Artist's book.
This richly illustrated publication is a selection of hundreds of still
photographs shot during the making of “Rebel Dabble Babble,” a
collaboration between Paul McCarthy and his son Damon McCarthy.
“Rebel Dabble Babble” is a complex installation and video
projection work originally inspired by both Nicholas Ray's 1955 classic
Hollywood film “Rebel Without a Cause” and the furious rumors that swirled
around the off-set relationships between its director and his stars James
Dean, Natalie Wood, and Sal Mineo. This densely layered opus confronts
definitions of power and role-playing, and expands far beyond references to
the 1955 movie and related legends. Ultimately, “Rebel Dabble
Babble” is an expansive meditation upon the archetypes and Oedipal
tensions that define family dynamics as they have been played out in private
homes, in the evolution of art history, and in the development of the
entertainment industry.
In the film, Paul McCarthy and his actors (including Hollywood star James
Franco) play hybrids both of Nick Ray's cinematic characters and the actors
who performed as those characters. With this mind-bending series of doubles,
binaries, and inversions, “Rebel Dabble Babble” presents
perversions of interchangeable roles and fetish relationships.
“Rebel Dabble Babble” includes over 350 full color image and new
texts by
Donatien Grau, Damon McCarthy, and Paul McCarthy.
Paul McCarthy (born 1945 in Salt Lake City, lives and works in Los Angeles) is among
the most important and influential artists of his generation in the US. His
reputation is that of a critical analyst of a mass media and consumer-driven
American society.
Since 2000, Damon McCarthy (born
1973) has collaborated closely with his father
Paul on a number of complex performative video installations, such as
“Caribbean Pirates” (2001-2005), “F-Fort Party”
(2005), “Piccadilly Circus” and “Bunker Basement”
(both 2003). Making use of a provocative formal vocabulary, the McCarthys
have been probing the icons and stereotypes of western culture and its
entertainment industry. In their joint works, Paul usually acts as performer
and director, Damon as cinematographer and editor, however the projects are
conceived and constructed in collaboration.
