PARIS, France—The French are wondering, if you have an 80-foot tall butt plug, how large is the bidet that belongs to its owner? It's not exactly a philosophical question. Such a butt plug is currently on public display at Place Vendôme in Paris, courtesy of artist Paul McCarthy.
As HuffPo notes, however, the giant green monster is really an artistic rendering of something that grows in forests. "Of course, the massive sculpture isn't technically a butt plug," they report. "It's a Christmas tree, simply dubbed 'Tree,' that's made its way to Place Vendôme in Paris. The piece is part of the International Contemporary Art Fair (FIAC)... and is showing in conjunction with McCarthy's first solo show in France—'Chocolate Factory.'" But is it real chocolate?
Not everyone is pleased as punch with the "tree." As HuffPo adds, "Yet despite all the seemingly obvious signs—it's art, McCarthy's an artist, FIAC is an art fair—the inflatable masterpiece is attracting attention not for its aesthetic uniqueness but for its resemblance to sex toys. In fact, France's far-right is not convinced the 24-meter high plant is an objet d'art at all."
One such objector, Printemps Français, tweeted, "'Anal plug or tree' Place Vendôme is disfigured... Paris is humiliated!"
A few others are equally outraged, but as Jennifer Flay, artistic director of FIAC, told Le Monde, tough merde!
"Of course this work is controversial," she actually said. "It plays on the ambiguity between a Christmas tree and a plug: this is neither a surprise nor a secret. But there is no offense against the public and enough ambiguity to not disturb the children. This work has also received all necessary approvals: the Prefecture of Police, the Mayor of Paris and the Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the Comité Vendôme... What is art [meant to do] if not to disturb, to prompt questions, to reveal flaws in the company?"
Vive la France!
UPDATE
Turns out some French people really hated the "tree," and this weekend cut the support lines holding it up. Per The Guardian, "Cables supporting the 24-metre green piece by US artist Paul McCarthy – which he said was inspired by a Christmas tree and a butt plug – were cut on Saturday, leaving the artwork slumped on the pavement in the Place Vendôme and forcing a security guard to deflate it, police said."
The attack was apparently coordinated. "An official from the FIAC contemporary art fair, which put on the exhibition, said the offenders had first unplugged the pump that kept the structure standing up," reported the paper, which added that fair organizers said the art piece would be put back up as soon as possible.
Some people see the attack as an inevitable outcome of artist McCarthy's illinformed impressions of the French. Over at the conservative TownHall.com, American ex-pat Rachel Marsden complains, "As a North American native and conservative who has lived in Paris for nearly six years, I've remarked that the biggest stereotypes about the French are that they're culturally suicidal, sexually depraved, antiwar leftists."
She adds, "While this 'art' might earn a chuckle in the U.S. if it were inflated on Venice Beach, Place Vendome is not in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Imagine if some French citizen were to stick a massive sex toy beside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. That would be a closer cultural approximation. Place Vendome is home to the Vendome Column, a monument commissioned by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte to commemorate the defeat of the Holy Roman Empire in the Battle of Austerlitz.
"McCarthy, whose previous 'art' has included an inflatable 'number two' that appeared in Hong Kong and a sculpture depicting former U.S. President George W. Bush engaged in a sex act with pigs, said he figured the French would be more sexually liberated and was surprised by the violent reaction," she continues. "Apparently he never asked himself: 'How might the French view a foreigner placing a giant sex object next to a national monument reflecting their historical military sacrifice and glory?' Instead, in concocting this project, it appears that he went straight to lowest-common-denominator rationale: 'The French like sex.'"
She may have a point, though it's unfortunate that she has to frame it so ideologically and unforgivingly; for instance, when she blames McCarthy for failing "to take his thinking one step further and consider the consequences of its placement next to a monument of great national significance." But to be fair (which Marsden is not), can McCarthy, a Los Angeles-based artist, really be blamed for the placement of pieces by the FIAC art fair organizers, who are French?
Marsden says of McCarthy's effort at PLace Vendome, "It all proved to be a gross miscalculation by the artist about French people and culture," but maybe, in truth, it was a slight, rather than gross miscalculation, exposing a rift in French culture that even some Franch people are interested in exploring publicly.
