'Daddie’s Bighead, Paul McCarthy 2003

            v'Blockhead Sculpture' and 'Daddies Bighead’ are inflatable sculptures. ‘Daddies Bighead’ is based on a ketchup bottle. Ketchup is a pivotal motif through all of McCarthy's work. He uses ketchup in his performances and installations along with mayonnaise and chocolate as stand-ins for bodily fluids and excretions. These grocery staples of domestic family life are transformed in McCarthy, born 1945, represent a Western World of violence, perverted sex and defecation to show the shallowness and duplicity of our image of happiness based on the all-pervasive Western media entertainment and consumer constructed conventions. His work distorts and mutates the familiar into the disturbing and carnivalesque. 
McCarthy first became known in the 1970s for his visceral performances and film works but during the 1990s he extended his practice into stand alone sculptural figures, installations and a series of large inflatable sculptures. 
‘Blockhead’ is based on the character of Pinocchio, but this popular Disney children's character is mutated into a grotesque form. Its size physically overpowers the viewer, putting the adult at a child’s level, questioning conventional Western World fake constructions. 
The big, somewhat hilarious sculpture, big balloon 'Daddies Bighead', can be seen as a visualization of maleness. Disney Pinocchio character’s innocence is replaced by masses of pink with female breasts and male phalluses. It could easily by the symbol of the general male surfing for his daily dose of porn. It’s an attack on the sugary unrealistic world Disney and other generally accepted mass media represent and which we widely accept.
McCarthy uses gory representations of sexuality to question Western World fake, romanticized view of itself. These works may seem innocent at a first glance, but when you add them to his other works, his messages just may sink in.

   

Taken in: Danmark / Midtjylland / Århus / Århus C (show map)

Taken on: January 28, 2006

Tags:

'Daddie’s Bighead

Paul McCarthy 2003

Buildings

Architecture

Highrises

Skyscrapers

Sculptures

Art Modern

Contemporary, Hanneorla 2003 « less

Sets appears in: • London Modern, set by Hanneorla, 2003

Groups appears in: • Different.

Stats: 2,471 views / 1 comment

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder