Challenging Innocence

The subject matter for this week is pulled together rather nicely under the title of “challenging innocence” as is it clearly the intent of McCarthy, Gaskell, and Goicolea to shatter our notions of iconic childhood innocence.  As Di Pietrantonio describes it, these artists all embrace the “overlapping of author with reader or viewer.  The acknowledgement that the production of meaning lies with both…” (Di Pietrantonio, pg. 90).  By blurring the line between the teller of the tale and the audience, the work of these three artists allows for our mind to roam and to become a creative force all its own.  This freedom to roam is the intentional consequence of their work.  In fact, it should be noted that McCarthy’s deconstruction of Disney like images such as Heidi, are intentionally vague, or intentionally explicit, in an effort to shake the mind loose of presumptions or comfortable sterility.

 

Di Pietrantonio goes on to write that we are comfortable with Disney imagery that might otherwise be awkward or threatening because of the scrubbed down nature of their story telling and characters.  However, when artists like Anna Gaskell and Paul McCarthy remove that cleanliness and place these characters in situations that allow for implied meaning or disconnected story lines – such as Gaskell’s ambiguous images of Alice – we become uncomfortable with what is left unsaid, or more specifically, what might be said only within our mind.  Likewise, as we search for meaning or causality in the photography of Anthony Goicolea, we find ourselves drawing conclusions that shatter the illusion of innocence within childhood play and pretend, and replace them with storylines and assumptions that leave us confused and perhaps threatened by these devious little boys.

Ultimately though, this could be the very response these artists are hoping to elicit from their audiences.  As we are forced further and further away from our socialized or inherited beliefs about children, the roles they play, and their very innocence, we begin to gain perspective into the human condition and the very way we have come to create, embrace, and perpetuate identity.  Di Pietrantonio is once again on the mark with his assertion that Paul McCarthy’s refiguring of the tale of Pinnochio provides a new and perhaps more illuminating perspective of our culture at the turn of the century, a time when “identity is as fractured as the truth” (pg. 97).  By creating imagery that pushes our minds beyond what is comfortable or predictable, McCarthy, Gaskell and Goicolea force us to answer difficult and threatening questions, while striving to tap some deeper truths about identity, culture and values.  In the end though, we find ourselves with more questions than answers…