Paris has no shortage of towering columns that amateur psychologists like to view in sexual terms. But nothing here has made the link between monumental sculpture and sexual desire as literal as a green, abstracted Christmas tree that looked disconcertingly like a “plug anal” – the mildly more polite French term for a butt plug.

The Los Angeles provocateur, whose aggressive sculptures, installations and videos have in the past depicted Snow White in sexually compromised positions and figures wearing George Bush masks copulating with pigs, had installed the inflatable sculpture in the middle of Paris’s elegant Place Vendôme, home to the French justice ministry and the Ritz hotel. Yet less than a day after its installation it was gone – a victim of the conservative populist backlash that has upended French politics over the past year.

Tree, as the sculpture was euphemistically titled, had received the approval of all the relevant organisations overseeing public art installations, from the Paris city government to the neighbourhood business association. Yet at the work’s inauguration on Friday, a man accosted the artist, slapping his face three times before running off.

Quickly images of Tree started circulating in right-wing social media circles, among them the Manif Pour Tous – a revanchist movement that first arose in opposition to the legalisation of gay marriage in France last year, and now serves as a catch-all protest movement. “Place Vendôme vandalised! Paris humiliated!” read one viral message from a hard-right leader.



Finally, during the night from Friday to Saturday, the sculpture was vandalised. First the attackers unhooked the sculpture from its air source; while a security guard was reattaching it, the vandals severed the work’s support cables.

Paul McCarthy’s Tree after it was vandalised. Photograph: Yoan Valat/EPA

It was at this point that the artist and his team decided not to reinflate the sculpture. “I don’t want to be mixed up in this type of controversy and physical violence, or even to keep taking the risks associated with this work,” McCarthy told Agence France-Presse this weekend.



McCarthy’s alleged anal dilator was installed as part of the public programming of Fiac, the Paris art fair that opens on Wednesday. Previous sculptures installed in the Place Vendôme include large humanoid sculptures by the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa in 2012, and a wooden bivouac fastened to the top of the square’s victory column by Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata last year.

McCarthy is also preparing a major installation elsewhere in Paris: a working chocolate factory in the city’s mint, which now hosts contemporary art installations. Visitors will be able to see dozens of varieties of chocolate shapes – among them a Santa Claus holding a smaller butt plug.



The controversy comes at a moment of right-wing populist revival in France, where President François Hollande faces record low approval numbers, his centre-right rival Nicolas Sarkozy has failed to gain traction for his attempt at a revival, but Marine Le Pen, leader of the hard-right National Front, continues her ascent. Last month her party won seats in the Senate for the first time, and recent polling suggests that Le Pen could place first in the 2017 presidential election, beating even her father Jean-Marie’s score in 2002. Outside the Palais de Tokyo, Paris’s giant contemporary art museum, posters affixed to trees advertise the Front National as “France’s leading party”.