Films
The Poison That Cures
Paul McCarthy on Gustav Metzger
- Tuesday 4 November
- Issue 15
- The Poison That Cures: Paul McCarthy on Gustav Metzger (2025), directed by David Wirth.
- Related Artist
- Gustav Metzger
- PAUL McCARTHY
Near the end of his life, Gustav Metzger organized Remember Nature a global day of action, held in London on November 4, 2015. It was a rallying cry: Metzger called on art students, artists and cultural workers to confront extinction, climate change and pollution. He believed artists had a responsibility to address these existential threats to humanity directly. “It is our duty and privilege to be at the foreground of the struggle,” he declared. “There is no choice but to follow the path of ethics into aesthetics.”
Remember Nature 2025, a re-activation of the project, is taking place this year on the tenth anniversary of the original, amid ever-more-dire threats to the planet and increasing political inertia. Artists are banding together once again, guided by Metzger’s belief in the power of art to effect change.
To mark the occasion, Paul McCarthy spoke recently about Metzger—his friend and inspiration—and about the legacy of his message:
“What Metzger’s work is about is empathy. It’s about empathy toward nature, empathy for people, for human life. There’s his concern for animals and nature and what we’re doing to them. And then there’s his concern about how we’re killing ourselves. A lot of people might say, ‘No, we’re not killing ourselves. We’ll be okay.’ I think Gustav—he’s holding up a mirror saying, ‘Hey, we’re on the edge.’”
Gustav Metzger practicing for a public demonstration of Auto-destructive art © National Portrait Gallery, London
Installation made by art students as part of Gustav Metzger’s global day of action, Remember Nature, London, November 4, 2015. Photo: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images. Artwork: Gustav Metzger © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / DACS, London
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Remember Nature 2025 took place on November 4, 2025. Information can be found at www.remembernature.art
Gustav Metzger: Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist, edited by Karen Marta, is available from Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
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Paul McCarthy is one of the most influential and groundbreaking American artists of his generation and is known for visceral, haunting and absurdist work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video to sculpture, drawing and painting.
Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) was a visionary artist and radical thinker. At the heart of his practice, which spanned over 65 years, are a series of constantly opposing yet interdependent forces such as destruction and creation.