“I think I do mistrust the direction the world is going in and I really mistrust that we don’t see who we are. We don’t know we’re alive and I’ve believed that since I was a kid.”
Born in 1945 in Salt Lake City, UT, Paul McCarthy has shown his performances, installations, and sculptures the world over. Last Tuesday, February 16 he gave a lecture to an audience of captivated students, foundry employees and community members in Maxey Hall.
“It’s not an exaggeration to call him one of the most important contemporary artists working today,” said Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture Studies Matt Reynolds in an email. “This is an unbelievable opportunity for the campus community to engage with someone who has transformed the art world over his long and diverse career.”
His 50 years as an artist of many mediums has garnered him an extensive biography, some of which include recent showings at the Whitney Museum in New York (2008), the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2009), and Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006).
Most recently his works have taken shape in large sculpture, dealing with images of the seemingly profane, such as a large inflatable turds (see: “Complex Pile”), or using imagery from Disney and exposing its sexual reality (see: “White Snow”). His upcoming show at the Henry in Seattle, which opens on March 5th, includes large pieces entitled “Bookends” which are carved out of black walnut and build upon his White Snow concept.
In his lecture McCarthy gave an extensive review of his art making practice and the objects that he has made since his first academic introduction to art at the University of Utah in 1969. His progression from an interest in themes of spinning and space, Adam and Eve, character personas, and his more recent obsession with “the party” took the audience through an art practice that is admiringly obsessive. Despite his prolific work ethic, however, his tone was humble and professorial.
“I can say honestly I’m not as concerned with the art world or the money only that I can make more and more,” he said.
His work’s blatant sexuality and violence could be seen as a critique, a radical restructuring of our societal structure. When asked about his rebellious intentions, though, McCarthy separated his role as an artist from the role that his art might signify.
“I believe it gets complicated if I refer to it as a resistance. What the fuck am I doing, I’m an artist living in an art world making pieces at the foundry so what kind of resistance are you talking about? On the other side we have the belief that the image is a resistance and it brings up something that actually does something.”
McCarthy’s most recent sculptures, such as the Bookends, have been made at the Walla Walla Foundry where he began working in 2010. The Foundry, one of the biggest facilities in the U.S. that helps artists produce not only bronze castings but works in wood, plastic, polyurethane, resins and silvers.
“The technical virtuosity of [the White Snow sculptures] and the skill of the Foundry are just astounding, so I am always amazed at what they are capable of doing,” Assistant Professor of Art and co-organizer of the event Nicole Pietrantoni said.
Over the past couple months, McCarthy started discussing with President of the Foundry Dylan Farnum the possibility of building a closer relationship between the colleges and the greater community.
“He was really interested in engaging students…[Paul believed art school] was fundamental and it was profound and it formed who [he was] as an artist,” President of the Walla Walla Foundry Dylan Farnum said.
Farnum also expressed an interest in using the Whitman campus as a host for a broader speaker series to take place between the Foundry and the college. The Foundry is home to 150 employees who work in close contact with creating the artist’s work, and yet many don’t have the chance to hear the artist speak about their pieces.
McCarthy’s lecture might have been the beginning of a new trend. Just miles from campus some of the most prominent artists in the contemporary art world craft pieces, and this new communication between Whitman and the Foundry could be the opportunity to open a larger conversation.