Paul McCarthy: The Box

The new artist’s book by Paul McCarthy (* 1945 in Salt Lake City) presents one of the artist's most significant works: The Box (1999). The work is a displaced sculpture of McCarthy’s entire studio. Inconspicuous from the outside, a fabricated wooden structure like a shipping crate with four holes indicating the windows and doors in McCarthy's actual studio, the inside reveals an overwhelming diversity of objects thereby creating an intimate portrait of the artist’s mindscape. The contents of The Box are the actual items from McCarthy's studio in Los Angeles, California, containing approximately three thousand objects, from a steel cabinet to a pencil, drawings and artworks. Only one thing is amiss, the box is tipped ninety degrees on its side, its contents, fixed to their surfaces, appear to defy gravity and taunt the viewer's perception of right-side-up. This radical displacement is repeated in the design of the catalog, thereby creating an object that functions as yet another haptic inversion. The aesthetic of disorientation is reflected in the volume, which was developed in close consultation with the artist.