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...

Borrando la Frontera
© » KADIST

Ana Teresa Fernández

2011

The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...

Sal Sem Carne
© » KADIST

Cildo Meireles

1975

Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...

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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...

Anti-Happening
© » KADIST

Julius Koller

Anti-Happening refers to Koller’s 1965 manifesto, ‘Anti-Happening (System of Subjective Objectivity)’...

Owl
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2006

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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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...

Untitled (Schindler House, #01)
© » KADIST

Luisa Lambri

2007

Rudolph Schindler’s designs, part of a practice he called “Space Architecture,” marry interior with exterior and space with light...

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Pia Camil
© » KADIST

Pia Camil, Espectacular Cortina and more...

Phillips Drops a Last-Minute $35m Bacon Bomb on the November Sales
© » ARTMARKETMONITOR

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...

Raven (gun)
© » KADIST

Catherine Opie

1987

In this work, a woman sits on a couch with her shirt pulled up to expose her pierced nipples, which are connected by a chain...

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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
© » KADIST

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
© » LARRY'S LIST

At a recent auction in London, a gallery paid five times the top estimate for a series of photographs...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Tirdad Hashemi

2022

This untitled painting by Tirdad Hasemi presents a space that can be thought of as both a prison cell and a house...