The Phallic Wars of Carroll Dunham
by Matthew Bourbon
In discussing the highlights of this exhibition I can’t help but start with the mish-mash paintings of the 1980s. These early works depict worm forms, colored against wood grain. The playful paintings are compendiums of tubular shapes, floating ovals and sweeping lines. They are chock full of painterly and drawing touches, as if Dunham wants to display a form of aesthetic babbling. These essentially formalist paintings are like doodles from an attention-deficit teenager distracted during trigonometry class. Freudian slips occur frequently. Pointless as the paintings may appear, the contrast between crudity and sophistication attaches an unexpected gravity to these works enabling them to feel nostalgic while remaining available to our current polymath tendencies.
Even Dunham’s next series of paintings–the giant intestine works–are interesting via a ridiculous history painting scale and portrait like stature. While not his most dynamic work, these paintings have a clear majesty. They look like Moby Dick turned inside out. Or perhaps they are outlandish portraits of the duke and duchess of excrement. Whatever they are meant to visualize, they clearly continue Dunham’s penchant for scatological associations. As these paintings boldly reflect, Dunham is a humorist playing out his most fabulous notions. Each body of work seems to reveal the comical against another sensibility–ugliness, anxiety or violence. The force of these narrative contradictions is Dunham’s strength. And when he fails… well you can’t really fault him. Even in his most problematic body of work, where he attaches pompoms to the surface of his canvases, one has to admire the bravado of his attempt.
Perhaps the period that really shows Dunham at his best, however, is the phase where he created paintings that depict eyeless protagonists venting their starkest animosities. In this body of work, Dunham makes paintings that are graphic, bitter and laughably cruel. Greedy penis heads and saber wielding man-mutants are caught in a war of instinct. His fiendish characters slice and piss their way through existence. The shit of life becomes the shit of Dunham’s art as the debased and wicked side of humanity is hoisted upon the pedestal for us to "admire." His is a Machiavellian Modernism. Moving away from expected hues, Dunham colors these paintings just short of pretty. They are of shades that should be "tasteful", but Dunham gives them a bit of acrid intensity. His yellows are too yellow. And his purples are just too purple. This subtle alteration makes the paintings exist in a cycle of attraction and repulsion. The uncomfortable seduction produced by the paintings fits well with the psychotic shenanigans that Dunham depicts.
What else should one say about this dizzy grouping of Dunham’s art? In thinking about crafting this review I couldn’t help but notice that whenever anyone writes about Dunham two things always creep into the discussion. One is the use of silly adjectives. The nastiness common to much of Carroll Dunham’s painting elicits painfully creative descriptions. The search for the perfectly suited phrase to describe his painterly forms is taken to absurd heights. In the many catalogue essays accompanying this show one can read such cute descriptions as "miasmic sludge, droopy tubers, hammerhead tumors, protoplasmic figures, barnacle and orifice encrusted shapes and warrior glyphs". The phrases go on. I myself couldn’t avoid the penchant to wax lyrical. I should apologize. It almost does a disservice to Dunham’s art. But maybe the substance of Dunham’s painting resigns one to inane descriptions as a way to tackle the hellish battles that Dunham depicts. Despite the work’s fanciful attitude Dunham may simply hit too close to true. Maybe it’s the inherent humor inside the grotesque play of violence found in his art that makes one want to neuter the darkness with poorly poetic descriptions. Whatever the reason, the proliferation of excessive description doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon.
The other tactic that surfaces when grappling with Dunham’s painting is the necessary outlining of his artistic predecessors. Many have enumerated his artistic kinships: Miro, Gorky, Twombly, Kandinsky, Bosch, Debuffet, Peter Saul, Guston, Matta and Tanguy. The only other connection yet to be listed might be the early, pre-colorfield, Rothko. But, maybe this constant comparison to other artists is also a means to confine the offhanded insanity depicted in his painting. It’s almost as if everyone talks around the central issues of Dunham’s art–namely, the fact that he regularly portrays comical hyper violence and sexual sadism. His characters piss in each other’s mouths as they whip and stab their way to ascendancy. They all seem to be vying for the title "king of the mountain" as they grit their teeth and fire their guns. Dunham’s art seems like a contemporary version of Greek tragedy. If something bad can happen, it invariably will. With the wit of a social commentator and the cold stare of a killer Dunham wonders about our predicament. If we are in a stand off with guns pointed at each other–who wins? His art goes for the jugular as a way to embody the futility found in much of human behavior. This means his art is absurdly serious and, in nearly all cases, fun. This proves a strange, but memorable tonic.
Carroll Dunham Retrospective
October 31, 2002 to February 2, 2003
New Museum of Contemporary Art
