Type
Text
Type
Thesis
Advisor
Andrew Uroskie. | John Lutterbie. .
Date
2011-05-01
Keywords
Art History | Cooking, Food, Ketchup, Paul McCarthy, Pop
Department
Department of Art History and Criticism
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/71727
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
In much of the scholarship about Paul McCarthy's video and performance work, the artist's use of food has been described in terms of its anthropomorphic qualities-its ability to masquerade as excrement or blood. Paul McCarthy's historical moment, though, prompts a different understanding of his work, specifically his use of food. The mid-70's saw incredible changes in the ways food was bought, sold and processed. It is the purpose of this thesis to resist the impulse to sensationalize his antics or frame them in terms of their psychosis in order to analyze how in McCarthy's work functions as a critique of the rapidly changing American food industry, specifically through McCarthy's treatment of ketchup and his use of meat. Through the use of commercial food products, this thesis also describes how an art historical connection to Pop Art can be made and provides several alternatives to art historical genealogies proposed for McCarthy's work.
Recommended Citation
Wolf, Robin Frances, "When is Ketchup just Ketchup? : Toward a Sociological Reading of Paul McCarthy's Early Video Art" (2011). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 932.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/932