Paul McCarthy
While still a student, Paul McCarthy threw himself out of a second floor window in a performance/action, emulating Yves Klein's legendary "Leap into the Void." McCarthy was an influential figure in the Southern California art and performance scene for decades before achieving international recognition. His performance work in the late 1970s explored areas of Dionysian and shamanistic initiation rituals, as well as the body and sexuality. The intensity of these performances, which often included the graphic depiction of taboo subjects, eventually led to his use of video and installation as primary media. Mining the depths of the family and childhood via kitsch and pop cultural detritus, the body and sexuality, and an often outrageous theatricality, McCarthy's works inhabit a violent landscape of dysfunction and trauma. In many of his works, he adopts a performance persona that appears crazed, witch-like, or infantile. McCarthy's works often involve liquids, from bodily fluids to paint; one performance involved mixing his own blood with food, an obsessive gesture that is simulated in Family Tyranny. In the late 1980s, McCarthy began using film and television sets as elements in video/performance installations. Often these elaborate fabrications involved the restaging of culturally-charged myths and icons, such as Heidi and Pinocchio, in the context of family psychodramas, Hollywood genres, and mass media.
Known For | Directing |
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Most Rating | 0.038 |
Birthday | 1945-08-04 |
Place of Birth | Salt Lake City, Utah, USA |
Also Known As |
1976
Class Fool
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In a shamanistic, quasi-sexual ritual performance, McCarthy threw himself around a ketchup-spattered classroom at the University of California, San Di...
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Class Fool
1975
Black and White Tapes
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Black and White Tapes derive from a series of performances Paul McCarthy undertook in his Los Angeles studio from 1970 to 1975. Conceived for the came...
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Black and White Tapes
1974
Sauce
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Performance art piece
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Sauce
2001
Paul McCarthy: Destruction of the Body
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Drawing on the idiom and imagery of the consumer culture he grew up in, video artist Paul McCarthy distorts and mutates the familiar into the disturbi...
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Paul McCarthy: Destruction of the Body
2014
The Art Foundry
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The Art Foundry
1975
Sailor's Meat (Sailor's Delight)
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Here, the artist performs as the female protagonist of Russ Meyer’s soft-porn film, Europe in the Raw! (1963). Done up in black lace lingerie, heavy m...
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Sailor's Meat (Sailor's Delight)
2020
Becoming Paul McCarthy
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On the influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artist
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Becoming Paul McCarthy
1987
Family Tyranny (Modeling and Molding)
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Experimental video about child abuse. McCarthy: "I was given access to a community television studio for two days of shooting and one day of editing....
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Family Tyranny (Modeling and Molding)
1987
Cultural Soup
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A man makes soup with mayonnaise and dolls. McCarthy: "I was given access to a community television studio for two days of shooting and one day of ed...
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Cultural Soup
1992
Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone
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A collaborative work based on Joanna Spyri's novel, Heidi.. The entire work consisted of a fabricated set, a group of partial and full life-size rubbe...
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Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone
2019
Coach Stage Stage Coach
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Paul McCarthy's reinterpretation of John Ford's classic western Stagecoach.
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