Paul McCarthy:YOU LIKE YOGA ….WE LIKE SPEED, Interview by John Beagles and Graham Ramsay, Transcript, 2001

Photo by Daniel Hennessy

"This interview took place in the restaurant at Tate Gallery, Liverpool, 18th October 2001. Paul McCarthy was taking a break from the final adjustments to the installation of his first major retrospective show in the UK. We joined him for a drink along with Tracey Ruddell, from the Tate Press Office.

GR/JB: One of the first things that we wanted to ask you was how you felt about the way your work is written about, specifically in terms of Kristeva, the abject and that whole psychoanalytical take on it? It sometimes feels like a way for the writers to make it intellectually respectable to themselves.
PM: It kind of goes both ways, there are people who just dismiss the work and just talk about it as being abject and not trying to analyse it, but just being dismissive. Then there are writers who are more analytical about it. I’m into it both ways because that’s kind of how it’s made. I’m not trying to make it psychoanalytical but then at the same time I am..."

Read the rest of this interview here, Paul McCarthy on Wikipedia, Beagles and Ramsay's website,