• Login
    View Item 
    •   DORA Home
    • Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities
    • School of Arts
    • View Item
    •   DORA Home
    • Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities
    • School of Arts
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    The Politics of Cultural Critique: Vomit and Disgust in Paul McCarthy’s Performances of the 1970s

    Thumbnail
    Date
    2013-11-14
    Author
    Curtis, Harriet
    Metadata
    Show attachments and full item record
    Abstract
    In the 1970s, Los Angeles-based artist Paul McCarthy made visceral performances which appealed to audiences’ innermost feelings of disgust and revulsion. Using everyday materials such as hot dogs, ground meat, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise, he enacted performances of consumerism in which he both ingested and expelled this potent mixture of foodstuffs. McCarthy succeeds in relaying this nausea to his audiences, both in the live moment of performance and whilst watching performance recordings. This paper considers vomiting in McCarthy’s performances, and the sense of nausea felt by his audience, as an act of resistance against unthinking consumers who swallow culture whole. Looking at two performances – Hot Dog (1974) and Tubbing (1975) – this paper looks at the urge to vomit and the will to prevent it, as a way of both alienating audiences and becoming more intimate with them. Artist Barbara Smith recalls from her experience of McCarthy’s live performance Hot Dog, the sense of nausea she felt when watching him stuff numerous hot dogs into his mouth. She considered it kinder to leave the room to vomit than to do so in front of the artist, for fear that he would do the same and risk choking. In my own reflections on McCarthy’s video performance Tubbing, I read his struggle to chew and digest raw meat not only as a struggle with his own body, but as indicative of his career-long interest in the politics of cultural critique; breaking it up, destroying it, or reconfiguring it into something less palatable.
    Description
    Citation : Curtis, H. (2013) The Politics of Cultural Critique: Vomit and Disgust in Paul McCarthy’s Performances of the 1970s. Shimmering, Shining, Vomiting, Glitter: The Politics and Poetics of Disgust (symposium), Nottingham Contemporary art gallery, 14 November.
    URI
    https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/handle/2086/20109
    Research Institute : Institute of Drama, Dance and Performance Studies
    Peer Reviewed : No
    Collections
    • School of Arts [775]

    Submission Guide | Reporting Guide | Reporting Tool | DMU Open Access Libguide | Take Down Policy | Connect with DORA
    DMU LIbrary
     

     

    Browse

    All of DORACommunities & CollectionsAuthorsTitlesSubjects/KeywordsResearch InstituteBy Publication DateBy Submission DateThis CollectionAuthorsTitlesSubjects/KeywordsResearch InstituteBy Publication DateBy Submission Date

    My Account

    Login

    Submission Guide | Reporting Guide | Reporting Tool | DMU Open Access Libguide | Take Down Policy | Connect with DORA
    DMU LIbrary