Photography (Photography)

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.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

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.

Installation (Installation)

Work n. 335: THINGS

Photography (Photography)

This photograph of Martin Creed himself was used as the invitation card for a fundraising auction of works on paper at Christie’s South Kensington in support of Camden Arts Centre’s first year in a refurbished building in 2005. His broad smile, on the verge of laughter, encourages reciprocity on behalf of the onlooker. This could be said to be a typical tactic in Creed’s work as it is so infused with humor and irony.

Photography (Photography)

Olive Oil (from the Propo Series)

Sculpture (Sculpture)

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. In homage to an influence in his early career, McCarthy attempted to reconstruct a pair of pants worn by Black Panther revolutionary Eldridge Cleaver in a picture that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s. But in the process, McCarthy misremembered their original design of the pants, which had black outer panels and white inner panels in white, and left a black shape highlighted in the crotch area.