Rotten to the Core Paul McCarthy L U A P

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E T I H T H BY MICHAËL AMY Paul McCarthy’s exhibition at Hauser & Wirth’s gigantic 18th Street R I W

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U space included sculpture carved out of blocks of walnut that were &

H R S E O J S pieced together from dark and lighter segments of wood. From these : U T A H H

G I D composite blocks, McCarthy produced medium-size to colossal R

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R T E S T tchotchkes (a genre that is dear to him), thereby entering the arena I N T E R C A

H in which Jeff Koons has been working for more than 30 years. Koons, E M T H R O I T T

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the come-back kid who has been getting a huge amount of attention S O E & B

T R D R E N U recently, is the man to both paraphrase and beat. His sensibility, S A O

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T though, is very different from McCarthy’s—aiming for immaculacy

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H and perfection. McCarthy’s carved imagery was drawn from Walt T C T S C R I T A M

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A Disney’s 1937 animated film version of Snow White and the Seven C

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A Dwarfs —funny, sentimental, sexual, and at times frightening children’s © I Y

, S M E N E T O R

R Opposite: WS The Prince , 2013. 4 stuff, and Koonsian territory, par excellence . However, McCarthy— S E J U

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F H stills. Above: White Snow, Flower Girl ,

, like his friend Mike Kelley, with whom he occasionally collaborated— E Y E L

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V 2012 –13. Black walnut, 304.8 x 152.4

O takes us from childhood longings back to the darkest recesses of infantile A E T C T N C E O G B M x 96.5 cm. behavior.

Sculpture May 2014 47 As we age, some of us hold on to imagery creating monstrous apparitions and hybrids pers) first appears alone in the forest, then that transports us back to a time when fit for this age of genetic manipulations. The entering the house, meeting the dwarves, we believe we were happier, even if only huge White Snow, Bookends (2013), with sleeping, partying, drinking (the latter two momentarily, inside the movie theater or its unnaturally smooth and mellifluous han - are Koonsian subjects), and eating—in in front of a TV screen. We have all seen the dling of the wood, is a stand-out, collapsing short, a Bacchic revelry, until things spin embarrassing, age-inappropriate objects too much visual information in its two sec - horribly out of control, both WS and WP flecking certain interiors ( Hello , kitsch). tions—one upright, the other tilted back by (Walt Paul, played by Paul McCarthy) are McCarthy’s work is always about taste and 90 degrees, providing just the right amount killed, and, finally, the young Prince arrives. decorum. What is appropriate? What is of optical ambiguity and mental confusion. Few people saw this long film montage acceptable? What are we repulsed by? What McCarthy’s exhibition “WS,” at the Park from beginning to end. Instead, visitors are we secretly drawn to? Who draws up Avenue Armory, delved much deeper into walked into and out of the hall as the movie the rules? Can you spell hypocrisy ? What the story of Snow White and the—largely continued to roll on, just like the world out - about inhibition ? Where do these primal invented—life of Walt Disney. This entirely side. The Feature offers all the messiness of urges come from? What are we repressing? different affair made optimum use of the life, with its tedium, ugliness, stupidity, and McCarthy’s project is important because he late 19th-century building’s gigantic drill endless repetitions, as one and the same constantly pushes the envelope, forcing us hall while reaching into the corridors and scene (shot from different angles) and to rethink the very nature of art. cells along the hall’s longer sides. A blast of scenes shot in different rooms are shown A performance artist steeped in process, noise mixing repetitive instrumental music, side by side, occasionally slipping in and out who often uses liquid or malleable food - overlapping talk, cries, groans, sighs, of focus as the camera pans in and then stuffs to allude to other viscous materials, screams, panting, and endless laughter out. The actors, not all of them particularly McCarthy directed the virtuoso carving greeted viewers as they approached the attractive, are further deformed by huge WS Olympia , 2013. 3 stills . of the walnut so that it achieves the round - hall. These sounds (coming from speakers noses. The situation is complicated by the ness and softness of wet clay—thereby lining the sides of the hall) accompanied appearance of two other White Snow fig - jected to all manner of violent handling. It reminding us of the Baroque exuberance of four images projected side by side on huge ures, wearing bouffant skirts in primary all becomes impossibly perplexing when late Bernini, grandfather of kitsch in the horizontal screens suspended high above col ors, and hyper-realist silicone sculptures one sees WP—brilliantly played by opinion of some critics. Significantly, in light the floor on both of the shorter walls (four- of WS and WP in the nude, which are sub - McCarthy made up beyond recognition— of the role played by nostalgia, some figures channel, seven hours, drawn from circa 100 forcing objects down the throat of his sili - fuse together, increase suddenly in scale, hours of footage). In The Feature, Armory White Snow, Bookends , 2013. Black walnut, 2 cone counterpart. The silent, pliant figure or are doubled—memory is imperfect— Edit , WS (White Snow, played by Elyse Pop - elements, 14 ft. high . is eventually raped by the dwarves with the stick of a broom, so violently that the broom’s handle exits the figure’s mouth— this in a city where not so long ago a black man was raped by a police officer with a club. (The exhibition was off limits to persons under the age of 17.) The center of the hall contained the ranch-style house and strange garden where the movie sequences were filmed. H

T McCarthy’s garden, a realm fraught with “WS,” taken as a whole, constituted a served as a reminder of the importance of R I H W

T artifice and illuminated by luridly colored Gesamtkunstwerk in which sound, moving the tormented Abstract Expressionist mas - & R

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& stage lighting, is part Hudson River School images, sculpture, architecture, light, and ter to the development of the younger

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U painting, part San Fernando Valley, part smell joined forces to create a cumulative artist. McCarthy has also received much A N A H

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S Graceland, part sick sublime, and part Pol - impression, as viewers navigated the from Bruce Nauman—particularly, use of I N T A

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I lock’s assertion that “I am nature.” It is sprawling suburban ensemble. When peek - space, repetition, boredom, dreariness— E T H R T A

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E fascinating how McCarthy—who has lived ing into the furnished rooms of the firmly and it was fascinating to see how S H E T T

R Y S U for so long in the shadow of Hollywood, middle-class house—some in an appalling McCarthy used this legacy as a springboard E O T C

R , U Y and who came of age during the early years state of disorder, with coagulating food and to leap into the void. O H C T

R , Y A of TV broadcasting—exposes the process drink denoting filth in the broadest possible “WS” is profoundly troubling—as trou - C H C T R M A

L C by letting us see the stage sets, left terms—one object looked strangely out of bling, in its way, as Pasolini’s splendid last C U A M P

L almost exactly as they were at the end of place (that is, if one overlooks the silicone movie, Salo , which is likewise steeped © U

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© shooting, and allows glimpses of the cam - corpses of WS and WP, the latter still in culture and politics. It is also profoundly S

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eramen, who walk in and out of the kneeling over a metal tub). Lying on the sad. Witness the scene (shown in the cor - H E W V

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V frames in the films. Where does reality end floor was a copy of Artforum , with a drip ridor off the drill hall) in which WS and WP U E H N S E O J G and fiction begin? painting by Pollock on the cover. This detail stride in slow motion, wailing and nude,

48 Sculpture 33.4 Sculpture May 2014 49 across the garden, with gestures and capitalist worldview very much alive. Mickey In “WS,” McCarthy takes a well-known expressions borrowed from Masaccio’s Mouse Club, anyone? and highly structured narrative and sees Expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the There is a huge amount of violence, how far he can stretch it, load it with tan - Brancacci Chapel in Florence. Or, witness nudity, tediousness, loneliness, and despair gents and digressions, and layer it with WP on his knees approaching WS, the in “WS,” particularly the terrific hour-long meanings both explicit and subliminal, so archetypal mother figure, who lies nude film Living with Walt (shown in the corridor that the whole, with its endless repetitions, on a couch in the superb video-diptych off the drill hall). There is also desire, which spins like a carousel, seemingly veering WS Olympia (shown in a room off the drill few, however, get to fulfill. In the film WS wildly beyond all control, though not quite. hall), suffering from a splitting headache: The Prince , male porn actors penetrate the McCarthy is a grand master at making the “Walt, did you do your homework?…Did silicone semblance of a hairless woman familiar look terribly unsettling. The story of you do your homework Walt?…Are you in the garden and climax (think Duchamp’s Snow White, as pure as snow, is about inno - lying to me Walt?” She then proceeds to Étant Donnés , and Koons); the sculpture cence and perseverance in the face of ill pull at Walt’s ear and wash out his mouth was displayed in a retail refrigerator display fortune, the ultimate triumph of good over with a bar of soap. Disney’s relationship unit, in the drill hall, for individual titilla - evil, and the rewards such victory brings to his hysterical, abusive, and incestuous tion. WS fellates a microphone held by WP along with it. It belongs to the genus of the mother was, if I follow McCarthy correctly, at the end of a long, phallic pole in the film fairy tale, which aims to instill good habits rewritten and transformed into the story WS Microphone Dream . Most of us are and strong morals in young children. of the loving and caring Snow White and deeply repressed, and food, or the rubbish McCarthy, however, has little patience for the child-like dwarfs in the animated film. that passes for it, becomes a substitute ethical lessons, wherever they come from, Significantly, WP is portrayed in the rest for sex, gore, and human waste in the 90- and proceeds to turn the whole thing on its of the “WS” films as an increasingly dys - minute film-diptych WS Walt Paul Cooking head. The corruption of youth is one of functional and tormented tormentor in his Show . McCarthy’s art is an art of excess. his preferred subjects. Who can forget the own right. Walt Disney, as perceived by Everyone experienced various states of tawdry tableau of The Garden (1991–92) in McCarthy (and other critics, including the arousal while negotiating “WS.” And then, which a father initiates his son in the joys of artist Llyn Foulkes), is a sly manipulator— there was the humor, scatological or other - sex? The deliberately ugly rendering of the The Garden , 1991 –92. Wood, fiberglass, steel, elec - His hallucinatory scenes, using the story to grow longer. This story, with its many Mr. Wholesome U.S.A.—who delivers wise, which enabled us to make some sort scene almost surpasses the unpleasantness tric motors, latex rubber, foam rubber, wigs, cloth - of Snow White as their launch pad, are adaptations in popular culture (including what is allegedly best for our young ones of sense out of it all, just as it allows us of the subject itself. McCarthy has great fun ing, artificial turf, leaves, pine needles, rock, and enacted by adults who perform as if they the 1940 animated Disney movie), offers while brainwashing them in an effort to make sense out of life. We would not be trees, 2 views of installation. were retarded—or at least under a situa - enormously fertile terrain for an artist to keep the white, puritanical, imperialist, able to survive without it. WS Walt Paul Cooking Show , 2013. 4 stills. tion of tremendous stress. McCarthy aims intent on exposing our basest instincts like in making us, the supposedly perfectly blasé to surpass reality itself in terms of outra - McCarthy ( Pinocchio Pipenose Household - observers of the contemporary art scene, geousness. dilemma , 1994). feel more than a little squeamish. The sweetness and innocence embodied “WS” is insane, but no more than so Children are quasi-sacred territory, deemed by Snow White also characterize the hero - much of what we see, hear, or read about, H T R I innocent because they lack an adult ine of a late 19th-century story about a reaching from the reality of our bedrooms W

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R understanding of good and evil. In short, young girl who goes to live with her grand - and backyards to the highest levels of gov - E S U

A children are off limits. Because they father in the Swiss Alps. Her almost tran - ernment. As McCarthy’s previous critiques H

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A will determine the future of humanity and scendental goodness and the supposed of idealized fantasy demonstrate, his is

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T thus the very survival of our planet, they purity of her cliché-ridden Swiss environ - clearly not an optimistic worldview. The R A

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H are considered our most precious legacy— ment were too tempting for McCarthy and American way—which Walt Disney cham - T

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E though McCarthy might intone that you Mike Kelley to resist taking down in Heidi, pioned—is corrupt and corrupting. T R U

O wouldn’t think them important at all, Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Despite our pretensions, we are all rotten C

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T judging by the state of our school systems Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone to the core. We embrace what is base— R A C S C

T and healthcare systems, the ubiquity (both 1992), thereby exposing the hypoc - just look at our entertainment industry, M C

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A of money-driven food conglomerates, our risies buried in the worldview that comes McCarthy declares. We purport to love R P P

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: C treatment of the environment, and the to life in Johanna Spyri’s 1880 novel, a story God, family, and country, but are driven by L T I L E A

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/ , number of children living in poverty in that has found many ways into 20th-century hate, lust, and greed. We are frauds—as O H R C I T I H

E what is claimed to be the greatest nation popular culture, worldwide. fake and ugly as those preposterous noses. A D

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R in all of history. Pinocchio, the protagonist of Carlo Col - There is a huge amount of food for O F A F E N J

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T Our children, we proclaim, need both lodi’s 1883 children’s novel, is a far more thought in “WS,” which—interestingly— S H E G T I R R

nourishing and protection, since they are mischievous, multi-dimensional creature. remains a work in progress. U /

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, E so terribly vulnerable. This world of pre - An animated marionette made of wood, R N E R S O L C I

conceptions concerning what lessons (and Pinocchio has all manner of adventures Michaël Amy is a professor of the history N N

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literature) are best shared with children is and ends up in all kinds of trouble, which of art at the Rochester Institute of Tech - E : D T E F R E F L what McCarthy profanes with such gusto. he lies to get out of, which causes his nose nology.

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