Paul McCarthy - the artist who even brought Santa Claus on sponge thoughts

The story with Santa Claus is told right away, but here it is to be clarified immediately that Paul McCarthy does not only make Santa Clauses think.

the American performance artist is famous for his critical and often snappy, shaking and sometimes disturbing, strange and thoughtful visual language, no artist for thought and emotional wimps.

Paul McCarthy expresses this visual language in many materials and media, in painting and drawings, sculptures and installations, actions and performances, videos and films , and sometimes also in Santa Clauses.

So many materials and media that the viewers of the art world have difficulty classifying the artist Paul McCarthy into a category, sometimes he is described as a conceptual artist , sometimes as an action artist , sometimes there is talk of the performance artist Paul McCarthy.

However, with his art, Paul McCarthy has impressive success: he takes 25th place in the list of the most famous artists in the world , and for a while, with more upward trend. Before the story with Santa Claus, a brief overview of his ascent to the higher orders of the art world:

Paul McCarthy finds his way early in training

Paul McCarthy was born in 1945 in Salt Lake City , the capital of the US state of Utah. Salt Lake City is "The Mormon Center" of the United States, a haven of good citizens with a rigid understanding of cleaning that is closest to the service and the family. However, his father was butcher, so blood and guts were a daily sight for the young McCarthy.

Perhaps these contradictory influences have led to Paul McCarthy only began studying art at the age of 24, from 1969 he studied art, first in the hometown of the University of Utah, then at the San Francisco Art Institute. At this university, the course for McCarthy's artistic identity was laid, it is one of the oldest (foundation in 1871) and is considered one of the most prestigious universities for contemporary art, in the USA and in the world.

McCarthy developed his degree as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the field of painting at the SFAI and then moved to the southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1972 he studied film, video and art at UCLA, and made his Master of Fine Arts there.

Now McCarthy started his career, the first work included in video performances in which he used gravity as a metaphorical expression, with beautiful names such as "Thirty-Minute Moon" (30-minute moon) and "In the Stomach of the Squirrel" (in the stomach of the squirrel). In 1973 he participated in group exhibitions, "Conceptual Art" , in the Libra Gallery from Pomona, CA and "Festival of the Arts" , organized by the University of Southern California.

From 1974 McCarthy became significantly more aggressive, and sexual provocation was now always an issue, its performances were mainly concerned with the topics of brutality and self -destruction .

The titles from this time speak their own language: "Meat Cake, 1", 2 and 3 (meat cake 1 2 3), "Sailor's Meat" (the meat of the sailor), "Paid Stranger" (paid stranger), "Political Disturbance" (political disorder), "Class Fool" (class clown), "Grand Pop" (big blast), "Doctor" (doctor "), "Contemporary cure all" (the zeitgeist heals everything), "Deadening" (dull), "San Francisco, The Shithole of the Universe" (SF, the shitty hole of the universe), "Pig Man" (Pig Man), "Pig Man-Pig Piper" (Piper-Pipe), "Monkey Man" (Affenmann), the "Penis Painting" (Tail painting) and the "Death Ship" (death ship) appear several times.

Paul McCarthy discovers the irony

In the 1980s and 1990s, Paul McCarthy overcome the time of the storm and urged, and from now on his performances (in the then international trend) were characterized by ironic distance, such as the "Painter" .

In this performance, Paul McCarthy wears a blonde wig, the tuber nose of a drinker and huge latex latex. In this presentation, he stuck around in a small wood -paneled studio, with a huge brush in his hand, always rotating around himself, and jamming. "I can't do it, I can't do it", and "decoyoning, decoyoning, decoyoning".

All around are gigantic color tubes, one of which is "shit" label. The tragic painter clown McCarthy now begins to distribute expressionistic stripes on huge screens with the grace of a knife or wood chopper.

In between there are a few excursions into adjacent rooms, with cuffs against his art dealer, absurd conversations with high -groovy scholars wearing tuber noses, a crowcher collector sniffs a little on McCarthy Aschloch - McCarthy really does not do anything in this bitter satire on the inflated artists in general and self -vocating "Action and blob artist" in particular (on two myths of the time, installation artist Vito Acconci and the abstract expressionists and legendary pioneers of the action painting Willem de Kooning, he also alludes to).

And yet everyone who has ever worked creatively in his life gets pity with the desperately painting. How he passes his color and disturbs, stamping helplessly in a circle and random scrawling paints - this appearance reminds every compassion that the urge to create art always has something to do with a kind of drunkenness that the process of approaching a work of art humans or can be upset, can be sexually exciting, childishly naive and sometimes tragic ...

The titles of the performances from this time also tell a story for themselves, this time a somewhat more happier one: "God bless America" ​​(God bless America), "Baby Boy, Baby Magic" (baby boy, magical boy), "Mother Pig" (mother pig), "Popeye's Automobile" (Popeye's Driving School " Driving school), "Popeye, Judge and Jury" ("Popeye, Richter and Jury)," Popeye American "(Popeye, the American)," French Patisseries "(French confectionery)," King for a Day "(king for one day)," Inside out, olive oil "(inside and outside, olive oil)," Cultural Soup "(cultural" Soup), "Family Tyranny" (family ranny), "A Hoot" (a scream), "Heidi", "Pinocchio", "Fresh Acconci", "Tokyo Santa" (Santa Claus Tokyo).

In addition, Paul McCarthy presented many other works in other forms of work during this time. B. Large backdrops built up in which actors play scenes according to "lust and mood", McCarthy's son Damon was often involved in or in these works of art.

600 group exhibitions with his diverse art , was able to equip around 100 individual exhibitions in all important art centers in the world, designed about as many performances and turned videos about it.

Happy and enormous art for the public

McCarthy art can be partially visited, then it is often fun, like the Sweet Brown Snail . Jason Rhoades this sweet snail in collaboration with Paul McCarthy from 2003.

Rhades studied with Paul McCarthy on the UCLA from 1991 to 1993, the two of them devoted the "propositions" together at the end of the nineties - either missed "proposition" (suggestions) or a cumulation of the "prop" (property ", i.e. a positioning of property. One of these "propositions" was a sales event in which the artists sold the entire nipple inventory of a kiosk as art, among these nipples there was also a small "Sweet Brown Snail" that should make bourgeois living room more comfortable.

When Jason Rhoades was asked to make a work of art at the Munich Theresienhöhe for the place in front of the traffic center of the German Museum, the two (probably grinning) decided to bring the cosiness of the snail on a large scale to the public.

The snail also fit too well on the local topic of "global speed", both with its proverbial slowness and with their complete mobility, global "hiking figures of our time" often struggle with the fact that they cannot take their house on their back.

The snail made of painted fiberglass is a giant snail of 4.50 x 6.30 x 3.90 meters, despite this awe-ranging size it still looks cute, even if the passers-by appears so small that the thought of the dangers of increasing acceleration in our age is almost imposed on every ironic "Um-deck thinker".

In other public work, the malicious side of the artist's joy, such as in "Henry Moore Bound to Fail" from 2004, this "Henry Moore" is in London Regent's Park and is a rather subversive reinterpretation of the bronze art of the old master so revered in the 1960s.

Whether McCarthy also wanted to take Bruce Nauman's sculpture "Henry Moore Bound to Fail" from 1967 - which he had made to defend Moore's jealous young sculptor but not moor's style at all - remains open, but is easily imaginable.

And the Santa Claus mentioned several times brings the third of the artistic passions to the public audience, the sexual allusions: Paul McCarthy's "Santa Claus" is a really nice Santa Claus with a small fir tree in hand, the fir tree is just not really a fir tree. Santa was commissioned in 2001 by the Rotterdam "Sculpture International" to decorate a place in the city.

As I said, this Santa Claus is not an ordinary Santa Claus, because he holds a butt plug in the right hand, a sex toy known as the "Po plug", this sexual allusion is said to be a satirical greed. The not every Dutch welcomed ... At his first place of installation in the city center, the slippery sculpture excited so much resistance from the surrounding shopkeepers that he had to move in a more artful environment, he first retired to the courtyard of the Boijmans van Beuningen museum.

In the meantime, the Dutch have reconciled with the vigorous Santa Claus because he looks pretty dwarf -like, he got the nickname Kabouter (Kobold, Gnom), because of the "thing in his hand" he is now the "Kabouter Buttplug". He can now even stand on the famous E -Trenacht pout in the center of Rotterdam, where almost every tourist captivates him on the photo.

Paul McCarthy for everyone

Paul McCarthys' works are more than popular on the international art market, it is one of the most influential contemporary artists at the moment, with appropriate prices.

If you still want to have your “very personal Paul McCarthy” at home, you could look around in auctions: B. a Paul McCarthy chocolate Christmas man with butt plug in the original box, for only $ 3,500.

A little expensive for a chocolate figure? Well, after all, these "Chocolate Santa with Butth Plug" were sold in 2007 in the famous New York Maccarone Gallery , they were official part of Paul McCarthy's exhibition "Peter Paul Chocolates". At that time, McCarthy had converted the complete, almost 600 square meter exhibition area into a fully functioning chocolate factory with a connected sales area.

Round table for Paul McCarthy's work "Chocolate Santa with butt plug"

In the subsequent video, see how the art magazine Artillery invites numerous close acquaintances of the artist to conversation and to the sensory test of the eccentric and provocative work of art together at several levels ... lively, entertaining, forming ... This is how the expression "The art penetrates us ..." (with Ezrha Jean Black, Carole Caroompas, Stephen Cohen, Stephen Cohen, Stephen Cohen, Tulsa Kinney, David E. Stone, Paige Wery and Mary Woronov). The film was shot in the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles (USA).

If you are not entirely sure whether a chocolate Christmas, who is over 6 years old, is not at some point in unpleasant microorganisms and would rather not have something like that in your apartment, you either would have to dig deeper into your pocket or look for a Paul McCarthy presence in public space, which is always the joy of happy but critical people.

Then Paul McCarthy will once again succeed in introducing us to works of art that at first glance cause a smile and at second glance reveal a bit of criticism, the excess that our consumer society makes so cruel and boring.

The third look of the observer willing to amusement could be pleased with Kunstaffine's audience - it already has something when two audibly art -educated older women, who were overwhelmed in Chanel and Hermès on a Bernese meadow, are slightly excited about McCarthy's "Complex Pile" , a 36 -meter -long and 15 -meter -high, air -filled shot made of plastic.

It is not a very innocent bunch, the "Complex Pile" caused a lot of trouble before it could be duly admired in the meadow in front of the Bernese Paul Klee in the field of center: At that time, the colossal bunch of a storm gust set out on a July night, from the meadow towards the city and laid two street lamps in this way and in this way A power line, a walnut and a greenhouse around until it had drained enough air.

The “Complex Pile” was just seen at an exhibition of public art in Hong Kong, together with an inflatable stone hinge and an inflatable giant span.