Paul McCarthy b. 1945
Painter (1995)
In Painter, McCarthy, decked out in a blonde wig, a bulbous drinker's nose, and giant latex hands, staggers around a small, wood-paneled studio with an immense paint brush, yammering things like, "I can't do it, I can't do it," and, "DeKooning, DeKooning, DeKooning." He punctures the sides of gigantesque tubes of paint (one is labeled "Shit"), mixes the paint, then slashes and hacks big crude Expressionist swaths onto canvases with crazy electric blue and orange grounds. During the course of the video, he meanders between adjoining rooms ranting against his dealer, sitting in on an absurd conversation with pretentious, bulbous-nosed scholars, has a sycophantic collector sniff his asshole, and chops off his own fingers with a cleaver. Painter is a hilarious satire of inflated Abstract Expressionists and the art world in general, but it is not only that. When McCarthy obsessively mixes his gallons of shit-brown paint, loads up his brush, and, grunting and waving, goes to his canvas, he is pointing towards something important: that paint is the same as shit and dirt -- just unruly filth that flows and stains. That finally, the hopeless drive to make art is drunken, humiliated, violent, sexual and infantile, perhaps tragic as well. (Brooklyn Rail)
RESOURCES:
Paul McCarthy in UbuWeb Sound
RESOURCES:
Paul McCarthy in UbuWeb Sound