Paul McCarthy (Utah, 1945) has been all the artists of the second half of the 20th century in one: he has been a video artist, performer, sculptor, and creator of "ninots." He has been expressionist, conceptual, material, and Duchampian. He has been a beat and a punk, and of the images of his work that the world knows best, he says they are a failure. This month, he was in Madrid and shared his career in a talk with curator Josechu Carrera at the art center and gallery SOLO CSV and spoke with EL MUNDO.
Have you noticed that many politicians in 2025 are engaged in a permanent performance?
Of course. Politics has become a form of entertainment, a theater... It is supposed to be a way to convey ideas, but in reality, it is entertainment. Those AI things that Trump launches are incredible. I can perfectly imagine a video artist creating images like that. Trump in a fighter jet, throwing crap at protesters... I suppose this kind of theater has always existed, but now it is at the center of everything. There is another image of Trump where he is in the Oval Office and his desk is full of Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes. It looks like the satirical sculpture of some critical artist. I saw it and thought, "My God, how crazy."
They are competing with artists for the audience's ability to be surprised.
It is a problem for artists but, above all, it is a problem for society because the form replaces the content. The form is the content. What is this man saying? Why is he saying it? What does it do to humanity? Everything is smoke and mirrors. He is so clever, so elusive...
Do you remember when you started using the word performance? Was it a word you gradually adopted or was it a discovery?
Both, actually. I entered art school and wanted to paint on large canvases, so I discovered that I was more comfortable if I placed the canvas on the floor. Mind you, I knew nothing about Jackson Pollock... I insisted on painting three-meter canvases, which is extremely difficult on an easel. I started painting with a roller and working on boards. Then, I began experimenting with fire because I wanted to achieve a deeper type of black. Of course, there was something performative in that, but it was by chance. Around 1966, I started reading about happenings. I was doing something I didn't understand.
Were there artists in your family?
My mother wanted to be an artist but gave up. She did artistic things, decorative things. And that was it. We didn't go to museums. There were no museums around me, and if there were, I never went, as far as I remember. But in high school, I had art classes, and the teachers were very interesting. They talked to us about the Beat Generation.
Are we talking about the 1960s?
A. The late '50s. Since I had bad grades, I entered an agronomy school in a place called Ogden, Utah, and again, I had the incredible luck of having good teachers who taught art and anthropology. In Ogden, I started making sculptures with industrial materials. I had no idea who Duchamp was and was already doing things like submitting a cash register to an art contest. And then I went to San Francisco.
People making love.
There was some of that in the Haight-Ashbury area. But there were also the Black Panthers. And there were hippies out of their minds walking around with guns.
What I mean is that your work is darker than the image we have. Do you agree?
A. Yes, that darkness is there, but the pieces are not alone, they appear in the middle of a path. They happen, they have a meaning. I don't want to make some of them again. It's like they turned into a mistake. After making Tomato Head and Spaghetti Man, I stopped making pieces like that. It was a mistake for me, but they became an important part of a type of figuration that emerged after me. All that figuration that came from Japan, all those toys... The sculptures I made afterward, the so-called raw sculptures, are much rougher and darker. But the world demands Tomato Head.
What do you mean by mistake?
I knew where I wanted to go with those pieces, but it didn't turn out as I intended. With Tomato Head, I realized right away, I saw that I didn't want to make objects so sharp, I didn't want more toys. I also remember the feeling of having made a mistake with the material... I expected the rubber to be harder, for the sculpture to be solid, for people to interact.
Do you use the word beauty often?
Not much, because it implies a long discussion about its meaning... But I do believe there is something. I wouldn't go as far as to say something universal, but I do think there is something, a vibration when black and red are together, or black and yellow, something that happens over and over. Many of my sculptures are what some people would call grotesque, but I find them beautiful. Perhaps the word beauty is a way for us to connect with other people. Many of the people I am friends with have similar intuitions about what is beautiful.