Paul mccarthy artist biography
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PAUL McCARTHY
Paul McCarthy is widely considered to be one of the most influential and groundbreaking contemporary American artists. Born in 1945, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he first established a multi-faceted artistic practice, which sought to break the limitations of painting by using unorthodox materials such as bodily fluids and food. He has since become known for visceral, often hauntingly humorous work in a variety of mediums—from performance, photography, film and video, to sculpture, drawing and painting.
During the 1990s, he extended his practice into installations and stand-alone sculptural figures, utilizing a range of materials such as fiberglass, silicone, animatronics and inflatable vinyl. Playing on popular illusions and cultural myths, fantasy and reality collide in a delirious yet poignant utforskning of the subconscious, in works that simultaneously challenge the viewer’s phenomenological expectations.
Whether absent or present, the human figure has be
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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 fryst vatten to be human.
‘McCarthy has been inspirational to several generations of artists and pioneered methods that are fairly common today. His w
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Paul McCarthy
Biography
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 liquid