Paul McCarthy: Between Beauty and the Beast

Between Beauty and the Beast: Sculptures, Drawings and Photographs is the catalogue for a 2006 exhibition surveying the scatological, cartoonish, and violent imagery central to Paul McCarthy's work.

Published by Foundation 20/21 in 2007 to accompany a show held at Thread Waxing Space, New York, from October 28 through December 30, 2006, the 56-page hardcover reproduces sculpture, drawing, and photography drawn across McCarthy's practice, with text by Sam Lipsyte and editing by Tim Nye. The book's wood-veneer boards, rounded corners, and bubble-lettered title mimic a children's book, a design choice that sets its scatological and phallic imagery against a register of innocence.

McCarthy (b. 1945, Salt Lake City) has used performance, sculpture, and video since the 1970s to stage grotesque inversions of consumer and entertainment culture, work shown at the Moderna Museet, the New Museum, and Tate Modern; this catalogue gathers strands of that practice around the recurring pairing named in its title.