Mother Pig, Shushi Gallery, San Diego Performance

1983 - Photography (Photography)

Paul McCarthy

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

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. Here, McCarthy squirts liquid out of a bottle held near his crotch onto a stuffed animal in the shape of a lion. The costuming, materials, and simulated bodily functions frequently appear in McCarthy’s work, which often disturbingly juxtaposes visceral and startling manipulation of the body with the cheerful artifacts of popular consumer culture.


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
© » KADIST

Felipe Dulzaides

2006

I Am Cuba— “Soy Cuba” in Spanish; “Ya Kuba” in Russian—is a Soviet/Cuban film produced in 1964 by director Mikhail Kalatozov at Mosfilm...

Absentia
© » KADIST

Tony Oursler

2012

Continuing Oursler’s broader exploration of the moving image, Absentia is one of three micro-scale installations that incorporate small objects and tiny video projections within a miniature active proscenium...

Nuevo Dragon City
© » KADIST

Sergio De La Torre

2008

Nuevo Dragon City is a reenactment of a historical event from 1927 in which six Chinese were either trapped or voluntarily hid themselves inside a building in northern Mexico...

The End One
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2005

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

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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
© » 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...

Paper Tigers…from a whisper to a scream
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2012

The 10 $1 bills that make up From a Whisper to a Scream (2012) read like instructions in origami...

8 Ball Surfboard
© » KADIST

Alexis Smith

1995

In 8 Ball Surfboard (1995),Alexis Smith combines her long-term interests in California culture and conceptual assemblage...

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Mickey Mouse
© » KADIST

Paul McCarthy

2010

To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey...

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
© » 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...

Sickhands
© » KADIST

Petra Cortright

2011

In her 2011 webcam video, Sickhands , Cortright poses before her in-computer camera, as her hands, hair, and body begin waving and rippling vertically across the screen, distorted by software effects...

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Pia Camil
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Pia Camil, Espectacular Cortina and more...

Phillips Drops a Last-Minute $35m Bacon Bomb on the November Sales
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Phillips Drops a Last-Minute $35m Bacon Bomb on the November Sales Francis Bacon, Pope with Owls, 1958 )$35-45m) Phillips announces tonight that it will offer Francis Bacon’s ‘Pope with Owls’ ($35 – 45 million) from 1958 during its New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art...

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Southeast Asia rap on the rise; Kolektif Hysteria in Jakarta
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Southeast Asia rap on the rise; Kolektif Hysteria in Jakarta | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar Via Yahoo December 10, 2020 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...

Disturbing behaviour: “Deproduction” by Terre Thaemlitz
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Disturbing behaviour: "Deproduction" by Terre Thaemlitz | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Courtesy of Comatonse Recordings September 22, 2019 By Patricia Tobin (670 words, 4-minute read) Content warning: References to sexual content or situations Deproduction by musician-producer Terre Thaemlitz was released on December 28, 2017 as a multimedia album consisting of audio, video and text...

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Cathy (bed self-portrait)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...

Shadows V, Set of 3
© » KADIST

Charles Gaines

1980

To make his series Shadows (1980), Gaines subjected 20 potted plants to a uniform procedure...

Untitled (San Francisco)
© » KADIST

Edward Kienholz

1984

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name...

Untitled (Blue Chapel)
© » KADIST

Robert Therrien

1985

In No Title (Blue Chapel) Therrien has reduced the image of a chapel to a polygon...

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Mickey Mouse
© » KADIST

Paul McCarthy

2010

To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey...

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...

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Les allégories
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Chloé Quenum

2017

The stained glass windows of Chloé Quenum’s Les Allégories evoke the sacred and describe the movement of a rooster in the form of patterns extracted from a wax fabric found in Benin...

Collectors the World over Are Buying Modern and Contemporary Art from Africa - via The Economist
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At a recent auction in London, a gallery paid five times the top estimate for a series of photographs...

A Feminist Memory Project in Nepal
© » APERTURE

An expansive archive illustrates the role of women in shaping over a century of the country's political and public life....