You may have guessed from my posts here that I’m not easily offended, especially when it comes to art. I try to maintain an open mind when it comes to creative expression, to move into the thought processes of the artist, and carry a very welcoming definition of art in general.
So I’m unsettled by the very fact that I’m unsettled by a recent sculpture, entitled ‘Lucy Exposed’, by pop surrealism superstar Ron English. I can enjoy the hypersexualized, vagina-centric sculptures of Murakami’s robot-nymphs and anime-styled lassos of ejaculate, but keep the kids out of it.
‘Lucy Exposed’ is the second work in a series which depicts surrealist mutations of characters from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip. The first sculpture in this set is a truly awesome piece called ‘Grin’, which imagines a Charlie Brown with lips that are slowly peeling away from a very real, creepy skull that lies underneath. It’s an interesting approach to addressing the secret life of Charles Schultz, and even if that wasn’t the intention of English, it looks very cool. Most of the work created by English relies heavily on uncomfortable re-imaginings of recognizable icons, though a fat Ronald McDonald isn’t that large of an intellectual leap.
For the second work in his Peanuts-centric series, English has focused on the blatant sexualization of Lucy Van Pelt, a cartoon character meant to be perpetually eight years old. I have to question the nigh-inscrutable motivation of Ron English when he straps an enormous bra onto Lucy which presents a double-entendre in the form of a pair of Snoopy heads, complete with pronounced nose-nipples, and backs the whole thing up with a disappearing thong.
The figure itself is completely self-referential, since one of English’s most recognizable images is a painting of Marilyn Monroe with Mickey Mouse heads for breasts - another stab at the commercialization of just about everything.
I’m definitely not saying that ‘Lucy Exposed’ is not art. Anyone familiar with the weird world of action figures knows that far stranger toys have stumbled out of the tentacle rape and complex rope bondage of Japan. I’m missing the point where this work is either clever, visually appealing, or addressing things which need to be addressed with art, because art for the sake of being subversive and controversial without positive intent is simply destruction - and I’d like to think that English is smarter than that. If I were to make an unrealistic leap through unlikely interpretations of Lucy, I might suppose that English is talking about the weird sexualization that pop culture is supplanting on teen pop stars and the girls who slowly coalesce out of the Disney Starlet Mills into nude-photo-sexting whorelets - but I’m not completely convinced that this work is that self-aware.
I can’t say that I’m "outraged," because outrage is a waste of time when I could happily be playing Low-G-Man - but ultimately, I’m disappointed that every time I log onto my favorite toy websites, this work is displayed as if it’s not really a young child with huge, nipply torpedo breasts. Are we so desensitized to this type of thing that it has become acceptable?
Where does the line between art and profanity get drawn, and who draws it?
