BOOK:Paul McCarthy, Phaidon Publications

Paul McCarthy creates installations, sculptures of animal/vegetable/human hybrids and slapstick performances in a purge of a national subconscious. The psycho-sexual desires and anxieties induced by the media and the built environment of contemporary America emerge in his collisions of plastic prosthetic limbs and condiments that stand in for bodily fluids.

By Efi Michalarou

These works have been variously deployed, through live actions, often documented on video, and more recently in outsized figures and artificial rural environments, combined in overtly sexual ways. McCarthy’s work echoes that of European artists such as Joseph Beuys or the Viennese Aktionistes, but gives “Action Art” a postmodern twist. This is the first comprehensive survey of over 20 years of work by a profoundly influential artist whose work is in the collections of the world’s most important museums. The author identifies key themes in McCarthy’s oeuvre and sets them within a broader cultural context. Expert on live arts and co-editor of Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, Kristine Stiles talks with the artist about his performances. The book also includes interviews and previously unpublished notes and poems towards sculptures, performances and videos. Finally renewed art critic and historian Robert Storr investigates how McCarthy’s work has evolved over the past two decades.