Paul McCarthy was born in 1945, in Salt Lake City, USA. Today he lives and works in California. He received his BFA in painting from San Francisco Art Institute, and received his MFA at the University of Southern California, where he studied film, video, and art. From 1982 to 2002, he taught performance, video, installation, and performance art history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

McCarthy’s works include performance, installation, film, and other genres, best known for their highly provocative nature. McCarthy’s works often express strong criticism towards consumerism in American culture, symbolized by Disneyland, B-Movies, Soap Operas and Comics.

His performance art and psychosexual events aim to test the emotional limits of both artist and viewer. His work has been shown in the 1993 Venice Biennale and in exhibitions at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), The Guggenheim Museum Soho (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and Musee d’Art Contemporain (Lausanne, Switzerland), among many others.