Dead Dad By Ron Mueck 1996-7 Silicone And Acrylic

"With unfailingly strict attention to detail, perspective and scale," ( Rosenthal et al; 1998; 203) Ron Mueck, is perhaps the most academically trained of all the YBA's. Mueck originally started work as a puppeteer and puppet maker, and eventually ended up working for Jim Henson on classical children's shows, such as Sesame street and renowned films including Labyrith. After which he went on to found his own business creating hyperrealism props for television companies, and it was only after then in 1995, when Mueck created 'little boy/ Pinocchio' for the painter Paula Rego that he decided to immerse himself in the world of art. When a close relative dies, grief immediately surrounds the person, smothering them in a dark, duvet of death and despair. The last thing on the person's mind would be creating an identical replica of the deceased bare, naked body. However for Mueck, this was his immediate reaction to commemorate his father's death. Mueck was not with his father when death came and took him, which may have given Mueck a more detached outlook on his father's body- he had not witnessed the transition from life to death, so he was simple studying a body. Not his fathers, as his father would remain in Mueck's head as he had been the last time Mueck saw him alive and well. Nothing escaped Mueck's scrutinising eyes. Every wrinkle, every strand of pubic hair has been captured and translated in a mechanical manner onto the doll-sized Dead dad. Mueck has not idealised his father in any way, he is almost presenting his father to the viewer as a butcher would do a piece of prize meat. No emotion is evident in dead dad, however despite the clinical detachment the viewer is presented with, the haunting aspect of being immortalised in the size of a child's toy. Dead Dad measures a mere 20x102x38 cm, and is cast in silicone and acrylic. The juxtaposition of such synthetic materials and the most natural state a person can be in create a tension which is ineffable. The sizing of dead dad creates an almost lost feeling in the viewer; it gives the impression that Mueck is trying to fight the decay of childhood memories of his father, and capture them in synthetic material which will last for hundreds of years and will never face the destroying transition between life and death. By manipulating the scale of Dead Dad, Mueck also allows the viewer to look objectively at what once was a father, living and breathing, but now a sad, almost pitiful sight presented on a table. It displays the hollowness of death- the way that only a shell remains and any semantics have been carelessly thrown from the corpse. Despite the ridged, rigour mortis positioning of dead dad, the flaccid penis and the tilting of the head add a freeze-frame quality to the sculpture. Evidently it must have been challenging for Mueck to create this piece; not only because of the semantics of the subject, but to scrutinise his father's body and humanise him as opposed to leaving his father as a super-human figure in his head. Mueck presents the public with the shock of his raw talent as opposed to a sensationalist shock.