22 September 2008

Why I Love Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy paints with his face. He once plastered his head inside a wall. He made a sculpture of a man with his pants down, humping a tree. He dipped his penis in a paint can and painted with it. He created a sculpture called "Santa Claus with Buttplug", which was displayed in a public park in Belgium.

What's not to love?

His work is corporeal and messy and comes from that impulse that makes you smash your fork into your mashed potatoes and fling it around the room. It's a reminder of the human animal and the fact that all this stuff we have built around us doesn't change our animal nature. While other artists are inside playing Boggle, he's going face-first down the Slip-n-Slide.

It's also fun. I saw his current installation at the Whitney Museum, which has an open staircase leading from one gallery level to the next. His gallery was full of stuff playing with rooms, so for example a life-sized video of the camera view spinning around a room. You stand still but your viewpoint spins.

There was also a small enclosed room with an open doorway and a rolling executive leather office chair bolted in the center. The room turned around like a carousel at various speeds, speeding up and slowing down, and the chair spun with it. The drawings of the project on the wall showed a person in the chair; I wonder if it was ever tried out that way. It was fun to picture that.

But this was the best part -- there was an installation called something like Bang Bang Room or Bang Door or something. A four-walled room, each wall with a door in it. The room starts closed up, closed doors. Then each wall swings out on right-mounted hinges. Then each door opens and closes with a bang. This keeps happening, at various speeds, until the room closes back up and the cycle resets.

Do you know how pleasant the sound of a four banging doors is? In an echoing gallery space, with an open stairwell at one end that carries the sound to the galleries above and below?

The poor museum guards. There's only one way to make that job worse than boring, and this was it.

But wait! There was an elderly white male guard at one end of the bang room. He stood looking at the room. There was another guard on the opposite end, a young black lady. When the door flung open, the old guard could see through to the young guard. Then they'd slam shut, and he couldn't see her.

Every time the doors flung open, he grinned widely, raised his arm, and waved at her. Slam. Fling, grin, wave, slam.

The young guard just looked at him bleakly.

That whole scene made my day. Thanks, Paul McCarthy!

I love that he forced this museum to install such an annoying piece, and that you were reminded of it even if you went upstairs to look at the amazing Buckminster Fuller exhibit because you could still hear it when you stood near the stair side of the room. McCarthy one up on Fuller in this one.

Paints with his face, people. Chew on that.

18 September 2008



There's no better way to unwind after ninety minutes of asanas than blowing your wad at OTB. Clearly I need to move to NYC to efficiently integrate the parts of my life.

08 September 2008

Call it Miss Ross Playground



p.s. I took a stroll through the Ramble in Central Park, and I came around a bend of a narrow path beside an algae-covered lake. I was looking around, watching birds bouncing around in the trees, seeing the sights, and oh, yes, here came a guy wearing a black backpack, a white shirt, and white pants with his penis hanging out of the zipper.

Well well.

I stared very hard at the trees on the side of the trail opposite the peek-a-boo and kept on walking. He seemed a bit startled and moved his shoulder to the side and did I don't know what, because I was looking at those fascinating leaves. I think he might've been reacting to the camera in my hand. Maybe his penis is camera-shy, "No pictures!"

I passed by and came around to where I'd started on this circular bit of trail. There were two guys heading toward the guy I'd just passed, and I hung around to see what he'd show them. I saw his head (the one on his shoulders, sicko!) peek around the trail, look at the two guys, and then turn around and disappear. I don't know what happened after that because I decided I was showing too much interest in the guy with the zipper problem.

In fairness to Central Park and New York City the thousands of other men I saw on my visit there managed to keep it in their pants.

p.p.s. To purge ourselves of that story, here's another: I sat next to a couple of little girls sitting with their nanny in a coffee shop. The littlest girl asked the older one if she wanted to hear a joke and got the go-ahead. "Why couldn't the mummy come to the telephone when it rang?" the little one said. The older one said, "I know this one. He was all wrapped up." The younger one said, "That's right. She was tied up. She was chained to the floor and couldn't come to the phone when it rang." The older one slurped her drink without looking up.

I love that that little girl pictured someone's mom chained to the floor, staring helplessly at a ringing telephone, and thought that made for a fine joke.