McCarthy's work is heavily influenced by
Viennese Actionism, seeking to break the limitations of painting by using the body as a paintbrush or even canvas; later, he incorporated bodily fluids or food into his works. In a 1974 video,
Painting, Wall Whip, he painted with his head and face, "smearing his body with paint and then with ketchup, mayonnaise or raw meat and, in one case, feces." His work evolved from pushing painting to the limit, using the body as canvas and as paintbrush, and eventually substituting bodily fluids or food for paint and then moving on to psychosexual events that fly in the face of social convention, testing the emotional limits of both artist and viewer. An example of this is his 1976 piece
Class Fool, where McCarthy threw himself around a ketchup spattered
UCSD classroom until dazed and injured. He then vomited several times and inserted a
Barbie doll into his rectum. The piece ended when the audience could no longer stand to watch his performance.
McCarthy's work in the 1990s, such as
Painter (1995), often seeks to undermine the idea of "the myth of artistic greatness" and attacks the perception of the heroic male artist.
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