By this time, the original Nintendo spark had become a relatively minor part of this installation; a seminal moment from which an arc of cultural associations would follow.

The installation consists of four components: the primary painting of Pinocchio/Hanswurst, with the statement “I want to be real…”, the archival digital print from which the painting derives that conversely states that this Pinocchio wants to be “a real boy…”, a hateful love letter in fractured German admonishing the artist/puppet for the obsession with their work, and a series of wax phalluses with Chinese auspicious knots and wiener labels.

The dialogue between the print and the painting components is fairly straightforward, with the print’s adherence to the Disney narrative of Pinocchio’s desire to become a real boy. Perhaps gender in this case may be relevant vis-à-vis the traditional gender roles in folk tales being ascribed to males, and may have some connection to the representative function of the phalluses, but this secondary narrative is more abstracted than the original developmental arc of the work itself. What is probably more relevant is the degree of abstraction from the original print in its representative function between the Disney mythology, the Warholian model of fame, and the traditional role of the Hanswurst/Punch/Pinocchio character in European folk tales.

It may go without saying that the character of Punch may be familiar as the crude, buffoonish character of childhood puppetry, but the origin of nearly all of the folk characters of the clever trickster/hubric clown/brutish buffoon class typified by Punch(inello), (H)Arlequin, and Hanswurst represent the same archetypal character and are derivative of one another. The derivation of the name Pinocchio from Punchinello with the representative similarity of the puppet (of the desires?) is not a great leap of faith. What is interesting is the cultural translation of the Disney Pinocchio character as a model of boyish impetuousness from the much more basic, brutal, or cunning character from 16th-19th Century Europe. However, this is not surprising given the period of Pinocchio’s origin, from a Disney studio interested in the creation of popular mythologies (from the cartoons to the theme parks) with a ‘wholesome’ approach to traditional stories, although many of the Disney classic animated stories are in fact highly dysfunctional in nature.

The letter addressed to the ‘artist’ in this work from an assumed lover, Andrea (Warhola? We don’t know), describes in fractured German her frustrations with her object of ridicule. The text, originally written in English and translated into German through a computer language translation software program, fractures apart into intelligible, but highly incorrect grammar as the English-speaking Andrea tries to communicate with the German archetype of her lover, the artist/buffoon Hanswurst. The obsessions with ‘the work’, reminiscent of stories from Scrooge to Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (Seurat), combine with the desire for attention through artistic outlandishness, as referenced in an interview with Bruce Nauman, combine to build a surreal/Dadaistic portrait of the megalomaniac who resorts to running down people’s dogs in a wheelchair, and calling it art. In the end, even muse Andrea can no longer stand Hanswurst’s abuse, and departs, threatening violence if he tries to contact her again.

While creating this work, the key element of placing this work in the greater context of the Punchinello/Hanswurst historical dialogue was revealed in the form of Bridget Bruckner’s installation in Bremen, Germany, entitled Der Hanswurst, in which a cat named Max (of personal interest as this name reappears repeatedly throughout my career) was painted as a Hanswurst-clown figure and then set loose in the gallery with tens of operating pink electric dildos. Much like Bruckner’s piece, the phallus reiterates the hubris/lack of self-control/self-importance of the male artist, underscored by the Chinese auspicious knots, but is subverted by the comical/clownish adornment of ‘Oskar’ Mayer wiener wrappers, inferring a hysterical need for love and external validation. As the 70’s Oscar Mayer hot dog commercial says, “Then everyone would be in love with me…”, these wrappers underscore the plaintive nature of the artist as buffoon.