LIFE WITH RICHARD

Matthew Binder on Artist Kate Vitali

Issue No. 3 | Fall 2023

Richard is over seven feet tall, gangly and soft, with large empty eyes and the toothy smile of a hyena. His outfits are always sensible, except at Christmas when he dons a Santa suit. His head is perversely colossal.

New York-based artist Kate Vitali, with the help of her friend Hana De Greef, made Richard from stuffing and fabric to use in her latest art project, eponymously titled, Richard. It reminds me in a way of the endurance performance pieces by folks like Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh, and Marina Abramović. Vitali lived with Richard for over a year and documented the time with photographs and videos. One photo shows her naked in a chair, stoically breastfeeding her giant puppet. In another, looking very satisfied, Richard lies in bed amidst rumpled sheets, the outsized cock with which Vitali endowed him pointed at the camera like a gun. In a third, Richard and Vitali pose like a bored suburban husband and wife. This is the photo she sent to her friends and family with instructions to hang it on their refrigerators. Richard lived in Vitali’s apartment like yet another roommate, spending most of his time at the kitchen table. In an apartment as small as Vitali’s, there was no escaping him. Richard “takes up a shit ton of space,” one of her roommates said, so much so, in fact, that it forced her to make “accommodations.”

The project — which earned Vitali the “Outstanding Student Award” her senior year at Pratt Institute—began with the concept of portraying the oppressive forces of patriarchy and the male gaze. “Richard is always there, even when he’s not there,” Vitali said. “He’s the dude who lives inside my head… externalized. It’s terrifying.” In one video, Richard sits propped up in bed ogling Vitali as she dresses. His stare is unabashed, of course. He’s quite literally incapable of looking away. Vitali says she hated Richard at first. He represented the burden that all women are forced to carry. And for different women, obviously, this burden can mean different things. Richard can represent a needy baby, a selfish lover, a misogynistic boss, or maybe even the older male writer sent to interview her then publish his observations.

In another video interview, one of Vitali’s male friends sits on the couch next to Richard, caressing the inside of his thigh while explaining how Richard will put you in a metaphorical box and constrain your personhood—if you let him. Vitali’s friend describes feeling societal pressure to be strong, so that if “someone needs help carrying something heavy,” he’ll be able to fulfill his “manly” duty of “shouldering the load.” Her friend laments that one possible harmful byproduct of this strength is that it may “lead to harboring feelings of superiority over people who aren’t as strong.”

But as time with Richard passed, Vitali came to see him more as an object of pity than as a malevolent threat. Interestingly, she says, the project coincided with her befriending more men. As these relationships blossomed, Vitali came to believe that men too are harmed by the patriarchy. This newfound sympathy is something she admits she never could’ve imagined just two years prior. “We’re all victims of patriarchy,” Vitali said as we sat in a park next to three older men hollering over the sound of a James Brown song blasting from their boombox. “It’s not just women.”

Vitali performed a range of experiments with Richard. For instance, she brought him home to her family for Christmas Dinner. Her parents lovingly set a place for him at the table, treating him as family, in the style of Lars and the Real Girl. Another time, Vitali placed Richard at a booth on campus with a sign encouraging students to receive “Psychiatric Help” from “The Doctor.” I asked Vitali whether putting Richard in a position of authority changed the way people looked at him. “Maybe at first,” she said, “but he’s still just a lifeless doll. It’s kind of like a sick joke. People approached him looking for psychiatric help, but he can’t even look you in the eyes.”

Vitali’s thesis advisor really wanted her to push the boundaries of her relationship with Richard, at one point encouraging her to shoot a porno with him. Vitali, however, wasn’t interested in going to such extremes. “Did you ever at least sleep with him in the bed?” I asked. “Maybe give him a little cuddle?” Vitali laughed nervously, then said, “Nah, I didn’t feel like doing that.”

Vitali collaborated with the dancer Rosa Allegra Wolff on a video titled The Last Dance. These childhood friends decided to work together when Wolff reached out after seeing Richard on Instagram. Vitali presented Wolff with a soundscape of dissonant bass notes and string-scratching, a sonic backdrop nearly as menacing as the theme music from Jaws. In preparation for the shoot, Wolff spent a full day alone with Richard, learning how his body moves. Wolff begins the dance with Richard stuffed into the tracksuit she’s wearing, the two merged as one. At first their movements are stiff and labored, as if in a battle for control. Then, as the dance gains momentum and power, their arms and legs windmill with increasing chaos.

The pants they share fall to their knees, and Richard’s massive dick violently flops and twists. Eventually, the energy subsides, and the two stagger about, until finally they collapse. Like a snake shedding its skin, Wolff extricates herself from Richard, strips him naked, tosses him to the floor, then mournfully walks away.

“It’s Richard coming to terms with his softness, fragility, and vulnerability,” Vitali said.

Vitali needed a grand finale to conclude her time with Richard. She killed him, and then at her senior show, she staged a memorial with bouquets placed around the trunk that stood in for his coffin.

On the memorial service pamphlet, Vitali wrote, “He made his way into all aspects of my life. It was hard not to feel consumed by it. I hit a wall. I can’t have him sitting in my apartment every day, waiting for me. I can’t have him stuffed in the back of my car, taking up space.” Later, she said, “I am more than positive that I will be returning to him.”

Vitali insists that it may take years for her fully to grasp her relationship with Richard. For now, Richard lies in his coffin in Vitali’s parents’ garage, waiting for the day she decides to exhume him.

Photography by Kate Vitali