Tag Archives: Paul McCarthy

WHO’S AFRAID OF THE NEW NOW? 40 ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE

Allen Ruppersberg, Who’s Afraid of the New Now?, from the series Preview Suite, 1988. Lithograph, image: 21 3/8 × 13 1/4 in (54.1 × 33.5 cm), sheet: 22 × 13 7/8 in (56 × 35.1 cm). Edition of thirty. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York

Allen Ruppersberg, “Who’s Afraid of the New Now?” from the series Preview Suite, lithograph, 1988 (courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York)

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Saturday, December 2, and Sunday, December 3, $5 per conversation, 10:00 am – 8:00 pm
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

The New Museum continues its fortieth anniversary celebration with “Who’s Afraid of the New Now? 40 Artists in Dialogue,” two days of free admission to the downtown institution and a fab series of five-dollar artist conversations that require advance purchase here. On Saturday beginning at ten o’clock, every hour on the hour (except for the two o’clock lunch break), you can catch Judith Bernstein and Linda Montano, Paweł Althamer and Cally Spooner, Ragnar Kjartansson and Carolee Schneemann, Hans Haacke and Carsten Höller, Donald Moffett and Nari Ward, George Condo and Jeff Koons, Paul Chan and Carroll Dunham, Thomas Bayrle and Kerstin Brätsch, Raymond Pettibon and Kaari Upson, and Simone Leigh and Lorraine O’Grady. Sunday’s lineup features Cheryl Donegan and Mary Heilmann, Jeremy Deller and Martha Rosler, Paul McCarthy and Andra Ursuta, Elizabeth Peyton and Allen Ruppersberg, Nicole Eisenman and Neil Jenney, Howardena Pindell and Dorothea Rockburne, Bouchra Khalili and Doris Salcedo, Camille Henrot and Anri Sala, Sharon Hayes and Faith Ringgold, and Carol Bove and Joan Jonas. It’s a crazy-good roster of artists who have shown at the museum, which was founded in 1976 by Marcia Tucker and opened at C Space in 1977 before moving to the New School and then 583 Broadway before its grand reopening at 235 Bowery on December 1, 2007. Currently on view are “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” “Kahlil Joseph: Shadow Play,” “Petrit Halilaj: RU,” “Helen Johnson: Ends,” “Alex Da Corte: Harvest Moon,” and “Pursuing the Unpredictable: The New Museum 1977–2017” in addition to a special window reinstallation of Bruce Nauman’s 1987 video No, No, New Museum from his Clown Torture series.

WUNDERBAUM: LOOKING FOR PAUL

Wunderbaum makes its New York debut with work examining controversial public art project by Paul McCarthy (photo by Steven A. Gunther)

New York Live Arts
Bessie Schönberg Theater
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
November 11-14, $15-$35, 7:30
212-691-6500
www.newyorklivearts.org
thenewforest.nl

In 2001, controversial Utah-born, California-based artist Paul McCarthy was commissioned by Rotterdam to make a public sculpture for Shouwburgplein, or Theater Square. However, the city ultimately rejected McCarthy’s work, a giant Santa Claus holding a rather phallic pine tree that soon became known as “Kabouter Buttplug,” or “Buttplug Gnome.” The sculpture was moved several times before finally parading into its new home in the Eendrachtsplein. The eco-conscious Dutch-Flemish collective Wunderbaum examines the controversy, and public art in general, in the multimedia Looking for Paul, which is having its New York premiere November 11-14 at New York Live Arts. In the piece, bookstore owner Inez van Dam has no appreciation for “Kabouter Buttplug,” so she decides to do something about it, going out to Los Angeles to confront McCarthy, who is rather familiar with confrontation. Looking for Paul features actors and creators Walter Bart, Inez van Dam, Matijs Jansen, Maartje Remmers, Marleen Scholten, and guest Daniel Frankl, with design by Maarten van Otterdijk.

STATE OF MIND: NEW CALIFORNIA ART CIRCA 1970

Paul Kos, “Sound of Ice Melting,” two twenty-five-pound blocks of ice, eight boom microphone stands, mixer, amplifier, two large speakers, and cables, 1970/2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Bronx Museum of the Arts
1040 Grand Concourse at 165th St.
Thursday – Sunday through September 8, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 (8:00 on Fridays)
718-681-6000
www.bronxmuseum.org

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of West Coast artists developed an evolving brand of California Conceptualism that incorporated environmental concerns and social interaction into works that explored consumer culture and the changing political landscape with a wry sense of humor while redefining what art is and could be. Originally mounted as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time series, “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” continues at the Bronx Museum of the Arts through September 8, comprising approximately 150 paintings, drawings, photographs, video, performances, and installation from 60 artists. Curators Constance Lewallen and Karen Moss have arranged the splendidly designed exhibit into such thematic sections as “The Street,” “Public and Private Space,” “The Body and Performance,” “Language and Wordplay,” and “Feminism and Domestic Space,” offering an exciting, well-paced tour of a California avant-garde immersed in the counterculture revolution of the era.

Visitors are encouraged to walk through Barbara T. Smith’s “Field Piece” and trip the light fantastic (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

For “Hair Transplant,” Nancy Buchanan exchanged body hair with Robert Walker. For “California Map Project,” John Baldessari spelled out the name of the state using geographic formations. Visitors can walk into Bruce Nauman’s immersive “Yellow Room (Triangular)” and prance through Barbara T. Smith’s “Field Piece,” lighting up nine-foot-tall blades of grass made of translucent resin. For her “Sitting Still” series, Bonnie Sherk took a seat in public places as people passed her by. Lowell Darling offers visitors a diploma from the Fat City School of Finds Art. Allen Ruppersberg Sunset Boulevard “Al’s Grand Hotel” is partially re-created, a 1971 project in which people could actually rent rooms and become part of the art. One of the highlights of the exhibit is a trio of video monitors showing cutting-edge, experimental short films by Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, and Nauman that subvert the traditional nature of the creative process. For “Sound of Ice Melting,” Paul Kos surrounds a block of ice with eight microphones, which make the ice a kind of celebrity with not a whole lot to say. Other artists featured in the show are William Wegman, Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Lynn Hershman, David Hammons, Eleanor Antin, Terry Fox, Allan Kaprow, and Bas Jan Ader, who literally died for his art. Although State of Mind” is a snapshot of a very specific period in the history of twentieth-century American art, it also reveals how these conceptualists not only captured the zeitgeist of the times but opened a wide artistic path for the future. The Bronx Museum is open Thursday through Sundays, and admission is always free. This week’s First Fridays program features live performances and special screenings from participants in the “Bronx Calling” Second AIM Biennial, which consists of works by such emerging New York area artists as Allison Wall, Diana Shpungin, Alejandro Guzmán, Daniele Genadry, and Alan and Michael Fleming. The evening will include Katie Cercone’s ritual-based “Queen$ Domin8tin,” Alicia Grullon’s “Cold War Karaoke Night” in which the audience can reenact cold war speeches, and the Flemings’ “Objects and Extensions,” a dance piece in which the brothers integrate their bodies into the architecture of the museum.

REBEL DABBLE BABBLE / WS / LIFE CAST

Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy, “Rebel Dabble Rabble,” multimedia installation (photo courtesy Hauser & Wirth)

Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy’s “Rebel Dabble Rabble” multimedia installation goes behind the scenes of the making of an American myth (photo courtesy Hauser & Wirth)

Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy: Rebel Dabble Babble, Hauser & Wirth, 511 West 18th St., Monday – Friday through July 26, free
Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy: WS, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., through August 4, $15
Paul McCarthy: Life Cast, Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th St., Monday – Friday through July 26, free

LA-based artist and provocateur Paul McCarthy takes a giant dump and smears it all over the Wonderful World of Disney, Hollywood, and American mythology in a pair of shows that are most definitely not for children or the faint of heart. Hauser & Wirth continues their spring/summer of McCarthy with “Rebel Dabble Babble,” the follow-up to his earlier indoor “Sculptures” and outdoor “Sisters” exhibitions. Asked by James Franco to participate in a show he was curating about Nicholas Ray’s iconic 1954 film Rebel without a Cause, McCarthy, teaming with his son, Damon, instead developed the related installation “Rebel Dabble Babble,” which McCarthy describes as “Art as a dangling participle.” The multimedia presentation, spread throughout Hauser & Wirth’s vast Eighteenth St. space, consists of carefully constructed re-creations of the staircase in the Stark house from Ray’s film and the Chateau Marmont bungalow where the director and his stars might or might not have become involved in some very heavy debauchery. On those intricately designed sets, the McCarthys used multiple cameras to capture lurid craziness as actors portraying James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo, as well as their Rebel characters, Jim Stark, Judy, and Plato, get involved in raunchy festishistic sexual rituals and surreal going-on in which the act of filming is part of the narrative. The central cast features Franco as Jim/James, Elyse Poppers as Judy/Natalie, and Jay Yi as Plato/Sal, with a bulbous-nosed Paul McCarthy playing Jim’s father and Ray and Suzan Averitt as Jim’s mother and Natalie’s mother. The doubling theme goes a step further when things get rather hot, including nudity, intense sexuality, and various forms of actual penetration; in true Hollywood form, the McCarthys bring in body doubles, including real porn stars, to perform these acts. The multichannel films are projected onto the walls of the gallery, each scene shot from multiple angles, overwhelming the viewer as anger, repression, obsession, voyeurism, brutality, incest, and more take center stage. At the top of the Stark stairs in a small bedroom, a video depicts Poppers begging visitors to pleasure her, while her double graphically pleasures herself in another gallery space. In the back room, hundreds of photos detail the goings-on, showing you what you might have missed — which could be good or bad, depending on your own limits and desires. The films are purposely amateurish, revealing the foibles of the medium, especially in an age in which anyone can make a movie and put it on the internet.

Paul McCarthy offers a unique take on the classic Show White fairy tale at the Park Ave. Armory (photo by James Ewing)

At the Park Ave. Armory, the McCarthys have installed the impressively ambitious “WS,” continuing their exploration of American mythology as seen through the lens of Walt Paul, the artist’s alter ego, a bizarre combination of Walt Disney and Paul McCarthy. In “WS,” which stands for “White Snow,” McCarthy again uses the theme of doubling as he tells a decidedly adult version of the story of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, combining the Brothers Grimm tale with the 1937 Disney animated movie, adding in elements of debauchery and pornography that are far from family friendly. (No one under eighteen is allowed in, even with a parent or guardian.) “Desire device / Dream device / Pretend device,” McCarthy writes in a poem in the exhibition program, and he investigates those three concepts and many more in an immersive installation that includes a forest, huge multichannel screens, a series of small rooms that are like peep shows, and a three-quarters scale model of the house he grew up in. Evoking the child’s journey into adulthood, “WS” consists of some twenty hours of films, with the main footage in the vast hall more or less following the general narrative of the Disney movie, albeit with sex, nudity, feces smearing, alcohol-fueled orgies, nine dwarfs (Humpey and Too Happy have been added) and three White Snows (Elyse Poppers, Aiden Ashley, Charlotte Stokely) in addition to a fourth, Real Doll White Snow who gets in on the festivities as well. McCarthy plays Walt Paul, who ends up in several rather uncomfortable positions. Visitors experience the bacchanalia by peering into windows and cut-out holes in the walls of the house where the sensationalistic proceedings occurred, ambling through the woods, climbing stairs, and wandering through nearly private screenings of a bizarre cooking show, an alternative Adam and Eve, a drinking party, White Snow performing fellatio on a microphone, and the prince pulling his pud. All of the characters have ridiculous, bulbous noses, mocking the idea of Hollywood’s ability to transform reality through makeup and other forms of fakery. The piece is supplemented by display cases that mimic Snow White’s glass coffin, a gift shop that sells Disney merchandise signed by Walt Paul, and a video interview with Paul, Damon, cocurator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and consultant Tom Eccles.

At first it might seem that Paul McCarthy’s “Life Cast” has little to do with “WS” and “Rebel Dabble Rabble,” but it turns out that in many ways it is central to the Salt Lake City-born artist’s current installations, which he refers to as works in progress. The exhibition, on view at Hauser & Wirth’s 69th St. space, features a quartet of remarkably lifelike casts of Elyse Poppers, who plays one of the Snow Whites in “WS” and Natalie Wood / Judy in “Rebel Dabble Babble.” Visitors are initially greeted by “That Girl: T.G. Asleep,” in which the Poppers figure, made out of silicone, paint, and hair, is lying on her back, completely naked. It’s impossible not to look for signs of life — the blink of an eye, a slightly rising chest— even though she’s not real. Indeed, the next part of the show, “T.G. Awake,” consists of three more versions of Poppers, this time sitting up, resting on her hands, eyes wide open. The title is a direct reference to the classic television sitcom That Girl, in which Marlo Thomas played an independently minded wannabe actress living in New York City. In the back room, McCarthy has made a cast of himself (“Horizontal”), his older, heavy, hairier body — kind of an anti-Sleeping Beauty — not nearly as attractive as Poppers’s, appearing more dead than asleep. In both “W.S.” and “Rebel Dabble Babble,” McCarthy reveals some of the tricks of the trade, sometimes showing the camera and microphone, not hiding certain elements that went into the creation of his crazed works; similarly, “Life Cast” includes an upstairs room where a pair of multichannel videos, “T.G. Elyse,” reveal in exacting detail how two of the Poppers figures were made, a tediously slow process that resulted in strikingly realistic sculptures that offer a sharp counterpoint to the wildly fantastical creatures and situations of “W.S.” and “RDB.” Taken together, the three shows continue McCarthy’s decades-long, often controversial exploration of American mythology and consumerism, social interaction, and pop culture touchstones in ways that are not always pretty but are entertaining as hell.

DO IT (OUTSIDE)

Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Sculpture for Strolling” serves as a kind of centerpiece of “do it (outside)” exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Through July 7, free
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org

Art is usually not about following the rules, but the “do it” series of international exhibitions is indeed based on specific instructions laid out by an ever-growing number of established artists. Twenty years ago, artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist came up with an idea for an evolving, perennially in-progress exhibition in which these instructions would be interpreted by emerging artists and community groups in local displays. Even the rules have rules, including “There will be no artist-created ‘original’ and “Each interpreted instruction must be fully documented.” The latest such show continues through this weekend at Socrates Sculpture Park, where the very first fully outdoor iteration of “do it” in a public venue opened in May. Set in a white-tented walkway designed by Christoff : Finio Architecture, “do it (outside)” features instructions from more than sixty artists, some of which are meant specifically for the viewer to enact, and others that are interpreted in the park, but all of which are meant to exist only for the length of the show. Lars Fisk has constructed a trio of Ai Weiwei’s “CCTV Sprays,” which can spray-paint over surveillance cameras. Becky Sellinger realizes Paul McCarthy’s backyard trench of silver buckets and body parts used as paintbrushes. An unidentified artist has created Michelangelo Pistoletto’s “Sculpture for Strolling,” consisting of wet newspapers formed into a giant sphere; if someone wants to keep the object, they must wire $3,000 into a foreign bank account. Anyone can rent Anibal López’s “For Rent” sign for $20 a day, as long as they replace it with a nondigital picture of it.

Grayson Revoir followed Darren Bader instructions to “glue a [rectangular] table to the sky [table top up, somewhere not too close to the sky’s zenith]” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Katie Mangiardi danced with a large piece of chalk as per Joan Jonas’s “Instruction.” Grayson Revoir built Darren Bader’s description of gluing a table to the sky, cleverly using a mirrored surface. Jory Rabinovitz created David Lynch’s “Do It: How to Make a Ricky Board,” which comes with a poem from the filmmaker. Shaun Leonardo’s interpretation of Bruce Nauman’s “Body Pressure” asks that you press yourself against a cement wall until your mind removes the wall; “This may become a very erotic exercise,” Nauman points out. Ernesto Neto’s “Watching birds fly, the game of the three points” encourages visitors to follow the flight of birds flying above, noting, “flying insects are pretty good too, a bit more nervous though.” There are also instructions from Tracey Emin, John Baldessari, Sol LeWitt, Joan Jonas, Anna Halprin, Yoko Ono, Rivane Neuenschwander, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, William Forsythe, Tacita Dean, Christian Marclay, Robert Morris, Martha Rosler, Tomas Saraceno, Nancy Spero, and others, some more philosophical and less physical than others. The show comes down on Sunday, July 7, when it will have to follow rule number 5: “At the end of each do it exhibition the presenting institution is obliged to destroy the artworks and the instructions from which they were created, thus removing the possibility that do it artworks can become standing exhibition pieces or fetishes.” (Also on view in the park right now are Heather Rowe’s “Beyond the Hedges [Slivered Gazebo],” Chitra Ganesh’s “Broadway Billboard: Her Nuclear Waters,” and Toshihiro Oki architect pc’s “FOLLY: tree wood.”)

ART SEEN: THE COOL SCHOOL

THE COOL SCHOOL takes a look at the influential L.A. art scene of the 1950s and 1960s

THE COOL SCHOOL (Morgan Neville, 2007)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Sunday, June 23, 11:15 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

While postwar modern art was exploding in New York in the 1950s, a small, close-knit group of artists were coming together in Los Angeles, exploring abstract expressionism in a tiny gallery called Ferus. Mixing archival footage with new interviews — shot in black and white to maintain the old-time, DIY feel — director Morgan Neville delves into the fascinating world of the L.A. art scene as seen through the Ferus Gallery, which was founded in 1957 by Walter Hopps, a medical-school dropout who looked and acted like a Fed, and assemblage artist Ed Kienholz. “The work was really special,” notes Dennis Hopper, enjoying a cigar with Dean Stockwell. “And there [were] a lot of really, really gifted artists that really have to be looked at again.” Among those artists were Wallace Berman, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John Baldessari, and Larry Bell. (All of them participate in the documentary except for Berman, who died in 1976.) In addition to featuring up-and-coming West Coast painters, sculptors, and conceptual artists, Ferus also hosted a Marcel Duchamp retrospective as well as early shows by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and other East Coast favorites. For nearly ten years, Hopps, Kienholz, and crafty businessman Irwin Blum kept Ferus going until various personality clashes led to its demise. The film includes an engaging roundtable from 2004 in which Neville brought many of the artists together to discuss what Ferus meant to them — and the art world in general. Behind a jazzy score, Neville also speaks with collectors, curators, and critics, putting it all into perspective. The Cool School, narrated by actor and photographer Jeff Bridges, is a fun-filled trip through a heretofore little-known part of postwar American art. The film is screening June 23 at 11:15 am as part of the Nitehawk Cinema’s monthly series “Art Seen” along with Paul McCarthy’s The Black and White Tapes, artist works by Kelly Kleinschrodt and Alexa Garrity, and Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s brilliant video bio A Brief History of John Baldessari, narrated by Tom Waits. The series continues July 20-21 with Neil Berkeley’s Beauty Is Embarrassing.

PAUL McCARTHY: SCULPTURES/SISTERS

Paul McCarthy, “White Snow, Bookends,” black walnut, 2013 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Hauser & Wirth
511 West 18th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Hudson River Park, 17th St. & the Hudson River Pier
Tuesday – Saturday through June 1, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-790-3900
www.hauserwirth.com

Controversial LA-based multimedia artist Paul McCarthy continues his assault on pop culture, and particularly the Wonderful World of Disney, in his latest installations, which will be seen all over the city this spring and summer. The Salt Lake City-born artist currently has two projects that run through Saturday, June 1. At Hauser & Wirth’s vast new space on West Eighteenth St., “Sculptures” consists of a series of large-scale black walnut pieces that relate a rather adult version of the story of Snow White, combining the 1812 Brothers Grimm German fairy tale “Schneewittchen” with the 1937 animated Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Many of the girls’ faces are caught mid-orgasm, most clearly depicted in “White Snow, Cindy” (which also references supermodel Cindy Crawford) and the totem “White Snow, Erection.” McCarthy plays with the collectible aspect of Disney figures in “White Snow, Bookends,” which is divided into two parts, one on its side. The show also includes a series of pencil drawings, “Étant donnés White Snow Walt Paul Forest,” and a wall of “White Snow Tree Forest Monochromes,” square and rectangular brown sculpture paintings composed of wood, foam, and bedliner, evoking muddy woods.

Paul McCarthy, “Sisters,” bronze, 2013 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Outside and down the street, McCarthy’s bronze “Sisters” rises on the pier, a demented tableaux of decapitated animals, smiling squirrels and bunnies, an old television set, and other odd objects, centered by a pair of tall sisters on crumbling bases. It’s unlikely that Walt Disney would be happy with this scene, although the Brothers Grimm would probably be delighted. McCarthy, whose “Cultural Gothic,” a sculptural installation in which a man stands proudly next to his son, who is having sex with a goat, was a highlight of the New Museum’s recent “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star” exhibition and whose “Balloon Dog” loomed large over the Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island earlier this month, will continue his fascination with Snow White at the Park Avenue Armory from June 19 through August 4, when the multimedia “WS” takes over the immense Wade Thompson Drill Hall; admission is $15 and limited to those eighteen and older, so don’t expect your grandfather’s Snow White. Meanwhile, “Paul McCarthy: Life Cast” will continue through July 26 at Hauser & Wirth’s 69th St. space, lifelike casts of Elyse Poppers that evoke the 1960s sitcom That Girl, along with life-size casts of a naked McCarthy himself. And on June 20, “Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy: Rebel Dabble Babble” moves into the 18th St. gallery, as father and son examine Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause as only Paul McCarthy can.