Fission and fusion in Paschke's Kiss I
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"Kiss I (1996) was conceived in Ed(ward) Paschke's personal blend of sources, was fashioned through his signature style, and was delivered with his cool air of irony. Although not the first in the legendary bad-boy artist's repertoire of painted kisses, this vision is one of his most provocative expressions. As such, the painter was pleased that Kiss I found its mark in the center of the heartland in 1997, when it was purchased by the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Archaeology. For kissing is not an innate human trait but rather a learned behavior that carries diverse cultural meanings dependent on particular time periods, geographical regions, and social groups. In some Sub-Saharan African, Asiatic, and Polynesian societies, for example, kissing was entirely unknown before being introduced by Europeans; and until recent times in most Middle Eastern countries, kissing was considered non-sexual and only appropriate between two men, two women, or parents kissing their children. The artist, born and bred in Chicago, was grounded in Midwestern traditions, wherein the conventional wisdom holds kissing as an intimate gesture of union between the self and another and as a potent marker of boundaries, dividing the pure from the impure and private from public life. Paschke, who famously claimed that if he had not been an artist he would have been a criminal, directed much of his career toward questioning such established mores. Thus, in keeping with the artist's circumstances and celebrated persona of rebelliousness , Kiss I works to disrupt aesthetic, emotional, and social standards of contemporary life in middle America."--First paragraph.
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