Paul McCarthy: Them as Was Is

Widely understood as one of the most influential living American artists, Paul McCarthy (b. 1945) has developed a multimedia practice which tests the limits of genre, medium and taboo. Spanning performance, photography, sculpture, video, drawing and painting, McCarthy’s oeuvre draws from politics and popular culture to investigate themes of sexuality, death and cultural subconscious. From performances incorporating bodily fluids and foods to elaborately staged installations and drawings executed by the artist’s alter egos, McCarthy’s works confront the human capacity for ugliness. The myths and absurdities of everyday life – among them the artist’s own psyche, the fairy tales of Walt Disney, and the fallacies of the American Dream – are used as source materials with which to question what it is to be human.

‘McCarthy has been inspirational to several generations of artists and pioneered methods that are fairly common today. His way of creating sculptural video installations out of the sets he used in performance works, for instance, has been adopted by many others. […]

Paul McCarthy moves in and out of his own oeuvre in a way that makes it hard to discern the chronology. Many themes return throughout his production, from the early years at art school to the present day. He repeats and recreates many works, and the repetition and translation, the transferral of certain works into other media, has emerged as a theme in itself.’ ​​​​​​

M. af Petersens, ‘Paul McCarthy’s 40 years of hard work – an attempt at a summary’‚ in Paul McCarthy: Head Shop / Shop Head. Works 1966–2006, exh. cat., Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and travelling; Göttingen: Steidl, 2006