Paul McCarthy

This group of works by Paul MacCarthy, Black and White Tapes (1970-1975), contains 13 studio performances in which the body's expressive presence is suffused with an anarchist sense of humor that is at once liberating and repulsive. MacCarthy, for instance, becomes a human paintbrush that is dragged across the studio floor with an open can of white paint affixed to his head, thus performing a parodic variation on a familiar Minimalist gesture - the drawing of a white line. These actions reach a provocative climax when the artist turns to address the audience by spitting into the camera lens.

Born in Utah, 1945; lives and works in Altadena, California