first a word on my trip. it began with two opposing omens which seemed to cancel one another out. 1) i’d forgotten to strap on the ol’ timepiece. worst mistake a public transport reliant traveller can make and still continue in his travels. trying to catch a bus somewhere across town without a watch? bad omen. 2) it’d been raining heavily all day. when i hustled out of the house in a mad rush, buttoned up, hat on head, the rain simply stopped. the streets were soaked, a singularly beautiful state for new york’s grid, and though the sky remained heavy with low, fast moving, clouds, the light was amazing. that certain light that is so hard to capture on film: two notches brighter than dusk and two notches darker than dawn. it seemed the perfect weather for visiting a bayman’s island to see the art of a bayman’s son, grandson, and great grandson. good omen. now fast forward…
the instillation is a large, self contained, room built in the center of the parrish’s transept gallery. the entire exterior, with the exception of the entries at each end, is completely covered in huge leafy swaths of neoprene camouflage netting. in an ideal world this sight would be happened upon it’s it’s native habitat rather than in the center of a pristine museum. you can imagine walking through some far flung marshlands on a rainy evening and happening upon this shrouded structure, noticing it only because of some flickering firelight escaping from within. even in a gallery setting the netting and positioning of the doors away from your approach do a good job of suggesting this. you are afforded a few moments on the mysterious outside to wonder what might be contained inside.
creeping to the doorway you’d peer in to see a warm, luxuriant, victorian style room, furnished in deep reds and rich dark woods. your first look would reveal the buck heads adorning the walls, the bird carvings lining the shelves, the hoof-footed lamps, the chairs made of horns and covered in skins, the garbage can made of an elephant foot, the tusks flanking the opposite entrance. you’d be surprise to say the least. “what is this place? some kind of hunting lodge in the middle of nowhere?” a discovery which would otherwise feel off-putting and creepy might, because of the warmth and richness of the interior, circumvent your better judgment and manifest as a fascinated curiosity. further inspection, however, would almost certainly reveal the more appropriate reaction to be fear.
where as i think people are willing to make concessions for ostentatious celebrations of violence the open fetishistic sexualizing of that violence is a a different matter entirely. you see, in the trophy room, in amongst the classic trophies of the hunters sport are mingled trophies of a different sort. bucks, arctic terns, and ducks reveal themselves to be fitted with snug, zippered, black leather and rubber fetish gear, only their eyes, or points, or tails uncovered. a group of swans to each side of the fireplace have had their bodies below the neck replaced with antique bedpans. in the corner a dove sits on a branch piercing through the side of an oversized black leather go-go boot. on the wall a long rubber covered goose neck attached to a harness creates a strap-on of sorts. the tusks flanking the doorways are studded with pearly knobs like some huge textured dildo and smaller dildos made of bird necks, one double headed, dot the room. what on first glance appears to be wallpaper with a decorative scrolling motif turns out to be an endless intertwining mass of erect penises and spreading vaginas, a motif mimicked in the black eel pots to either side of the hearth. in short the trophy room is the hideaway of a guy who not only hunts with a metaphorical hard on for power, but with a literal one, and tingling balls as well i’d venture to guess.
in any case, a gallery is not a place for suspension of disbelief. you are not encouraged to feel that what is on display is real, but rather the opposite, that the thing it is better than real, beyond real, above real, or in the vernacular, that it is art. the setting tips the scale in favor of a theodore roosevelt vibe, rather than a leatherface / tin-death-shack in the woods vibe. seeing the trophy room at the parrish wouldn’t creep you out the way it might if you really happened upon it. you are free therefore to set aside the obvious and base appraisal, as i’ve laid it out, sip some wine, and delve deeper into the many layers of meaning, symbolism, and historical context of the work. i am no art critic, so i’ll leave that sort of thing to the professionals.
from Alicia G. Longwell:
At the turn of the twentieth century, a now widely-recognized social phenomenon called the feminization of America culture caused men to make a hasty retreat from the parlor to establish a private domain elsewhere in the household. The ascendancy of women in the public spheres of politics and the arts became such a hot-button issue that President Theodore Roosevelt himself was compelled to publicly advocate for the vigorous, outdoor life necessary to preserve the male of the species. The trappings of the big game hunter filled the Trophy Room at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt’s estate in Oyster Bay on Long Island’s North Shore. Closer to home, Standard Oil heir H.H. Rogers built a hunting lodge in Southampton, calling it the “Port of Missing Men” after the title of the popular 1907 novel.
It would take the finely-tuned sensibilities of a young sculptor named Michael Combs to sense the currency of this phenomenon at the turn of the most recent century. Rather than perceiving the divide between the sexes, Combs finds the fault line elsewhere. An artist who lives and works both on Long Island’s North Fork and in New York City, he comes from a long line of boat builders, decoy makers, fisherman and market gunners who for generations made their living on the Great South Bay. In his artistic practice, Combs investigates the quintessentially masculine pursuits of his forebears as well as the 21st-century hunter’s preoccupation less with the capture and the kill and more with the paraphernalia of hunting. No longer a divide along gender lines, Combs’s Trophy Room symbolizes the realm where the hunter and the hunted now converge and where the aggression and acquisitiveness that fuels much of our 21st-century social, political and environmental discourse is played out.
You are invited to enter The Trophy Room. The artist’s wry take on prim Victorian wallpaper deftly sets the tone. Combining historic decoys from his family collection with the stuffed heads and horn and hide furniture that are the literal trappings of the big game hunter, Combs further colonizes the room with his own carved and painted sculptures, objects that at first glance read as decoys or trophies, but on closer regard reveal their poignant and multivalent meanings.
that’s all true enough i suppose. certainly rolls off the tongue. i tend to think of it in far less flowery terms. less “hasty retreat from the feminization of america” and more “glorying in death and power to the point of fetish.” less “poignant and multivalent meanings” as “my cock is soooo huge.” but then, as stated, i’m no art critic. at the opening both the curator and mike himself gave talks. many questions were asked which poked around the sexual overtones of the room, the implications of worshiping violence. everyone involved danced elegantly around the issue, letting it be an implication, something soft to tease rather than something hard and explicit. it was both admirable to see it handled so deftly and somewhat amusing. i kept waiting for someone to just blurt out, “hey, listen, a real sick, dangerous, motherfucker hangs out in this room, sits on this couch surrounded by his freaky taxidermic sex toys. it may be made explicit for arts sake, but this is not totally fiction. people really do revel in this shit, people love violence, love macho trophies, and love waving both their guns and their dicks around! watch out!”
anyhow, from a strictly aesthetic standpoint the room and the objects inside are fantastic. i think artistically this instillation represents a real leap forward for mike combs. it breaks away both stylistically and conceptually from his roots in decoy and decorative bird carving, and propels the work into a more exciting place. it’s a road he’s been moving down since i first saw his work, step by step, but i feel with the trophy room he’s finally made it out of the woods. the work is riskier, more dramatic, and better honed conceptually. it seems almost as if, in collecting together all the elements for it, the room is at once a loving homage to the historical forces which formed him and a statement of his intention to take control of them and steer them in a new direction. mainly, and most importantly, the work is beautiful.
if you happen to be in the hamptons before may 15th go check it out. as for me, after a nice dinner of charred meats with some of the folks involved i managed to avoid any more bus trips and snag a ride home with a yale masters program architect with whom i shot the shit at length about art, religion, and our nonist ideals… all in all a good time. if you’d like to learn more about mike and see some of his work, as well as his families work, check out his site, and the combs decoy museum site. i gotta run and wrap a few bunnies i just murdered in latex. toodle-oo.
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Subtle wall paper.
Subtle? the word I was thinking was ‘bonerific.’ This reminds me of the anecdote I read somewhere about a bored deer hunter having a wank in his blind, and returning the following weekend to find it utterly trampled. Seems the pheromones were some sort of biochemical ‘wanna piece of me?’ as far as the bucks were concerned.
I also recall a National Lampoon piece about hunters who ambushed and raped their game, with ill-lust-rations (I simply love the way that word trifurcates, don’t you?) It’s all so dahmeresque. Or ghraibish. Or skullandbonic.
At least the ducks don’t have mustaches and wigs.
sculptor michael combs has a new show up at the parrish art museum in southampton, a site specific instillation, called the trophy room. the museum blurbs the show on their own site this way: “combs focuses on the ultimate male retreat, the “trophy room,” where masculinity, aggression, and acquisitiveness converge in a compelling commentary on social and environmental concerns.” that’s all true, if a bit antiseptic and coy. i made the trip out to southampton a couple of weeks ago to see this temple to masculinity for myself. no small feat if you know me.
