Paul McCarthy

Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
Private Collection, London
Acquired from the above by present owner

This work is in excellent and sound condition overall. There are no apparent condition issues with this work.
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Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy is not only one of the most influential artists working in America today, but he has earned this title through the exploration and exploitation of myths and stereotypes in American popular culture. With an astonishing career spanning fifty years across a multitude of mediums including film, painting and sculpture, McCarthy manipulates cherished childhood patriarchal emblems – from the Christmas Tree to Mr. Potato Head – to reflect the darker side of American life. Chocolate Silicone Blockhead's cartoon-like figure does just that by reflecting McCarthy’s observation of the relationship between modern culture, consumerism and preternatural adolescence.

Chocolate Silicone Blockhead adds an additional layer of meaning to McCarthy’s work. Beyond the naïveté of the cartoon-like subject, the vulgarity and sexually perverse Pinocchio nose, both of which are typical of McCarthy, lies the connotation of this work’s epithet-laden title taking a step further into an unsettling blend of humor, horror and subversion. Notions of taboo do not bother McCarthy, he revels in them: “These days, taboo breaking is a pastime akin to golf, or a child’s scavenger hunt. Taboo breakers carry around little scorecards and stubby pencils so they can check off the taboos they are supposedly breaking. McCarthy doesn’t have a scorecard. He’s not breaking taboos. He’s bathing in them.” (Sam Lipsyte, Paul McCarthy, Between Beauty and the Beast: Sculptures, Drawings and Photographs, New York 2006, p. 19).

Termed the “Demented Imagineer” by New York Times, McCarthy has taken what is simple and archetypal of a generation of American popular culture and burnishes the veneer: "Much of my work is about the initiation from innocence to culture. It’s 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).