Paul McCarthy

A lot of people think art is masturbatory crap. For Paul McCarthy, it often is crap—and ketchup, and semen, and urine, and fake blood, and pantyhose. McCarthy's outlets of production are as varied as his subjects: performance, video, sculpture, installation, and photography all enter the mix. (The sculpture here, Houseboat, is an ongoing project.) The artist is a kind of Geppeto of the perverse, and nothing in cul- ture—from a French chef to Santa Claus to wayward goats—is too precious to be a target of McCarthy's wrath, chocolate genital rubdowns, or the revelations of a libidinal mind. —Christopher Bollen