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
© » 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...

9000 PIECES
© » KADIST

Euan Macdonald

2010

The video 9000 PIECES by Euan Macdonald was filmed at a musical instrument factory in Shanghai where 90 percent of the pianos that they manufacture are exported around the world, and only 10 percent are “finished” and can be labeled “Made in the US (or) Europe.” The video captures an intricate network of mechanisms as they interact with each other, their rhythmic movements resulting in an intense choreography and a cacophony of metallic sounds dramatized by Macdonald’s editing...

Perro en Tlalpan (Dog in Tlalpan)
© » KADIST

Gabriel Orozco

1992

Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...

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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...

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...

The Pixelated Revolution
© » KADIST

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
© » 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...

From the series the Old and the New (XI)
© » KADIST

Carlos Garaicoa

2010

From the series the Old and the New (XI) by Carlos Garaicoa belongs to the series Lo viejo y lo nuevo / Das Alte und das Neue (The Old and the New) which was first exhibited in 2010 at Barbara Gross Gallery in Germany...

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Blind Spencer (Mirror)
© » KADIST

Douglas Gordon

2002

Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...

L'Exposition Lunatique
© » KADIST

L’Exposition Lunatique October 2 – November 14, 2010 With works by: Francis Alÿs, Kennedy Browne, Jason Dodge Hans-Peter Feldmann, Christoph Keller, Julius Koller Anthony MacCall, Roman Ondák, Pratchaya Phinthong...

Marlene Garcia-Esperat (Silver, Plinth 5), Monuments of the Disclosed
© » KADIST

Ahmet Ögüt

2022

Monuments of the Disclosed by Ahmet Ögüt is an NFT series of digital monuments to whistleblowers...

Maude Arsenault – Resurfacing
© » ASX

Maude Arsenault – Resurfacing – AMERICAN SUBURB X Skip to content Her work invests the themes of female representation, private space, domesticity and intimacy within the framework of a photographic and material approach which oscillates between abstract compositions, self-portraits, landscapes and images documentaries...

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Fordlândia Fieldwork
© » KADIST

Clarissa Tossin

2012

In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Mark Bradford

2012

This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...

Color of History, Sweating Rocks
© » KADIST

Ranu Mukherjee

2011

Conceived as a large-scale mural-like projection, Color of History, Sweating Rocks is a neo-futuristic, hybrid film that combines cinematic language, collage, animation, and inventive forms to highlight the plight of the peoples of the Sahara—and refugees in general—who have been displaced by oil-mining....

Reborn
© » KADIST

Desiree Holman

2010

Reborn, 2010 is a three-channel video by Desiree Holman that questions ideas of motherhood and the maternal instinct...

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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
© » KADIST

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
© » MUTUALART

The Los Angeles-based artists paints dark scenes of a society destined for doom, all the while selling his art to the subjects of his creations....

Freedom Farming
© » KADIST

Li Binyuan

2014

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

Damien Hirst Just Burned Millions of Dollars Worth of His Art in Front of Gleeful Onlookers
© » LARRY'S LIST

For “The Currency,” Damien Hirst’s debut NFT project, the artist invited collectors to make a $2,000 wager on the value of his art....

Dad is Byron
© » KADIST

Diamond Stingily

2017

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