Mickey Mouse

2010 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

Paul McCarthy

location: Los Angeles, California
year born: 1945
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: Salt Lake City, Utah

To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey. On his shoulders he supports an enormous false head, Mickey’s familiar face grinning with glossy eyes. The artist has marked out in heavy black the background of Cinderella’s castle. Robbed of his context, the character becomes the sole focus of the image, a subject of unusual scrutiny. Under this close examination, his torso and legs begin to seem strange—too human for his extremities—and his friendly wave starts to look less like that of a childhood hero and more like that of a politician. With McCarthy’s intervention, the famous mouse is upstaged by his own artificiality.


Known for his transgressive performance art pieces that often challenge social conventions, Paul McCarthy is undoubtedly one of the main figures in the West Coast contemporary art scene. Using different forms from pop culture as source material, McCarthy casts a critical look at American society and consumerism. With a particularly poignant sense humor, his works also investigate the intricacies of human psychology.


Colors:



Scene I am Cuba
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Absentia
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Tony Oursler

2012

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A Minute Ago
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Rachel Rose

2014

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Tania Libre
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Lynn Hershman Leeson

2016

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Forest Gathering N.2
© » KADIST

Gregory Crewdson

2005

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Untitled
© » KADIST

Trisha Donnelly

2007

Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...

No Title (Without the comics)
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Raymond Pettibon

2007

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The Pixelated Revolution
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Rabih Mroué

2012

The Pixelated Revolution is a lecture-performance by artist Rabih Mroué about the use of mobile phones during the Syrian revolution...

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Forest Gathering N.2
© » KADIST

Gregory Crewdson

2005

Forest Gathering N.2 is part of the series of photographs Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) where anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios...

Untitled
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Trisha Donnelly

2007

Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...

UFO-Expedition (U.F.O.)
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Julius Koller

1982

Wordplay was a central focus of Koller’s work, in particular the acronym U...

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Blind Spencer (Mirror)
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Douglas Gordon

2002

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L'Exposition Lunatique
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Hypnotic Show conducted by Marcos Lutyens in English
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Maude Arsenault – Resurfacing
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Silencer #16 & #17
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Will Rogan

2010

MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...

Serengeti Green
© » KADIST

Phillip Maisel

2015

While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...

Untitled (Men)
© » KADIST

Matt Lipps

2011

In the series Horizons (2010), Lipps uses appropriation to riff on Modernism’s fascination with abstract form...

There are veins in these lands, I
© » KADIST

Rodney McMillian

2013

In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...

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Memory Mistake of the Eldridge Cleaver Pants
© » KADIST

Paul McCarthy

2008

Memory Mistake of the Eldridge Cleaver Pants was created for the show Paul McCarthy’s Low Life Slow Life Part 1 , held at California College of the Arts’s Wattis Institute in 2008 and curated by McCarthy himself...

Mother Pig, Shushi Gallery, San Diego Performance
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Paul McCarthy

1983

McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works...

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Carl Dobsky: Prophet of the West
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Freedom Farming
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Li Binyuan

2014

Freedom Farming presents how, after being given the right of farming, Li Binyuan began to re-dig his land...

Dad is Byron
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Diamond Stingily

2017

Dad is Byron is an audio work produced in collaboration between Diamond Stingily and her father, the house musician Byron Stingily...

Doodood and John
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Chris Huen Sin-Kan

2013

Contrast to the bustling and unrelenting experience of a city such as Hong Kong, Chris Huen Sin Kan paints the tranquil interiors of his apartment, where he leads a modest and almost hermit-like life...