I’ve been following Jim Carrey’s Sharpie art output over the past few years, much of it focused on skewering the Trump administration. It’s lurid stuff, and meant to be: full of fanged Kellyanne Conways and rumpled Mike Pompeos, Donald J. Trump as a Wicked Witch or a flaming meteoroid about to crash into Earth. You could call it Expressionism, in its most disturbing form. In a way, it’s like courtroom sketch art, dashed off by a mental patient or someone experiencing severe gaslighting.
Like many onlookers, the comic actor — who used to do portraits of Jesus and Lincoln — apparently struggled to find humor in the current state of US politics. For a funny man, that can be a real handicap. So he turned to art therapy (see the 2017 short film, I Needed Color), and I’ve enjoyed the gestural urgency of that art over the past years as much as I’ve enjoyed Stephen King’s occasional Twitter rants and late night hosts’ nightly takedowns.
Then, for whatever reason, Carrey decided to sheathe his Sharpie. Last Feb. 3, he announced he was “done” with the Trump-trolling phase of his reportage, and one wonders if the aborted impeachment trial in the Senate had anything to do with him throwing up his hands and putting down his colored magic markers.
He says his art was meant to be a kind of beacon in the dark night. “To me, that was like a time — and it’s been a time — where I just wanted to be the lighthouse that was saying, ‘Hey, stay off the rocks, you’re headed for the rocks!'” he told Yahoo. “We’re still headed for the rocks, but I’ve decided, ‘You understand my message, I don’t need to be steeped in it anymore.’”
Political art, just like any other commentary these days, sparks wide division. Carrey decided he didn’t want to contribute to that anymore. “What I want to tell people is that it’s never been a matter of hating anyone, that I can sit down with anyone in this country and break bread. I love people,” he explained. “To me, we got tricked by politicians and weird corporate concerns to believe that disagreement is hatred. I will never go for that.”
The comic actor was not through with doing art, though. His next fascination, after the extended “Orange Period”? “Kind of obsessed with mangoes right now,” he tweeted back in February. “They’re the fruit of the Gods. They represent abundance and sweetness and the gifts of the universe. So that’s where I’m at.”
I think we can all agree that mangoes bring people together. Right, Filipinos?
Carrey even began 2020 on a note of optimism, offering this juicy greeting to Twitter fans, along with a slice of non-ironic mango art: “Happy New Year! This year, let’s fill our hearts up with gratitude: treat every month in 2020 is if it’s May and the trees are full of mangoes! Yyyyyyummy!”
That didn’t last long. Things started to go sour when the novel coronavirus reared its head. The world went topsy-turvy. Without warning, out came the Sharpie, and back came the grotesque riffs on Trump and those around him. The “Mango Yellow Period” segued to “Orange Period 2.”
While art critics might cock an eyebrow and declare Carrey’s sketches naïve, there is something — some wild abandon — in his depictions of Trump’s rogue’s gallery that elevates them. Whether he’s lacerating Mike Pence or Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Rudy Giuliani, Carrey’s pen is merciless. He’s like Picasso, questioned by Spanish fascist soldiers about his “Guernica.” “Did you do this?” the soldiers demanded, standing before his mural of a horror-frozen Basque town leveled by war bombs. The artist reportedly pointed his finger back and answered: “No, you did.”
So Carrey didn’t start the fight. He’s just reflecting what he sees.
He’s also fairly reverential in his portraits of heroes, and those people who have recently passed: his Obama sketches, his depiction of friend Robin Williams. Before the grotesque lampoons, he did larger conventional canvases (his earlier “Disappearing at the Laser Peel Party” and “Eva”) that were an attempt to “heal a broken heart,” and a release from the pressure of performing.
But it’s in satire that Carrey’s mischievous pen speaks loudest. Was it the accumulation of fresh horrors — the coronavirus, the death of George Floyd — that lured the Hollywood actor back to political cartooning? Don’t know. At this point, the rubber-faced actor who used to fetch $20 million per role can follow whatever muse he likes. But I admit, I kind of missed seeing that Jim Carrey — the one who understood that comedy ain’t always pretty. Now he’s back.
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You can see specimens of Carrey’s art on the Twitter page @JimCarrey.