Tree Trimming

Maybe it's the sleep deprivation, or maybe it's just the phrase "Santa with Butt Plug," but I found this article freaking hilarious! There is someting inherently funny about the idea of being able to look at Santa with a tree slung over his shoulder and see him hauling a butt plug... or vice versa, which again is hella funny. But it is seriously ambiguous. Being made out of chocolate is just a bonus.


…Paul McCarthy, a California-based artist known for his reliably disturbing installations, has converted the Maccarone gallery into a chocolate factory. Peter Paul Chocolates LLC, as he calls the enterprise, will operate through the end of 2007, turning out Santa Claus figurines for the Christmas trade.

Made of premium chocolate from the Guittard company, in California, the ten-inch-high figurines sell for a hundred dollars each...

The Santa figurine, whose title is “Santa with Tree and Bell,” is innocuous enough at first glance. We see the large, friendly bell, held in front of him, and the Christmas tree, hoisted on his right shoulder—or is it a Christmas tree? It’s treelike, in an abstract sort of way.

But one is also aware that, a few years back, McCarthy created a twenty-five-foot-high bronze for the city of Rotterdam that he called “Santa with Butt Plug.” Sexual imagery, not always benign, has figured in a good deal of his work. (His 1992 sculptural installation “The Garden” cast an entirely new light on tree-hugging.)

“I’ve made a number of pieces about the butt plug,” he conceded. “I like that it looks like a Christmas tree, and also like a Brancusi, or an Arp. As an artist, you look for things that have multiple meanings.”

Read the whole article here.

I keep picturing a little old granny unwittingly purchasing these tasty chocolate treats as a Christmas surprise for her grandkids. Eww. (I find relief in knowing these are $100 a pop, so that scenario is doubtful. Phew!)

xoxo

-J.D. Bauchery
http://www.hotmoviesforher.com/