Paul McCarthy is an L.A. guy. He’s fascinated by Hollywood and legendary figures like Walt Disney, whose work underpins ideas about modern American morality and ethics.
Pinocchio is one of the darker stories that Disney adapted for the screen. It is the story of a wooden marionette who wishes to become a boy. Pinocchio’s nose grows whenever he tells a lie and he’s practically a poster child for misbehavior.
Pinocchio could be the mascot of this exhibition since play offers kind of a safe space to misbehave.
McCarthy calls his boy Pinocchio Pipenose, a brutal industrial metaphor that contrasts sharply with Pinocchio’s loving creation by a wood carver.
Pinocchio Pipenose plays perversely with mass-produced condiments, such as ketchup, mayonnaise, and chocolate sauce. It’s an abject performance of infantile behavior and waste.
When kids play with their food, it’s cute. When adults do it, it’s disgusting.
“I was kind of a class clown, making people laugh in school.”
WHO
Paul McCarthy (born 1945, United States) started making videos in the late 1960s in Southern California. His performances are often absurd and disturbing twists on beloved American legends, myths and icons.
WHAT
In Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, McCarthy dresses in a modified Pinocchio costume with an exaggerated fake nose, which he uses to ingest ketchup, mix condiments, and poke holes in the structure. Another Pinocchio figure enters the scene toward the end of the video and the two characters aggressively interact with each other physically using their costumes and props.
WHY
McCarthy is interested in pushing the boundaries of a nostalgic childhood character as well as the limits of his audience. The characters shown are not the fictitious and playful do-gooders we grew up with. Pinocchio Pipenose’s explicit and disturbing play challenges our innocent memories of the fairytale Pinocchio.
LISTEN
PlayTime curator Trevor Smith describes how McCarthy’s Pinocchio Pipenose character is emblematic of the phrase: “play rewards misbehavior.”Read the transcript.
WORKS
Pinocchio Pipenose Householddilemma, 1994
Video (44 minutes)
On loan from the Marieluise Hessel Collection, Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College
These three PlayTime artists exhibit a range of expression—from sculpture to video to sound to textiles—but all three are inspired to negotiate political and cultural forces through play.
Paul McCarthy draws inspiration from the realms of childhood movie fantasy: Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Pinocchio, and other tales of mischief, silliness, and naughtiness (along with more adult Hollywood fare). The piece that appears in Playtime, Pinocchio Pipenose, embodies McCarthy’s (and to a large extent, Playtime‘s) spirit of play rewarding misbehavior and, as Trevor Smith puts it, acting as a safe space for transgressions (to which McCarthy is no stranger). At the same time, McCarthy is a complicated figure whose work sparks as much controversy and revulsion as it does praise and criticalacclaim.
Rivane Neuenschwander is known for a playful approach to her work, which—like the piece presented as part of our exhibition, Watchword—also requires wordplay, communication, and participation to activate the work for the viewer, including games, wearable work, and comics.
Neuenschwander has also created work geared directly at children. In London, in 2015, she initiated a program whereby kids created their own superhero capes, of sorts, that helped the children confront their fears.
“We are doing holes in these rifles before the rifles make holes in us.” Pedro Reyes‘ flutes made from guns were played recently at a March for Our Lives rally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Like the “gun flutes”—a signature part of the Reyes’ art making—his Disarm Mechanized II in Playtime comments on the depth with which deadly weapons have infiltrated our culture and have come to define different, fraught aspects of it. No stranger to building protest and politics into his work, Reyes has been known to employ satire and comedy to surprising effect. In a new project—Manufacturing Mischief—to premiere later this month at MIT, the artist uses puppets to expand Reyes’ commentary on the impact of new and old technology on current politics.
Check in next week for a new roundup of the latest play news and stories.
