

Meat Paul Thek
Gallery Exhibition
Paul Thek, Meat Piece with Warhol Brillo Box, 1965, wax, painted wood, Plexiglas, 14 x 17 x 17". From the series “Technological Reliquaries,” 1964–67
"Telling stories is about the ability to understand empathy."
- filmmaker Xavier Box
Words by Ariel Maccarone
August 31, 2018
If only we could remember that we are meat and bone. If only we did not forget that life's esoteric concepts apply to us just as we think they apply to others.
If only we knew our shelf life. Do y
is as real a thing as the phone you're holding. I wonder. Would we be kinder to one another? that we come complete with a shelf life. Perhaps we would begin to see ourselves in everything, and how much more deeply we might live. The Hammer Museum’s exhibit, “Paul Thek: Diver, a Retrospective” echoes this sentiment with its “meat pieces” collection (1963-1967).
The pieces are realistic sculptures of dismembered corpses––arms, legs, ribs, bones. Made of wire-mesh cores, the pieces are covered in bees wax, colored oil, glass beads and other material. The pieces look like butchered meat to an unsettling degree. Marinating, juicy, blood and fat spilling over bone. What is perhaps e ven more unsettling is that they look, somewhat, enticing - in the way a devout carnivore by view a slab of meat. Is this an innate feeling? I would say I am, more often than not, a vegetarian. And yet even I feel this bizarre
What is especially striking is that Thek's insistence on never clarifying whether the meat is human or animal, whether we are viewing a beautiful cut of beef or a human limb. Perhaps what is most disturbing is that regardless of the answer, the pieces are still beautiful.
The collection was inspired by Thek’s trip to the catacombs in Sicily. “It delighted me that bodies could be used to decorate a room like flowers,” said Thek in a 1966 interview. Thek confronts the traditional view of the body as burden. We are forced to consider whether our struggle for survival is really as beautiful as the stories we tell ourselves about the meaning of life.)
The exhibition begins with a sterile-looking rectangular room that nears fifty square feet. Three out of the four walls are an immaculate white, save the uniform, horizontal string of black and white photographs; Brassaï’s photographs. The place and time of Brassaï’s images is a slowly disappearing 1930’s Paris coping with the cultural changes of an impending World War II. Similar to Riis and Hine, Brassaï tells the story of a specific population rather humanity as a whole; a population that Tattersall calls “the nocturnal denizens of Paris” (Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, 2017).
More than the work of Arbus and Goldin, Brassaï’s photographs construct a language for the city itself. The majority of his photographs typically feature more than one person and dedicate more space in the frame to the surrounding environment. In order to understand the entirety of a single photograph, one must scan the photo from left to right, top to bottom, and do so again and again. Gradually a narrative develops. A string of mundane, but very personal details weave themselves into a cohesive whole.
The photographs of Arbus and Goldin more extensively explore the “singularity of individuals” (Wall Text, Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin, 2018). The small size of the photographs–ranging from 12" x 32" to 23" x 32”–cause them to be dwarfed and consumed by walls’ surrounding empty space. One must approach the wall–standing at least three feet from it–in order to make out the specific details that add the intimacy these photographs are known for. The coerced approach is a function of the exhibition's thoughtful spacial design. Nearing the wall at such an intimate distance requires a kind of humility from the viewer. One must accommodate the photographed–move further into their world–in order to know them.
Walker Evans once praised the camera as being “[that] great, incredible instrument of symbolic actuality…” (Kronenberg and Lee, 169-210). Evans further contended that photographic art is something which arises from the “unobtrusive technical mastery” of the camera as a tool to document the external with fidelity (Kronenberg and Lee, 169-210). Contrary to Evans, Arbus and Goldin subjugate the camera, molding it into an intimate extension of themselves.
At first glance, Arbus’s room seems to be a reverential testament to the cult of the Other: an army of freaks, the unsavory, the unwanted, all those whose power is not recognized or valued by the mainstream. Upon closer examination, however, one might consider that perhaps Arbus relates to the camera not merely as a vehicle for voices of others, but also as a way to meet the Other within herself. In this way, the camera evolves as would a limb, becoming an intimate extension of its owner. Arbus’s work addresses the “singularity of individuals” (Wall Text, Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin, 2018), whether that individual be herself or others. This dynamic is achieved by–among other methods–dedicating most of the frame’s space to the individual. The result is an almost mystifying and romanticized outcast archetype.
The exhibition concludes itself in a smaller room dedicated to Goldin's photographs leading to an intimate room secluded by a wine red curtain reminiscent of a vintage movie theater. Occupying the center of exhibition's smallest room are rows of couches for viewers to sit while watching a slide installation by Goldin. The room plays “a digital presentation of Goldin’s original 35mm slide installation The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1983-2008)….[The slide installation allows] viewers to experience the artist’s photographs as both static and moving images” (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2017). The couches, too, align with the exhibition theme. They serve as subtle invitations for viewers to–figuratively and literally–share space with strangers. Seating is not compulsive. Viewers can opt to stand against the walls and experience the instillation more privately, or even indulge as would a voyeur and witness the reactions of surrounding viewers in the darkened room.
“I feel very strongly that every artist has one central story to tell. The struggle is to tell and retell that story over and over again, in visual form, and try to challenge that story. But at the core that story remains the same. It's like the defining story of who you are” (Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, 2012). Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin gives voice to the dichotomous nature of truth, reality, and identity, and does so during a time in global history when we may have taken those very things for granted.
Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin is on view until Monday, September 3, 2018 at The Museum of Contemporary Art's Grand Avenue location
(250 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, 90012).
Members: Free
General Admission (valid all day at both DTLA locations): $15
Students with I.D.: $8
Seniors (65+): $10
Children under 12: Free
Jurors with I.D.: Free
Mon 11am-6pm
Tues Closed
Wed 11am-6pm
Thurs 11am-8pm (Free admission 5-8pm every Thurs)
Fri 11am-6pm
Sat 11am-5pm
Sun 11am-5pm

Ariel Maccarone is a Los Angeles-based author, musician ("Black Mouth"), and artist. She has been published in Boston Poetry Magazine, Argentina-based art magazine Apapacho Gallery, and FOTO MOFO Photography Magazine, where she was also Assistant Editor. She has also worked as a freelance social media consultant for clients such as Red Bull and PEN Center sponsored publishing house Unnamed Press. Ariel still handwrites letters to her first grade teacher, Miss Phyllis, who taught her how to write.
She can be found wandering the Santa Monica mountains with an overpriced cup of coffee and hiking shoes that have not been broken in. You can find more of her writing, music, and artwork at ARIELMACC.com.
Article References
1. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) Presents Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin. Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, 19 Dec. 2017. Web.
4. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. Zeitgeist Films, 2012. Shapiro, Ben, director