Paul McCarthy

SNOW WHITE AND THE PHALLIC BRONZES
by L. Brandon Krall

Paul McCarthy is our anti-Disney, wrenching timeless folk figures away from the saccharine American visionary and returning them to the dark libidinal forests of their origins. In “The Dwarves, the Forests,” his current show in New York -- which closes on Saturday at Hauser & Wirth on East 69th Street -- McCarthy presents a series of heavy bronze sculptures that are by turns lecherous, horrific and just plain creepy. The “refined” world of Disneyana, McCarthy has said, is an “invention. . . a Shangri-La that is directly connected to a political agenda, a type of prison that you are seduced into visiting.”

...more