John Miller: Metro Pictures.(New York)(brown paintings, sculptures and reliefs from 1985 to 1994)

Scatological humor is probably as old as culture itself--but in art of the '80s and early '90s, jokes about excrement proliferated, provoking a lot of nervous laughter. RUN FROM FEAR/FUN FROM REAR--that's one of the ways Bruce Nauman put it. He also paired clowns and toilets to flush out the complexities of pleasure, pain, and self-consciousness that rim the act of evacuation.

Remember Mike Kelley's 1987 felt banner that blared PANTS SHITTER AND PROUD P.S. JERK OFF TOO, or the video Heidi, 1992, made with Paul McCarthy, that featured sausage turds and a sustained involvement with ...

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