How sweet, a major international artist is opening a chocolate
factory. And indeed, chocolate, tomato ketchup and mayonnaise
have frequently figured in the work of Paul McCarthy, usually as
merciful stand-ins for assorted bodily fluids. In Manhattan, a
Swiss confectioner is flying in to mastermind the chocolate, and
a special factory, packing plant and shop counter have been
created in the Maccarone gallery, which will sell the 10-inch,
$100 (£47) figures until Christmas Eve. The figures are
described as Santa With Tree and Bell, and they do resemble
those jolly Santas marching on to shop shelves clutching little
Christmas trees. But they bear an even more striking resemblance
to the 24-metre-high figure which the artist exhibited in a park
in Antwerp last month, entitled Santa Claus With a Buttplug.  As
far as Dai Morgan Evans, visiting professor in archaeology at
Chester University, is concerned, even Damien Hirst's maggot-
ridden cow's head, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1996,
wasn't in the same league