Paul McCarthy

McCarthy’s work explores fundamental issues of human identity, from the body to social interaction. It confronts and obliterates notions of classical unity and the harmony of human proportion and form, and often questions norms of social interaction in domestic situations.
In Penis Hat the pirate is not the swashbuckling hero from storybooks. Instead McCarthy portrays an intimidating and wretched pirate, emphasizing a lifestyle of danger and debauchery on the margins of society. A captain's life is his ship—or so the saying goes; here McCarthy literally transforms the body of the ship into the body of the pirate. The ribs of the ship are also his ribs, windows and holes are bodily orifices, oars signify limbs, and canons resemble penises and a nose. This penis/weapon motif alludes to both warfare and sexual conquest and exudes a potent masculinity. However, if amputation occurred, as texts at the bottom of the drawing and corresponding red spurts through the work explicitly reference, the pirate would lose his power and manliness. By transforming the iconic figure of the pirate through brutal images of debauchery and castration, in this large drawing McCarthy powerfully critiques stereotypes of masculinity.