The video Painter attacks the myth of the artist-genius, inherited from Romanticism. Paul McCarthy presents an abstract expressionist painter and all the people who gravitate around him, from the collector to the gallery owner and art critics. Dressed in a hospital smock, with a blonde wig, and sporting an enormous parodic nose, part clown, part alcoholic, Paul McCarthy himself plays the role of the Artist. In a sitcom setting, armed with oversized paintbrushes – just like his hands – he makes a painting based on an obscure ritual, in which he confusedly mutters, invoking god and encouraging himself aloud. He thus criticises the doubts of creative artists regarding their work.

This parody of creation also concerns the commercial system surrounding artistic production, which developed in the 1990s. In 1995, Paul McCarthy experienced the economic boom in contemporary art. He sold numerous works and thus attained international renown. The art market's rise was accompanied by a metamorphosis of the artist into a media personality, becoming an actor of the 'art world' and show business. The staging device used in Painter imitates popular American shows and thus prefigures Reality TV, which films its subjects attentively and in which any insignificant detail becomes worthy of interest. It is the false lucidity of the stakeholders of the art market that is mocked here, when we see the artist adulated even when he wears the hospital smock, like a mental patient. By painting with ketchup and mayonnaise, Paul McCarthy makes reference to his own performances. Painter shows Paul McCarthy in a violent act of self-mockery.

Patricia Maincent
Translated by Anna Knight