TRANSGRESSION

WOW, a lot to talk about. The work of Paul McCarthy, Anna Gaskell, and Anthony Goicolea are a kick to the teeth of normal. Transgressive art messes with our comfortable world – from the literal mess of McCarthy, to the uncomfortably staged scenes of Gaskell and Goicolea. I’m sure that the “straight” world condemns this kind of work for exactly this reason. The artists wish to challenge the way we see the world, and in so doing expose realities beneath the surface of contemporary and popular culture.

For this goal alone, it looks tremendously worthy to me. Every painting or movie or art installation should not be about making us more comfortable with the world as we see it. Art should shake us up and open our minds to something new, and sometimes disturbing is necessary because what is beneath the surface may, in fact, be disturbing. If we hide from the truth, whether about images of children in popular culture or anything else, then thank goodness for artists willing to give us a kick in the pants or even the groin to facilitate some awakening.

I love how McCarthy takes Heidi and Pinocchio and messes around with their cute and comfortable Disney imaging to make us explore some ugly truths. Yes, why in the world are we so interested in Heidi? Pure little blonde pony tailed Alpine girl that she is? These stories that have become so full of ease and surface gloss, are indeed built from some darker places in our collective psyche. Like Grimm’s Fairy Tales, we have tried to scrub clean some very dark and dirty stories while maintaining some beneath the surface thrills and desires.

While McCarthy’s video projects seem sort of clunky and amateurish, they also maintain a bizarre jolt that comes from something more than mere weirdness. He and Kelley are plumbing the depths, not for outrageousness alone, but for something that attracts us. I love the idea that art can go to these places, while the Philistines miss the entire point of the investigation.

Coincidentally, I happened to be watching a documentary about Christo and Jeanne Claude’s Gates Project in New York’s Central Park last night. In a much tamer way, the Gates was meant to challenge how we see the world by doing something that on the surface appeared to make no sense. While not exactly transgressive art, the principles are similar; shake people up to see the world in a new way. Maybe we’re missing something, perhaps we need to look in different corners and from new perspectives.

Gaskell’s photographs delve into the familiar territory of Alice for the same reason we have spent so much time there ourselves. There is something very strange going on here beneath the surface that moves us, and it is something that we do not completely understand. Goicolea’s uncomfortable-cloned-adolescent-male-sexuality-and-scatology ventures into similarly disruptive territory. What is it about childhood, adolescence, sexuality and transgression that provide such a draw? Is it simply pointing out the obvious undercurrents of growing up that we try to hide and forget?

Each of these artists would likely agree that childhood and adolescence are the perfect territory to explore transgression and sexuality and darkness and things going on beneath the surface. Do we want Pinocchio tamed or do we want him to stay out of control? Do we long for the simple purity of Heidi because we long to go back to childhood or because we long to have sex with her? These questions are obviously at the heart of our class investigation, and the view is murky. It’s like Jack Nicholson screaming, “You can’t handle the truth!” Maybe not, but much is happening here. Youth is an in-process time of messy incompletion, and it moves us.

Back to more mainstream popular culture, I can’t help but mention David Lynch relative to transgression and secrets and hidden worlds. There’s Eraserhead of course and everything else that he’s ever done. But Blue Velvet is a perfect example. From his exposure of the bugs beneath the surface of the grass, to the violent criminality beneath the surface veneer of small town America, to our hero and heroine’s unexpected attraction to violent sadomasochistic behavior – Lynch tells a story and takes us to real places that we don’t typically get to, or wish to, see.

What do the images of McCarthy, Kelley, Gaskell, and Goicolea force me to see about childhood and adolescence? They make me see that all is not purity, innocence and light. They make me see that there is much hidden in our attraction to children in art and popular culture. And they show me that transgression is necessary for art to challenge the quiet of the status quo.

While there is certainly innocence and purity in our imaging of childhood, there is also much more that is hidden, dark and substantive. This is why the look from Cherry Ripe is and was so entrancing – there is much more here than meets the eye.