Sauce, from 1974, is a video performance by Paul McCarthy. The video starts simply enough, a table, bottle of ketchup, and a naked man. McCarthy has used condiments in many of his works; ketchup represents blood, mustard is mucus, and mayonnaise is well, you get the idea. For this video, McCarthy ritualistically sponges his body with ketchup, paying a lot of attention to his penis and eventually covers his whole body in ketchup. He mounts the table and goes into the fetal position and begins to moan hoarsely. Now if McCarthy had started moaning “mother” or “momma” it would seem that this video is about wanting to be young again and yearning to be under mothers wing again. But we don’t have those give-away mommy issues; the interpretation to say the least is still open.

McCarthy has had a long and productive career in video based performance art. McCarthy’s early work has been compared to those of the Vienna Actionists, although ultimately much less violent and blood soaked. McCarthy doesn’t agree with this comparison. “Vienna is not Los Angeles. My work came out of kids' television in Los Angeles. I didn’t go through Catholicism and World War II as a teenager; I didn’t live in a European environment. People make references to Viennese art without really questioning the fact that there is a big difference between ketchup and blood”.