Paul McCarthy
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| Paul McCarthy | |
| Born | June 18, 1945 Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Field | Performance Art |
| Training | San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco University of Southern California, Los Angeles |
| Works | Sailor's Meat from 1975, The Garden from 1991 |
Paul McCarthy (born August 4, 1945 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
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[edit] Life
McCarthy studied art at the University of Utah in 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. Since 1982 he has taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. McCarthy currently works mainly in video and sculpture.
McCarthy had Nathan Mabry as one of his students. Mabry felt that, as a teacher, McCarthy "was amazing. Whenever he saw you in the hallway, he would put his arm around you and ask how things were going. He’d offer to swing by your studio. And I’m always interested in his work. To a certain extent, the objects he produces could be considered classical sculpture, even when he’s imbuing these objects with very different meanings and using unconventional materials." [1]
Originally formally trained as a painter, McCarthy's main interest lies in everyday activities and the mess created by them.[2] 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 Allen Kaprow, with whom McCarthy had a professional relationship.[2]
[edit] Work
Paul McCarthy misleadingly is often considered to be influenced by the Viennese Actionism. Although by his own statement the happenings of the group were known to him in the 1970s, he sees a clear difference between the self-injurious 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."[3] In his early works, McCarthy seeked 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, Painting, Wall Whip, 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."[4] 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 injured. He then vomited several times and inserted a Barbie doll into his rectum.[2] The piece ended when the audience could no longer stand to watch his performance.[2]
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.[2]
[edit] Bibliography
- 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.
- Glennie, Sarah. Paul McCarthy at Tate Modern: Block Head and Daddies Big Head. London: Tate, 2003.
- McCarthy, Paul. Paul McCarthy. London: Phaidon Press, 1996.
- Monk, Philip. Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy: Collaborative Works. Toronto: Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery at Harbourfront Centre, 2000.
- Phillips, Lisa. Paul McCarthy. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2001.
- Sauerlander, Kathrin. Paul McCarthy: Videos 1970-1997. Cologne: Walther König, 2004.
[edit] References
- ^ Jori Finkel (March 6, 2008), A Talk with Sculptor Nathan Mabry, ARTINFO, <http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26777/a-talk-with-sculptor-nathan-mabry/>. Retrieved on 23 April 2008
- ^ a b c d e Klein, Jennie (May 2001). "Paul McCarthy: Rites of Masculinity". PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 23 (2): 10–17. doi:.
- ^ Petersen, Magnus af:„Paul McCarthy´s 40 years of hard work-an attempt at a summary”, in: “Head Shop/Shop Head”, Steidl Verlag, Göttingen, 2006, p.20
- ^ Roberta Smith. "ART REVIEW: Work on the Wild Side, Raw, Rank and Morbid", The New York Times, May 15, 1998. Retrieved on 2007-05-26.
- Nielson, Emma (2007). "The World as Pirate’s Lair – Paul McCarthy’s LaLa Land, Parody Paradise". Pulse Berlin (Relation). “McCarthy has a predilection for American myths and icons. In most of his works, he takes the models and role models of that world and skewers them. Santa Claus, Pinocchio and the cowboy play just as important a role in the imagery as Bush or the Queen of England.” Review of McCarthy’s 2007 LaLa Land exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London , and Haus der Kunst, Munich.
[edit] External links
- frieze review of 'Low Life Slow Life'
- New York Times review
- Tate Modern
- Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois, Paris, France
- Hauser & Wirth, London, UK
- Paul McCarthy, HEAD SHOP/SHOP HEAD, 2007, SMAK, Ghent
- Black and White Tape, 1972
- Paul McCarthy: the belated recognition of a misunderstood genius
