Charles Ray unlocks the door of an empty storefront down the street from his studio in one of those neighborhoods in Venice, California, that has no dearth of liquor stores. The large space is empty, save for a young boy playing on the floor with his toy car. When Ray flicks on the lights, it becomes clear that the child is a sculpture, a nude rendered in a smooth alabaster white. The surface detail is spare: gently protruding ribs, some grooves for hair. The boy’s gaze is cast downward toward the car, compelling the viewer to kneel next to him and try—fruitlessly, it turns out—to read the expression on his face. Ray, too, squats down. “I’m really interested in where we are right now—down on the floor,” he says, satisfied. “I think that’s where the artfulness of it is, where you find yourself in front of the work. You know, physically, this brings you to the floor.”
“I used my genitalia—that’s not important,” he says. “People make a big deal out of that. But you know, should I ask my assistant if I can use his?”
More than five years in the making, The New Beetle, which was originally sculpted in clay by a crew of assistants and then cast in stainless steel and painted white, is the latest piece by the enigmatic artist to take childhood as its ostensible subject. In 1992 there was the six-foot-tall Boy, an overgrown youngster in shorts, suspenders, knee socks and effeminate T-strap shoes, who looked like a slightly sinister version of the Bob’s Big Boy mascot or a future inductee into the Hitler Youth, and in 1993 came Family Romance, a family of four that’s nuclear in more ways than one, with the young children mutated to the size of their parents. The heavy psychological implications are apparent to just about everyone—except Ray. He would rather talk about “sculptural space.” Critics and curators, he complains, have paid far too much attention to his psyche, focusing on biographical details, like the fact that he got shipped off to a military academy for high school. “Work is rich,” he says. “It can be looked at psychologically or philosophically or personally. The interpretive nature of work is different than the work itself. The interpretation of work isn’t the key to understanding it. I’m worried about making a good sculpture. I’m not so worried about the interpretation of it.”
Ray’s concerns with making The New Beetle revolved around “the juncture between the hand and the car” and making the car more detailed while keeping the boy more “virtual,” or abstract. Asked about the realism of the ribs, Ray (who is childless) opens the door just a crack: “Kids have such strange bodies. Different parts are growing, and you know, they have weird lumps and bumps and things that are normal.”
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