Paul McCarthy - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Friday, October 17, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Galerie Hauser & Wirth, Zurich

  • Exhibited

    Stockholm, Moderna Museet, 17 June - 3 September, 2006; Aarhus, ARoS Aarhus Museum of Art, 10 February - 28 May, 2007; Ghent, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.), 12 October, 2007 - 17 February, 2008; Paul McCarthy Head Shop/Shop Head, Works 1966 - 2006 (another from the edition exhibited); Naples, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, People: Volti, Corpi e Signi Contemporanei dalla Collezione di Ernesto Esposito, 29 June - 28 August, 2006

  • Literature

    L. Phillips, Paul McCarthy, New York, 2000, p. 141 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, Head Shop/Shop Head, Works 1966 - 2006, Stockholm, 2006, p. 340 (illustrated); Exhibition catalogue, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, People: Volti, Corpi e Signi Contemporanei dalla Collezione di Ernesto Esposito, Naples, 2006, pp. 90-91 (illustrated) 

  • Catalogue Essay

    The present lot, Bavarian Deer, presents a diversion in aesthetic, subject, and material for Paul McCarthy, we are simply presented with an image of innocence and freedom. An image of a faun, re-appropriated from a postcard found in Bavaria, McCarthy’s Bavarian Deer reveals the nostalgic notions of a rural childhood much like in his later work Black and White Heidi which belongs to a series of ephemeral photographs and collages McCarthy created in 2000.

    “I got interested in their cartoons, comics and then started using their characters. But later in the late eighties and early nineties I turn my focus from Disney’s characters, to Disney Land. And here I am thinking about it as Disney Land, as a sculpture factory. The mechanized figures. A robotic rise with their robotic figures. I was looking at their town-areas and fiberglass objects as sculptures. That whole manifestation of mechanism really got me interested.” (Paul McCarthy quoted in www.kopenhagen.dk 13 February 2007)

    Bavarian Deer presents a rare glimpse into McCarthy’s ability to step back from his work and create a mood that is poignant and withdrawn with simple action of re-presenting a thoroughly recognisable image. This image plays on the idea of frightened innocence, and relies on the memory of the viewer to conjure moments of fear, loneliness, isolation and contrast them with those of the happiness and freedom of childhood.

342

Bavarian Deer

1987-1989
C-print flush mounted on acrylic board in the artist's wooden frame.
283 x 192 x 7.7 cm. (111 1/2 x 75 1/2 x 7 in).
This work is from an edition of three.

Estimate
£60,000 - 80,000 

Sold for £57,650

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

18 Oct 2008, 7pm
London