011 he exhibited animatronic sculptures of George W Bush having anal sex with pigs. “Tawdry images for dismal times”, according to the Guardian.
Train (2003-2009)
The Guardian asks has reality finally overtaken his ketchup-smeared visions of corruption? There is an inevitability to McCarthy’s response. “How much more absurd can you get than Donald Trump? It’s a really good example of a performance, its theatre. He’s really just manipulating a population……we’re still trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on. Even now. Like, what is going on? We’re so utterly fucked up that, if anything, we really do need these experiments into this reality.”
WS Spinoffs, Wood Statues, Brown Rothkos at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles (2017)
There is always a constant questioning, and his materials include sex, violence, bodily fluids and sick humour. It’s a risky business although McCarthy’s son Damon (who collaborates with him on many projects) argues it’s not risky as there is nothing to lose. Still, McCarthy claims to have been censored four to five times per year.
References;
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy in conversation with Tom Eccles – Hauser & Wirth
The Guardian
“This is Modern Art” – Channel 4 (1999)