Purple Magazine
— F/W 2014 issue 22
Paul McCarthy
Deprecated: htmlentities(): Passing null to parameter #2 ($flags) of type int is deprecated in /home/purpleinstitute/preprod/releases/20260106124831Z/web/app/themes/purple/includes/class.magarticlehelper.php on line 52
Studio portrait in Los Angeles by ARI MARCOPOULOS
interview by DONATIEN GRAU
portraits by ARI MARCOPOULOS
Paul McCarthy may be the most radical American artist — the devil to Jeff Koons’s angel. He subverts what he calls “normality” through the use of transgression, regression, and repression and creates a “trauma theater” for the art world. Welcome to America’s dark side.
DONATIEN GRAU — You come from Salt Lake City, and your childhood has been a very important part of your work until today. Can you tell me a little bit about it?
PAUL MCCARTHY — It was a type of conditioning. Not too much different than a lot of conditionings in America at that time in the 1950s. But there were particularities to the environ- ment itself, which were related to the religion of Mormonism, a very repressed religion. Conservative and…