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Lot Essay
Paul McCarthy is one of the most influential artists working in America today. Initially known for his works in which he shocked viewers with his overtly sexual performances and installations, his later work has involved exploring the myths and stereotypes of American popular culture. McCarthy lives and works in Los Angeles, a city that thrives on the selling of dreams and fantasies, and he finds a rich seam of inspiration in the consumer icons from the entertainment industry and their traversal toward a darker side of American life. In one of his most important works from the 1990s, Tomato Head (Green), McCarthy creates a life-size cartoon-like figure that explores the relationship between modern culture, consumerism, and innocence.
McCarthy plays out the allegories of a beloved and immediately recognizable cast of characters ranging from Santa Claus and Pinocchio to Mr. Potato Head and Popeye. Seemingly recognizable characters are subtly changed or adulterated to produce works that become unsettling and unnerving. Tomato Head (Green) is both a nomenclatic and visual play on the children's toy "Mr. Potato Head." Developed in 1949, the original "Mr. Potato Head" was the first toy ever to be advertised on television and has remained popular even today. This post-war children's entertainment symbolizes the beginning of a new consumer-driven era in America. McCarthy's life-size human figure with an enlarged cartoonish tomato as a head transforms a children's toy into a sinister and disturbing work of art that questions several aspects of American culture.
Much like "Mr. Potato Head,"omato Head (Green) has holes in place of eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, where various pegs affixed with these human parts could be inserted randomly to give the figure different appendages or expressions. Unlike the toy, however, there are holes in its groin and anus where pegs could also be inserted. The work suggests an ability to construct gender identity: making these changes and substitutions allows the figure to play with potential self-iterations and explore all the possible identities available to it. However, even though the figure has several items at its disposal with which to auto-configure, these are a prefabricated, predetermined set. This limitation speaks to the restricted number of identities and lifestyle choices available to individuals in normative contemporary culture. Raw, visceral, and deeply disturbing, McCarthy's work unmasks the vile, dysfunctional truth behind the American dream. Through these twisted perversions of American cultural icons, McCarthy undermines a central theme of the American ethos of equal opportunity, the American dream, which promotes the notion that one can realize oneself to the fullest regardless of origins and social status, is here invalidated through the message that society mandates one's options of choice. The idea of freedom of choice is turned on its head and questioned.
McCarthy disinters the perversions inherent in American "values" through cherished emblems of childhood, re-envisioning them in adulterated contexts with an unsettling blend of humor and horror. Innocence--specifically the sanctity of childhood--is undermined by sinister forces that are far less hallowed; and the burnished veneer of American culture crackles. This questioning of American culture is a theme that McCarthy returns to often in his oeuvre. He explores the relationship between the apparent innocence of childhood and devises a twisted representation of the two. The distorted, mangled appendages of the young boy Steven, for example, a work dating from 2007, his arms outstretched, seemingly lost and searching his way through the world, seem at odds with the happy-go-lucky figures taken from American childhood memories. This tension between what the eye sees and what the mind knows is at the very heart of McCarthy's work. Prevalent in the work of many artists of his generation, McCarthy has constantly strived to update these ideas with new treatments and materials. His later work begins to examine the nature of European fairy-tales and the central-European personification of purity, which relates to McCarthy's earlier twisted parodies of Heidi and other clichéd Swiss characters.
Over the duration of his career Paul McCarthy has become one of the most perceptive commentators on modern culture and society. The artist augments as he elaborates perceived norms of contemporary culture, taking what is already there and exaggerating their existing, and sometimes subtle, perversities. The underlying natures of his figures reveal themselves to the viewer slowly and unexpectedly, in parallel to the acculturation process that the artist decries: "Much of my work is about the initiation from innocence to culture. Its generational, meaning that blame cannot be specific. It's passed down. Where does the perception or action come from? It becomes you. You are it. Culturalized into absurdity. I'm in it, too" (Paul McCarthy, quoted in Hunter Drochojowska-Philp, The Mechanical Id, 2001, www.kunstwissen.de).
McCarthy plays out the allegories of a beloved and immediately recognizable cast of characters ranging from Santa Claus and Pinocchio to Mr. Potato Head and Popeye. Seemingly recognizable characters are subtly changed or adulterated to produce works that become unsettling and unnerving. Tomato Head (Green) is both a nomenclatic and visual play on the children's toy "Mr. Potato Head." Developed in 1949, the original "Mr. Potato Head" was the first toy ever to be advertised on television and has remained popular even today. This post-war children's entertainment symbolizes the beginning of a new consumer-driven era in America. McCarthy's life-size human figure with an enlarged cartoonish tomato as a head transforms a children's toy into a sinister and disturbing work of art that questions several aspects of American culture.
Much like "Mr. Potato Head,"omato Head (Green) has holes in place of eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, where various pegs affixed with these human parts could be inserted randomly to give the figure different appendages or expressions. Unlike the toy, however, there are holes in its groin and anus where pegs could also be inserted. The work suggests an ability to construct gender identity: making these changes and substitutions allows the figure to play with potential self-iterations and explore all the possible identities available to it. However, even though the figure has several items at its disposal with which to auto-configure, these are a prefabricated, predetermined set. This limitation speaks to the restricted number of identities and lifestyle choices available to individuals in normative contemporary culture. Raw, visceral, and deeply disturbing, McCarthy's work unmasks the vile, dysfunctional truth behind the American dream. Through these twisted perversions of American cultural icons, McCarthy undermines a central theme of the American ethos of equal opportunity, the American dream, which promotes the notion that one can realize oneself to the fullest regardless of origins and social status, is here invalidated through the message that society mandates one's options of choice. The idea of freedom of choice is turned on its head and questioned.
McCarthy disinters the perversions inherent in American "values" through cherished emblems of childhood, re-envisioning them in adulterated contexts with an unsettling blend of humor and horror. Innocence--specifically the sanctity of childhood--is undermined by sinister forces that are far less hallowed; and the burnished veneer of American culture crackles. This questioning of American culture is a theme that McCarthy returns to often in his oeuvre. He explores the relationship between the apparent innocence of childhood and devises a twisted representation of the two. The distorted, mangled appendages of the young boy Steven, for example, a work dating from 2007, his arms outstretched, seemingly lost and searching his way through the world, seem at odds with the happy-go-lucky figures taken from American childhood memories. This tension between what the eye sees and what the mind knows is at the very heart of McCarthy's work. Prevalent in the work of many artists of his generation, McCarthy has constantly strived to update these ideas with new treatments and materials. His later work begins to examine the nature of European fairy-tales and the central-European personification of purity, which relates to McCarthy's earlier twisted parodies of Heidi and other clichéd Swiss characters.
Over the duration of his career Paul McCarthy has become one of the most perceptive commentators on modern culture and society. The artist augments as he elaborates perceived norms of contemporary culture, taking what is already there and exaggerating their existing, and sometimes subtle, perversities. The underlying natures of his figures reveal themselves to the viewer slowly and unexpectedly, in parallel to the acculturation process that the artist decries: "Much of my work is about the initiation from innocence to culture. Its generational, meaning that blame cannot be specific. It's passed down. Where does the perception or action come from? It becomes you. You are it. Culturalized into absurdity. I'm in it, too" (Paul McCarthy, quoted in Hunter Drochojowska-Philp, The Mechanical Id, 2001, www.kunstwissen.de).