Piccadilly Circus 2003

Piccadilly Circus was produced as the opening for the Hauser & Wirth gallery in London. This performance/installation piece took place in the basement of a bank in London where, at first, McCarthy had no interest in doing anything with the building. While checking the space out, McCarthy and his son came up with the idea for Piccadilly circus:

"In the basement were vaults, with barred doors and thick concrete walls: a kind of jail. Upstairs were executive offices, one of which for some reason had been called the 'American room.' My son, Damon, whom I have been working with, said, "Why don't we put Bush upstairs and bin Laden in the basement?" I instinctively responded, "And the Queen Mother goes in the middle."

The idea began in 2002 right before America was heading off to war with Iraq. The characters were made to resemble important figures of this time, President Bush, Osama Bin Laden, and the Queen Mother. They were overly cartoonish and puppet like with over sized masks and clownish hands and feet. The video performances show three different versions of the characters participating in crazy scenes like parties and wild eating rituals.

President Bush has long been a subject of McCarthy's works. Many focus on just Bush's head as lifeless, lying on the ground, others portray him in degrading, sometimes sexual, positions with random animals. McCarthy has always used the media and the idea of the Western world is his artwork, usually attempting to uncover or reveal the darker, less talked about side. In Piccadilly Circus he is hinting at some secret, special bond between certain leaders, an almost mutually abusive bond in a way, with how the characters interact with one another. Bush painting things on Bin Laden's face, the so called 'tea-party' with those two and the Queen Mother, among other scenes. "Piccadilly Circus is about Bush but also about reconfiguring images of leadership and buffoonery. Some of its themes are similar to others I've explored over the last thirty years. There's a kind of obsessive behavior that gets repeated. I've been criticized for this, which seems odd to me. In my work, one of the returning themes is futility. But the expression of the futile produces a sort of satisfaction. Futility itself becomes a kind of completion. It's a belief in art" (McCarthy).

McCarthy's Piccadilly Circus has the feeling of an Andy Warhol piece. It takes something we are all familiar with, the President or a Campbell soup can, and makes it into something completely different from what we know. The Same with Jeff Koons. He took everyday figures, Michael Jackson, the Pink Panther, and turned them into artwork by placing them into awkward situations, situations out of the norm for those figures. I have found Paul McCarthy's artwork very interesting. Each piece tells a story that has in some way always been there but never been brought to attention. Obviously, we have all made the connection somehow between the war in Iraq, Osama Bin Laden and President Bush, but in Piccadilly Circus, McCarthy has sort of thrown it wide open and into our faces.

1000 words: Paul McCarthy talks about Piccadilly Circus, 2003 ArtForum Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. Web. 16 Nov. 2009. .

Blockhead and Daddies Bighead 2003

Blockhead and Daddies Bighead were an installation by Paul McCarthy at the Tate Modern's North Landscape in London. Both extremely large scale inflatable structures, they are the largest outdoor structures at Tate Modern. Blockhead, above on the left, is loosely based on the Disney character of Pinocchio, but a much more mutated version of the character, with a large block head and Pinocchio nose protruding from it, atop a large body sitting on a stack of books. The base of the sculpture is hollow, creating a hallway with a vending machine inside where the public can purchase candy, specifically made for the exhibition. McCarthy described the use of a black surface as creating a black object, which becomes a hole in the landscape. The second of the pair, Daddies Bighead, stands at over 50 feet tall. The body is a replica of a ketchup bottle with a giant head sitting atop of it. The head supposedly represents 'the head of the patriarchal tower, a penis tower bottle' (McCarthy).

Much of McCarthy's works focus largely on Hollywood and Disney. He forces the viewer to take the humor and the fantasy along with the perversion and horror that these things create. He often uses such mediums like ketchup, chocolate sauce, and mayonnaise to replicate bodily fluids that cover his artworks. So much of his work uses ketchup as a cover for blood that he has mistakenly been said the have the influence of Viennese Actionism: “The use of ketchup and masks grew out of my work and not out of being conscious of their work. I was pretty aware that certain artists were doing stuff like that. I think I found out about the Viennese in the early 1970s. Vienna is not Los Angeles. My work came out of kids’ television in Los Angeles. I didn’t go through Catholicism and World War II as a teenager, I didn’t live in a European environment. People make references to Viennese art without really questioning the fact that there is a big difference between ketchup and blood. I never thought of my work as shamanistic. My work is more about being a clown than a shaman."

Blockhead and Daddies Bighead remind me slightly of the works of Claes Oldenburg. Oldenburg also turned regular objects into huge spectacles as in his Floor Cake piece from 1962 or Soft Light Switches from 1963-69. It is interesting to me that someone can create what is essentially a big balloon and place it outside and call it art. I have always thought of art as paintings and photographs, even sculptures. Although, in some way these two works of art can actually be called sculptures.


Tate Modern Past Exhibitions Paul McCarthy." Tate: British and international modern and contemporary art. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/paulmccarthy/.

Paul McCarthy at the S.M.A.K. - we make money not art." We make money not art. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2007/12/last-week-i-vis-2.php.

Caribbean Pirates 2001-2005

The above photograph was taken from the multi-screen installation works of Paul McCarthy in collaboration with (son) Damon McCarthy. This installation was shown at the REDCAT Museum in Los Angeles. The work included large scale sculptures, video projections, color photographs, props and full scale film sets. Much of the sculptures were made of fiberglass and covered in chocolate sauce, ketchup, and fake blood, along with the objects and figures strewn about the setting. "This gargantuan project occupied the artist and his son, Damon McCarthy, and a huge crew of actors, builders, mechanics and film personnel over several years. The performance action that took place on the set included blood-gushing animatronic limb amputations, prosthetic nose-severings, belly-bursting tropical diseases and gang-bangs. Not to mention the catering-size cans of Hershey's Chocolate Sauce drooled and spattered absolutely everywhere. It's only chocolate, you might say and the action may be so knockabout as to be unbelievable, but this is still a theatre of cruelty, in the Hollywood Jacobean mode." - Adrian Searle, The Guardian.

Much of Peter McCarthy's works took the glitz and glam of Hollywood and the western consumer society and brought out the darker side of it. The idea for Caribbean Pirates came from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and the Disney Land attraction. The difference being that the movies and Disney Land attraction are about fun and entertainment. McCarthy takes it to the extreme of gore and obscenity. The video projections shown along side the main sculptures show brutal scenes of invasion, mutilation and sale of women among other things. All of the events that took place on actual pirate ships. Even so, from the outside, the installation can still seem like a parody or spoof of some grotesque horror movie with all the masks and over emphasized costumes and pirate paraphernalia. But according to McCarthy and his son the work also has an undertone of references to the US invasion of Iraq, with some scenes alluding to prisoner abuse. Father and son suggest the pirate theme to be a metaphor for US invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

This particular artwork installation is very interesting to me. The way that it takes something so simple, like the Pirates of The Caribbean movies and the pirate theme in general, and brings it back down to its most basic level. It brings back into view the horror and reality of the events that actually took place during these times. Anymore, the idea of pirates has become so fantasized, dressed up, almost fun, when in reality what pirates were and what they did was none of these things. One of the most fascinating parts to me is the fact that Paul McCarthy took this idea of pirates and used it to represent the invasion of Iraq by the United States. After researching this artwork I can see the connection between the two, but upfront, not knowing anything about the artwork, that idea would never have crossed my mind.

Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy: "Caribbean Pirates" california institute of the arts." Home california institute of the arts. Web. 12 Nov. 2009. http://calarts.edu/events/22-nov-2008/paulmccarthyanddamonmccarthyquotcaribbeanpiratesquot.

Paul McCarthy at the S.M.A.K. - we make money not art." We make money not art. Web. 12 Nov. 2009. .