Carroll Dunham
Since the 1980s Carroll Dunham has established himself as a prominent painter in the contemporary art market, currently being represented by major galleries such as Gladstone in New York City. Dunham is known for portraying his subjects with aspects of surrealism, pop, abstract expressionism, and even graffiti to convey sexually and psychologically charged narratives.
In this work, Hat on Shoulder, 2002, Dunham plays upon a recurring theme in his works, a tophat-wearing, phallus-nosed character, named Mr. Nobody, who wanders throughout many works from this period. Mr. Nobody seems enclosed within these realities, trapped in the paint. Is he just a man or a psychological plea for survival? In Hat on Shoulder, Mr. Nobody appears to have taken his hat off, almost to allude to a sense of defeat.
Purchased from the 2005 Student Union buying trip, James Morrill, a student on the trip, shares that while this work was relatively rare for the period being composed in black and white, it took up a lot of their budget being a secondary market piece. He recalls that while a debated purchase, it ultimately paid off. I am intrigued by this work because of the perplexing figural forms made possible by the various abstractions. This work allows the viewer to think deeply about what they want to see versus what they actually see.
Lilly Reed '23
Carroll Dunham’s bold geometric lines in contrast with organic shapes evoke a kind of abstract, cartoonish surrealism that’s reminiscent of both Salvador Dali and Keith Haring with unique sexual undertones. The phallic nose commonly represented in Dunham’s work– whether the viewer recognizes it as such or not– reveals our psychological tendency to read familiar symbols into ambiguous figures, and as Freud would argue, provides an outlet for the expression of repressed sexual drives. The ambiguity of abstraction provides a viewer with a “window,” represented in the work, into the nature of his or her own mind and the unconscious realms of the psyche, revealed through his or her own interpretation. Even leaving behind psychoanalytic theory for a more modern interpretation of Dunham against a psycho-sexual backdrop, his frequent employment of phallic and vaginal figures may be the subconscious suspect to his success. With evolutionary theory backing the concept that sexual reproduction as the main driving force behind nearly all human behavior, even vaguely sexual representations that don’t intend to be arousing like the one here may draw the viewer in and pique interest. Dunham toys with the dichotomies of the familiar against the unfamiliar, biology with geometry, and the conscious with the unconscious to provide a space through which we can investigate our own minds.
Kylie Yorke '23, Psychology Major
Since 2000 Carroll Dunham’s art has included a mixture of abstract, figural, sexual, and surreal features. Some are subtle and puzzling. Others include imagery no more subtle than the scrotum that passes for Peter Griffin’s chin on “Family Guy.” In 2001 a critic described Dunham as interested in the human personality “stripped of moderation and repression.” In that sense, his work is reminiscent of the art of Robert Crumb. Both present overtly sexual themes with little concern about shocking the viewer. Freud might argue that both are saying, “This came from my id. Take it or leave it.” Hat on Shoulder is from a period in which Dunham included cartoonish penises and scrotums as characters’ noses and upper lips. In this painting that scrotal feature can be seen on the lower right. When I first saw the painting I was looking for the “hat” and the “shoulder.” To the left center is an object that could be Lincoln’s stovepipe hat. When I stepped back and took a wider view, I seemed to see a man sitting on a toilet, with a small round window in the upper right. For me it was hard to appreciate Dunham’s mix of humor and “in your face” sexual expression without seeing a dozen or so more works that he produced during this period. His more recent works appear more openly sexual, less comic or ironic.
Phillip Batten, Ph.D., Psychology Department
Mark H. Reece Collection of Student-Acquired Contemporary Art, CU1993.4.1
Reproduced with permission of the artist.