Paul McCarthy – The artist who even gave Santa Claus lewd thoughts

The story about Santa Claus will be told shortly, but it should be made clear right away that Paul McCarthy doesn't just make Santa Claus think, not at all.

The American performance artist is famous for his critical and often biting, stirring and sometimes disturbing, funny and thought-provoking visual language; he is not an artist for thoughtless and unfeeling softies.

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

So many materials and media are used that art world observers have difficulty categorizing the artist Paul McCarthy; sometimes he is described as a conceptual artist , sometimes as an action artist , and sometimes as a performance artist.

In any case, Paul McCarthy has achieved impressive success with his art: He holds 25th place on the list of the world's most famous artists , and has done so for quite some time, with a trend that continues to rise. Before we get to the story with Santa Claus, here's a brief overview of his ascent to the higher echelons of the art world:

Paul McCarthy finds his way early in his 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 USA, a haven for upstanding citizens with a strict understanding of cleanliness, who believe in service to others and family. His father, however, was a butcher, so blood and entrails were a daily sight for young McCarthy.

Perhaps these conflicting influences led Paul McCarthy to begin his formal art studies only at the age of 24; in any case, he began studying art in 1969, first in his hometown at the University of Utah, then at the San Francisco Art Institute. It was at this institution that the foundations for McCarthy's artistic identity were laid; it is one of the oldest (founded in 1871) and is considered one of the most prestigious institutions for contemporary art, both in the USA and the world.

McCarthy earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from SFAI and then moved to Southern California to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). From 1972, he studied film, video, and art at UCLA, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree.

McCarthy's career now began, with his early works consisting of video performances in which he used gravity as a metaphorical expression, bearing evocative titles such as "Thirty-Minute Moon" and "In the Stomach of the Squirrel ." In 1973, he participated in group exhibitions with such performances, including "Conceptual Art" at the Libra Gallery in Pomona, CA, and the "Festival of the Arts ," organized by the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

From 1974 onwards, McCarthy's work became significantly more aggressive; sexual provocation was now a recurring theme, and his performances mainly dealt with the themes of brutality and self-destruction .

The titles from this period speak for themselves: “Meat Cake, 1”, 2 and 3”, “Sailor's Meat”, “Paid Stranger”, “Political Disturbance”, “Class Fool”, “Grand Pop”, “Doctor”, “Contemporary Cure All”, “Deadening”, “San Francisco, The Shithole of the Universe”, “Pig Man”, “Pig Man-Pig Piper”, “Monkey Man”, “Penis Painting”, and “Death Ship” appear multiple times.

Paul McCarthy discovers irony

In the 1980s and 1990s, Paul McCarthy overcame the Sturm und Drang period; his performances (in line with the international trend at the time) were now characterized by ironic distance, such as the “Painter” .

In this performance, Paul McCarthy wears a blond wig, a drunk's bulbous nose, and enormous latex costumes. In this getup, he staggers around a small, wood-paneled studio, holding a giant paintbrush, constantly spinning in circles and whining, "I can't do it, I can't do it," and "DeKooning, DeKooning, DeKooning.".

Gigantic tubes of paint lie scattered around, one of which is labeled "Shit." The tragic painter-clown McCarthy now begins, with the grace of a knife-wielding or wood-chopping artist, to spread expressionistic-looking stripes across enormous canvases.

In between, there are a few excursions into adjacent rooms, with ranting against his art dealer, absurd conversations with haughty scholars, some of whom also have bulbous noses, a sycophantic collector sniffs a bit at McCarthy the asshole – McCarthy really leaves nothing out in this bitter satire on the pompous artist in general and self-adoring “action-and-splatter artists” in particular ( he also makes direct references Vito Acconci and the abstract expressionist and legendary pioneer of action painting, Willem de Kooning

And yet, anyone who has ever engaged in creative activity in their own life feels pity for the desperately painting dandy. The way he passionately scoops up his paint, grunts in dismay, staggers helplessly in circles, and paints indiscriminate scribbles – this performance reminds every sympathetic observer that the urge to create art is always connected to a kind of intoxication, that the process of approaching a work of art can humiliate the artist or excite them to the point of violence, can be sexually arousing, childishly naive, and sometimes even tragic…

The titles of the performances from this period also tell their own story, this time a somewhat more cheerful one: “God Bless America”, “Baby Boy, Baby Magic”, “Mother Pig”, “Popeye's Automobile”, “Popeye's Driving School”, “Popeye, Judge and Jury”, “Popeye American”, “French Patisseries”, “King for a Day”, “Inside Out, Olive Oil”, “Cultural Soup”, “Family Tyranny”, “A Hoot”, “Heidi”, “Pinocchio”, “Fresh Acconci”, “Tokyo Santa”.

In addition, Paul McCarthy presented many other works in other forms during this time; sometimes, for example, large sets were built in which actors played scenes according to their "whim"; often McCarthy's son Damon was involved in or on these works of art.

Between 1973 and today, Paul McCarthy has participated in an impressive 600 group exhibitions , has held around 100 solo exhibitions in all the major art centers of the world, created about as many performances and filmed videos about them.

Joyful and profound art for the public

Some of McCarthy's art is publicly displayed, and it's often fun, like the Sweet Brown Snail . This cute snail was Jason Rhoades in collaboration with Paul McCarthy starting in 2003.

Rhoades studied under Paul McCarthy at UCLA from 1991 to 1993. Together, they conceived the “Proppositions” in the late 1990s – either misspelled “Propositions” (suggestions) or a combination of “prop” (property) and “position,” thus a positioning of property. One of these “Proppositions” was a sales event where the artists sold the entire knick-knack inventory of a kiosk as art; among this knick-knackery was a small “Sweet Brown Snail” intended to make middle-class living rooms cozier.

When Jason Rhoades was asked to create a work of art for the square in front of the German Museum's transport center on Theresienhöhe in Munich, the two decided (presumably grinning) to bring the coziness of the snail to the public on a large scale.

The snail was simply too fitting for the locally relevant theme of “global speed”, both with its proverbial slowness and its complete mobility; global “wandering figures of our time” often struggle with the fact that they cannot take their house with them on their backs.

The painted fiberglass snail is a giant snail measuring 4.50 x 6.30 x 3.90 meters; despite this awe-inspiring size, it still looks cute, even though passersby appear so small next to it that the thought of the dangers of increasing acceleration in our age is almost unavoidable for any ironically gifted "out-of-the-box thinker".

In other public works, the artist's malicious side of his teasing pleasure comes through more, as in “Henry Moore Bound to Fail” from 2004, this “Henry Moore doomed to fail” stands in London's Regent's Park and is a rather subversive reinterpretation of the bronze art of the old master who was so revered in the 1960s.

Whether McCarthy also wanted to mock Bruce Nauman's 1967 sculpture "Henry Moore Bound to Fail" – which Nauman had created to defend Moore against jealous young sculptors, but which was not at all in Moore's style – remains open, but is easily conceivable.

And the aforementioned Santa Claus brings the third of the artist's passions to the public eye: sexual innuendo. Paul McCarthy's "Santa Claus" is ostensibly a very nice Santa Claus with a small Christmas tree in his hand, but the tree isn't actually a real Christmas tree. The Santa Claus sculpture was commissioned in 2001 by Rotterdam's "Skulptur International" to adorn a public square.

This Santa Claus, as mentioned, is no ordinary Santa Claus; he's holding a butt plug in his right hand, a sex toy also known as a "butt plug." This sexual innuendo is meant to be a satire of consumerism. Not every Dutch person appreciated it… at its initial location in the city center, the risqué sculpture provoked so much resistance from the surrounding shop owners that it had to be moved to a more art-friendly environment. Somewhat sheepishly, it retreated to the courtyard of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

The Dutch have now reconciled with the lewd Santa Claus; because he looks rather dwarfish, he was nicknamed Kabouter (goblin, gnome), and because of the "thing in his hand," he is now the "Kabouter Buttplug." He is even allowed to stand on the famous Eendrachtsplein in the center of Rotterdam, where almost every tourist takes a picture of him.

Paul McCarthy for all

Paul McCarthy's works are highly sought after on the international art market; he is one of the most influential contemporary artists at the moment, with corresponding prices, of course.

However, if you still want to have your “very personal Paul McCarthy” at home, you could look around at auctions: There you can find, for example, a Paul McCarthy chocolate Santa Claus with a butt plug in the original box, for only 3,500 US dollars.

A bit pricey for a chocolate figure? Well, these “Chocolate Santa with Butt Plug” were sold at the famous Maccarone Gallery in New York ; they were an official part of Paul McCarthy's “Peter Paul Chocolates” exhibition. At the time, McCarthy had transformed the entire exhibition space, nearly 600 square meters in size, into a fully functional chocolate factory with an attached retail area.

Roundtable discussion on Paul McCarthy's work “Chocolate Santa with Butt Plug”

Watch the following video to see how the art magazine ARTILLERY invites numerous close acquaintances of the artist to a shared table for conversation and a multi-layered sensory exploration of the eccentric and provocative artwork… lively, entertaining, educational… giving the expression “art penetrates us…” a truly new meaning… (with Ezrha Jean Black, Carole Caroompas, Stephen Cohen, Tulsa Kinney, David E. Stone, Paige Wery, and Mary Woronov). Filmed at the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles (USA).

If you're not entirely sure whether a chocolate Santa Claus that's over six years old might eventually be colonized by unpleasant microorganisms, and you'd rather not have something like that in your home, you'd either have to dig a little deeper into your pockets or look for a Paul McCarthy-esque presence in public spaces, which, to the delight of cheerful but critical people, appear time and again.

Then Paul McCarthy will once again succeed in presenting us with works of art that at first glance evoke a smile and at second glance reveal very harsh criticism of the excess that makes our consumer society so cruel and boring.

The third glance of the amused observer might be delighted by an art-loving audience – there is something to be said for two audibly art-educated older ladies, dressed in Chanel and Hermès, discussing McCarthy's "Complex Pile" – a 36-meter-long and 15-meter-high, air-filled pile of plastic shit – in a slightly excited manner on a Bernese meadow.

It is not an entirely innocent pile; the “Complex Pile” caused a lot of trouble before it could be duly admired in the open-air exhibition “Beyond Eden” (2008) on the meadow in front of the Paul Klee Center in Bern: Back then, after a gust of wind on a July night, the colossal pile set off from the meadow towards the city, knocking down two streetlights and a power line, a walnut tree and a greenhouse along the way, until it had released enough air.

The “Complex Pile” was recently on display at a public art exhibition in Hong Kong, along with an inflatable Stonehenge and an inflatable giant suckling pig; perhaps this light but not easy art will one day come your way.

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de