Paul McCarthy’s sculpture “Tree” (it’s supposed to be a Christmas tree) in the Place Vendôme in Paris was inspired by a sex toy, according to the “artist,” who is famous for acts of Marxist pornographic obscenity and who isn’t an artist at all but a well-funded public vandal. Many hate the sculpture and someone cut the cables yesterday. It’s hard to believe that the controversy wasn’t expected by those who commissioned the work and that they don’t even welcome the controversy. One doesn’t commission, or give a permit for, a Paul McCarthy sculpture unless one wants to be provocative and express chic nihilism. Supposedly, the “sculpture” will be re-inflated.

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Hurricane Betsy writes:

From a European newspaper:

“This inflatable “Christmas tree” erected in Paris is making passers-by feel a little uncomfortable.

The 80ft-high object is raising eyebrows because of its uncanny resemblance to a sex toy, but is actually an installation by American artist Paul McCarthy.”

By the sounds of things, a lot of people/passersby are familiar with this object. I never saw such a device in my life. If ever I felt any urges to purchase socalled sextoys, I would kill myself in shame. Just for having the feeling.

The world, or much of it, is beyond saving, when the “common man” walks past that green installation and right away knows what it is.

 Laura writes:

Good point.

Dan R. writes:

Hopefully this will prove to be a bit over the top for those Parisian fans of enlightened sex. I’m reminded of the reactions to photos of abortions, where ardent supporters of “the right to choose” loudly proclaim their distaste for graphic depictions. As noted on TTH early last year, Gertrude Stein, ironically, had it right.

Buck writes:

I am so glad that the image in the entry below is no longer atop the page.

“Inspired” by a tree or a sex toy? All but the most mundane definitions of “inspired” posit a transcendence of some kind, something extraordinary and external, often deemed supernatural and sometimes divine.

Paul McCarthy is said to have told Le Monde that his work entitled Tree had been inspired both by a sex toy and a Christmas tree, and that Tree was an “abstract work” rooted in a joke about a sex toy. He’s obsessed with anal toys.

McCarthy is “inspired” to degrade. His “art” transcends nothing,certainly not the bio-mechanical sack of meat containing his brain. He’s a sexual pervert. Claims that he claims to be more a clown than a shaman, and claims that some of his “art” means to undermine “the myth of artistic greatness” and to attack “the perception of the heroic male artist” is a load of one his favorite substances.

It seems to me that everything that he does is purely, obsessively material. His Tree/butt plug is an engineering/manufacturing task. There is nothing artistic about it. He borrowed the shape and the color. What exactly is his art? Why do people support this stuff? What exactly, does it “inspire” them to think about?

Laura writes:

It doesn’t inspire them; it thrills them.

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