Paul McCarthy

For other people named Paul McCarthy, see Paul McCarthy (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Paul McCartney.

Paul McCarthy
McCarthy at the Westernparade in Munich, 2005
Born	(1945-08-04) August 4, 1945 Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	San Francisco Art Institute University of Southern California
Known for	Performance art Sculpture
Notable work	Sailor's Meat (1975) The Garden (1991) Bossy Burger (1991) Tree (2014)

Paul McCarthy (born August 4, 1945), is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Life

McCarthy was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1945. He studied art at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, and later continued to study at the University of Utah until 1969. He went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute receiving a BFA in painting. In 1972 he studied film, video, and art at the University of Southern California receiving an MFA. From 1982 to 2002 he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy currently works mainly in video and sculpture.

Originally formally trained as a painter, McCarthy's main interest lies in everyday activities and the mess created by them. Much of his work in the late 1960s, such as Mountain Bowling (1969) and Hold an Apple in Your Armpit (1970) are similar to the work of Happenings founder Allan Kaprow, with whom McCarthy had a professional relationship.

Work

Sweet Brown Snail by Jason Rhoades and Paul McCarthy at the Bavariapark and the Verkehrszentrum of the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

"Boxhead" (2001), Collection of the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim in Brumadinho/Brazil

"Santa Claus" (2001) on the Eendrachtsplein in Rotterdam, the Netherlands

McCarthy's works include performance, installation, film and "painting as action". His points of reference are rooted, on the one hand, in things typically American, such as Disneyland, B-Movies, Soap Operas and Comics – he is a critical analyst of the mass media and consumer-driven American society and its hypocrisy, double standards and repression. On the other hand, it is European avant-garde art that has had the most influence on his artistic form language. Such influences include the Lost Art Movement, Joseph Beuys, Sigmund Freud, Samuel Beckett, and the Viennese Actionism.

Although by his own statement the happenings of the Viennese Actionists were known to him in the 1970s, he sees a clear difference between the actions of the Viennese and his own performances:

"Vienna is not Los Angeles. My work came out of kids' television in Los Angeles. I didn't go through Catholicism and World War II as a teenager, I didn't live in a European environment. People make references to Viennese art without really questioning the fact that there is a big difference between ketchup and blood. I never thought of my work as shamanistic. My work is more about being a clown than a shaman."

In his early works, McCarthy sought to break the limitations of painting by using the body as a paintbrush or even canvas; later, he incorporated bodily fluids or food as substitutes into his works. In a 1974 video, Sauce, he painted with his head and face, "smearing his body with paint and then with ketchup, mayonnaise or raw meat and, in one case, feces." This clearly resembled the work of Vienna actionist Günter Brus. Similarly, his work evolved from painting to transgressive performance art, psychosexual events intended to fly in the face of social convention, testing the emotional limits of both artist and viewer. An example of this is his 1976 piece, Class Fool, where McCarthy threw himself around a ketchup-spattered classroom at the University of California, San Diego until dazed and self-injured. He then vomited several times and inserted a Barbie doll into his rectum. The piece ended when the audience could no longer stand to watch his performance. Concerned that the University's custodians would have to clean up the mess, graduate students Virginia Maksymowicz and Blaise Tobia, along with art historian Moira Roth, spent several hours cleaning up the ketchup and vomit. Maksymowicz can be seen in the rear left of a documentary photo of the event.

McCarthy's work in the 1990s, such as Painter (1995), often seeks to undermine the idea of "the myth of artistic greatness" and attacks the perception of the heroic male artist.

McCarthy's transfixion with Johanna Spyri's novel Heidi led to his 1992 video and installation, Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone, on which he collaborated with Mike Kelley.

Caribbean Pirates (2001-05), alludes to the Johny Depp film and to the Disneyland ride.

During the summer of 2008, Paul McCarthy's inflatable "Complex Shit", installed on the grounds of the Paul Klee Centre in Bern, Switzerland, took off in a wind, bringing down a power line, breaking a greenhouse window and a window at a children's home. This incident was widely reported internationally via news outlets in several languages with headlines like "Huge turd catastrophe for museum" and "Up in the sky: is it a turd or a plane?"

McCarthy has created several Christmas-themed works. Through them, he combines the dismal aesthetic and the real meaning of Christmas. In 2001, he created "Santa Claus" for the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Originally, it was intended to be placed next to the concert hall at the locally famous "Schouwburgplein" square, but it never was. This was due to controversies around the statue: The work is seen by many citizens as having sexual connotations, and, therefore it also is colloquially called "Butt Plug Gnome". Its original location was rejected by citizens and retailers, as well as several other proposed locations. On November 28, 2008, it did, however, receive a permanent destination on the Eendrachtsplein square, within a walkway-of-statues project.

In November 2009, an exhibition called "White Snow" was held at Hauser & Wirth New York, featuring McCarthy's mixed-media works, centered on the character Snow White from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

In October 2014, McCarthy unveiled "Tree" in Place Vendôme in Paris. The inflatable sculpture, standing 24 meters tall, was said to resemble a large green butt plug. This caused controversy among citizens, who believed their historic square had been sullied. Within two days the piece had been deflated by someone, and McCarthy stated that he did not want it to be repaired or replaced. He also admitted to Le Monde that its butt plug shape was deliberate, and a "joke".

Selected exhibitions

• 2013 Utah Biennial of Contemporary Art, Paul McCarthy – Mondo Utah: The Folkloric of the Beehive State, Salt Lake City
• 2013 Park Avenue Armory, WS, New York
• 2009 De Uithof, Paul McCarthy – Air Pressure, City of Utrecht
• 2009 Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Paul McCarthy – Transformation, Salt Lake City
• 2009 Hauser & Wirth, White Snow, New York
• 2009 Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Paul McCarthy & Benjamin Weissman – Quilting Sessions, Warsaw
• 2008 Whitney Museum of American Art, Central Symmetrical Rotation Movement – Three Installations, Two Films, New York
• 2007 S.M.A.K. Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Paul McCarthy – Head Shop / Shop Head, Ghent
• 2007 Middelheim Sculpture Museum, Paul McCarthy – Air Born / Air Borne / Air Pressure, Antwerp
• 2006 Moderna Museet, Paul McCarthy – Head Shop / Shop Head, Stockholm
• 2005 Haus der Kunst, Paul McCarthy – LaLa land parodie paradies, Munich
• 2004 Van Abbemuseum, Paul McCarthy. Brain Box – Dream Box, Eindhoven
• 2003 Hauser & Wirth, Paul McCarthy. Piccadilly Circus, London
• 2003 Tate Modern, Paul McCarthy at Tate Modern, London
• 2001 New Museum, Paul McCarthy, New York

Bibliography

• Rugoff, Ralph, Kristine Stiles, Massimiliano Gioni, Robert Storr. Paul McCarthy. London: Phaidon Press, 2016.
• Blazwick, Iwona. Paul McCarthy: Head Shop. Shop Head. Stockholm: Steidl/Moderna Museet, 2006.
• Bronfen, Elisabeth. Paul McCarthy: Lala Land. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2005.
• Sauerlander, Kathrin. Paul McCarthy: Videos 1970-1997. Cologne: Walther König, 2004.
• Glennie, Sarah. Paul McCarthy at Tate Modern: Block Head and Daddies Big Head. London: Tate, 2003.
• Phillips, Lisa. Paul McCarthy. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2001.
• Monk, Philip. Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy: Collaborative Works. Toronto: Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery at Harbourfront Centre, 2000.
• Rugoff, Ralph, Kristine Stiles, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio. Paul McCarthy. London: Phaidon Press, 1996.
• Sherer, Daniel. "Heidi on the Loos. Ornament and Crime in Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's Heidi." PIN-UP 3 (2008), 59–62.
• Zebracki, Martin. Engaging geographies of public art: indwellers, the 'Butt Plug Gnome' and their locale. Social & Cultural Geography 13(7), 735–758

External links

• New Museum archive
• New York Times article: Fairy Tales, but Strictly Adults-Only
• Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, London, New York
• frieze review of 'Low Life Slow Life'
• New York Times review
• Paul McCarthy in the Video Data Bank
• Tate Modern
• Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, Paris, France
• Paul McCarthy, HEAD SHOP/SHOP HEAD, 2007, SMAK, Ghent
• Black and White Tape, 1972
• (fr) Article sur Paul McCarthy in Art and You
• "aftershock" review of 'Low Life Slow Life'
• Paul McCarthy at Kadist Art Foundation