THENEWYORKER,MARCH16, 2020 61
would be better if she said nothing.
“Oh, barf,” another said, before de
scribing a trajectory of intense, exhil
arating seduction followed by a nasty
dénouement of faultfinding and
blame. In 2017, Wolfson produced a
video companion to “Colored Sculp
ture” called “Riverboat Song.” A red
haired trickster, voiced by Wolfson,
begins a disquisition on relationships:
I want you to say things like, You’re a re-
ally good person, I know that now. I want you
to get excited when you see me. I want you to
feel sad when I don’t want to see you. I’d also
like you to do things for me. Like cook, or ad-
vise me on cleaning. Maybe even do it for me.
Yes, do it for me. I’d like you to follow my di-
etary instructions as if they were made in gen-
erosity and not control. I’d like you to under-
stand that I am not responsible for my rage
but it’s instead a response to your correctable
defects. I’d like you to love me more than any-
thing, and do as I say, and be strong and em-
powered, sexy, stylish, and sassy, despite all
my oppression. When I leave you, you’ll for-
give me and blame yourself. You’ll feel as if
you’ve been fired, or reëvaluated as a problem.
You’ll find my lack of empathy disturbing, and
you’ll grow resentment. But, since I’ve decided
to pay your expenses for one year, you’ll feel
obligated to remain silent.
Then the little redhaired guy pulls
down his tattered cutoff jeans and
pees everywhere. Was it selfmock
ery—an acknowledgment of gender
privilege—or a taunt with an intended
audience of one?
Wolfson’s uncomplicated relation
ships are with his dogs, Midnight and
Broomstick, both rescues. Most of the
framed pictures in his current home,
a rental overlooking the reservoir in
Silver Lake, Los Angeles, are snap
shots of them—noses, straining leashes,
distant figures romping in a field.
With women, “no one’s been there
long enough to get attached to,” Brooke
Garber Neidich, the Whitney trustee,
says. “Often, it’s someone really inter
esting—or not. I’ve probably seen the
dogs more than anything.”
Wolfson and DayReiss broke up in
2018, and she moved to Las Vegas, where
she is creating an animated A.I.pow
ered girlfriend who can text, call, and
FaceTime users. At eighteen months,
their relationship was among the lon
gest of Wolfson’s adult life. The naked
pizza photograph proved to be a signifi
cant chapter. DayReiss challenged him
about it, saying that its power was not
conferred by him but was inherent in
its unique point of view—hers. Even
tually, Wolfson agreed to split the pro
ceeds of the finished work. “An artist
sometimes thinks they’re an island
where they take, take, take,” he told me,
not long ago. In the photograph and in
the argument, he seemed pleased to
have DayReiss help him look at him
self. “Charlotte’s genius is making me
think about how I see things,” he said.W
olfson spent the month of Jan
uary editing and reworking a
holographic piece: twenty fans, the
kind used in nifty corporate displays,
playing images on their rotating blades.
I went to visit him in a large ware
house studio in Glendale, next to the
specialeffects firm where he made
“Female Figure” and “Colored Sculp
ture,” and where he was working on
the Cube.
The studio was filled with older
works—a log cabin, the size of a stor
age shed, with a grimacing face; parts
of “Female Figure.” One corner was
dominated by a humanscale Hallow
een display that Wolfson had bought
at the Home Depot around the cor
ner: three witches stirring a cauldron,
which he had stickered with the mes
sages “Everyone is gay” and “Describ
ing how a dog was slaughtered.” There
was a rowing machine, for spontaneous
workouts. Midnight loped over to his
bed and lay down.
Sadie Coles was visiting. In the
nineties, Coles worked as a studio man
ager for Jeff Koons; at her gallery, which
opened in 1997, she shows Matthew
Barney, Sarah Lucas, John Currin, and
a number of the group known as the
Young British Artists. Wolfson’s new
piece was set to open at her gallery in
two weeks.
The title, “Artists Friends Racists,”
had come to Wolfson in a flash. For
almost nine months, he had been
building an avalanche of images to
express the notion: him at various art
events during the past decade; art stars
from the generation above him, many
of them represented by Zwirner; black
cultural figures; police cruisers; white
people, including Macaulay Culkin,
looking in the mirror, with yellow
halos drawn above their heads;
animations he commissioned, including one of a puppy getting shamed
and spanked.
Coles, who has closecropped gray
hair, pulled a chair up to a pair of com
puter monitors. The sound of whir
ring fans filled the studio. Wolfson
clicked through files for her. “This is
called ‘Interracial Kids,’ ” he said, as
pictures of children, images pulled from
the Internet, came onscreen. “There’s
a bagel. I just don’t like the bagel.
Bagel’s out. Look, there’s the Star of
David.” Sixpointed stars spun like
chorus girls across the fans, unzipped
themselves, and metamorphosed into
juicy red hearts.
“You took out the asshole,” Coles
observed.
“It was too much,” Wolfson said.
“It brought the piece into a space of
negativity.”
“Good, ’cause Laura who works with
me was a little worried about that.”
Wolfson showed Coles images of
himself as a child, which he had
graffitied with horns and placed in a
prison. “I’m the devil, and then I’m
behind bars,” he said.
“Brilliant,” she said. “Your mom’s
going to love that.”
In the studio, I asked Wolfson if
he felt that it was becoming harder,
given his status as a straight white
man, to make his art. “Totally,” he said.
“I didn’t choose to be who I am. I’m
here to see the world and to have an
uncensored experience of the world.
That doesn’t mean I have the priv
ilege to shit all over my audience
through provocation.”
He told Coles that he wanted to
include images of Klansmen, and of
a grotesque Dutch holiday tradition
in which white people paint their faces
black, in reference to “Black Pete,” a
Moorish chimney sweep who serves
as Santa’s helper. “Do you think it’s
O.K.?” Wolfson asked. “Ummm,” she
said, mentioning that the dispute over
the propriety of Black Pete had been
all over the papers again recently.
“But I’m not claiming any agency
to the black experience,” he said. “This
is from my experience, which would
be a white experience, of, like, a lib
eral person who doesn’t identify as
a racist but grew up in a racist cul
ture and therefore is conditioned to
racism.” He seemed newly concerned