I viewed Paul McCarthy's experimental film "Painter" for the first time. In fact, I have never seen any of McCarthy's work before yesterday. I have to say, I was quite shocked. It took me five to ten minutes to realize what was going on; what the artist was criticizing. Upon research on McCarthy after finishing the film, I found that he was satirizing impressionist artists (Willem de Kooning specifically), surrealist artists, the art world in general, and Disney. Originally trained in painting, he creates works around film and sculpture; "Painter" includes all three. In an online network called "Dangerous Minds," this work is described as "[mimicking], in its lo-tech way, the outrages of Dali and Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou with a deranged Mouseketeers on brown acid vibe." I looked into Un Chien Andalou and saw a bit of a connection as far as chaos and destruction goes, but he more so reminded me of a high-pitched Disney character talking nonstop nonsense. I researched more of McCarthy's work and found sculptures representing Disney creatures and imaginary characters, such as Santa Claus, with explicit content (violence, sexual innuendos, etc.). "Painter" did not include such characters, but it did feature a giant-nosed artist with similar-nosed dealers and collectors interacting with and admiring him.
The more I look at McCarthy's work, the more I see the prevalence of sculpture. Even in his films, he is recording moving sculptures. Whether the actors are completely sculpted over to become unrecognizable, as in "Piccadilly Circus" (also includes creepy sawing off of body parts), or just extended, like the giant noses and his hands in "Painter." With this, comes the presence of messy-ness and destruction; flailing paint everywhere, slathering food, chopping off hands, and heads, stabbing canvases and massive "Shit" colored paint tubes. However, despite all of the chaos, he is commenting on something societal. Ubu.com states that McCarthy's "elaborate fabrications involved the restaging of culturally-charged myths and icons...in the context of family psychodramas, Hollywood geners, and mass media." His fabrications are exaggerations of the ridiculous stories that the mass media has grounded into our culture over generations. McCarthy's performances are outrageous to the naked eye, yet you can see the same in the media if you just look deeper and read between the lines.
In my first viewing of anything McCarthy (which was "Painter"), I didn't necessarily "connect" with the work, though it did immediately grab my attention. After realizing the meaning behind the content, I was intrigued and satisfied with the overall film, but the aesthetic was jarring. I'm not used to watching films so strange and exaggerated, and I wasn't sure how to react. With further reading and further background information, I am becoming a little connected with his works. Though on the surface it still gives me a creepy vibe.
While watching "Painter," it seems that the main character is struggling with his art as if it is bigger than he can handle, and he also seems to have split personalities. He is talking to himself in various voices that are difficult to understand all while using his over-sized hands to dip a giant paintbrush into buckets of paint. When he paints, theres no structure to it. Rather, he is slapping it on in seemingly random motions, and he has to do three of them. (This must be the part that's commenting on de Kooning's paintings and his abstract expressionist style.) As the film progresses, the artist becomes more and more childish. He's screaming about money, running around, creating more of a mess with his enormous materials than he is actually using them to create art, and after a long period of his nonsense, he begins to snore standing up. The next scene is where demolition arises as he takes scissors, and then a butcher, to his hand as he sobs. He whacks at his finger for what seems like hours until he is finally able to pull it off. As I watched this, I wondered if rather than killing himself, he's attempting to kill the direct cause of his suffering. The remaining of the piece carries on with him still painting, still making a mess, and putting himself inside of the colossal paint tubes that are labelled "BLACK," "RED," and "SHIT." (He really doesn't seem to like his work, or like himself as an artist, or even like himself at all.) He also meets with some fancy pants collectors and, before the film is over, the dealer puts his huge nose up against the painter's bare bottom, enjoying its aroma.
This piece exhibited time as real time, being almost 50 minutes of the paragraph above. There was no shortening nor increasing speed. It is very much an experimental film of its time, shaky camera and all. The use of space and movement was prominent in the piece. The artist's studio is set up so that the viewer sees the giant canvases side-by-side against the wall, the human-sized paint tubes, and the messy buckets of paint as he stabs them with paintbrushes almost taller than him. This portrayal of materials matched perfectly with the artist's attitude. Surrounded by these objects, he acted overwhelmed and was at a constant battle to keep control of his art. At times, he succumbed and allowed himself to be taken over by the tubes of paint. He also did a lot of pacing, spinning, jumping, standing on tables, and using his hands to not only create his own paintings, but to also destroy other works of art.
One element that stood out was the use of rhythm in the hand butchering scene. For a portion of this madness, every time the knife hit his hand the camera would cut to a close up, and every other time the camera would cut to a full a view of the hand. This went back and forth for a while, and the added butcher sound for every hit made it almost mesmerizing. Repetition is also in this scene, as well as throughout the film; repeating of jabbing the paintbrush into the bucket, and repeating of the forms he painted on the canvases. The film did have an overall unity of similar-nosed people and showing the motions of creating art, but not too much variety due to the prominent use of repetition. Yet the noses, the hands, and the materials in relation to the actors made for hilarious proportions.
"Painter" is almost 50 minutes long and is currently in the archives of the NY MoMa.
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