Iggy orange streetwise knit sweater

MIKE KELLEY

STEDELIJK MUSEUM AMSTERDAM

DELMONICO BOOKS PRESTEL Munich, London, New York

MIKE KELLEY

Mike Kelley is organized by Stedelijk Museum Director Ann Goldstein, in cooperation with The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. The curator of the first concept is Eva Meyer-Hermann.

Edited by EVA MEYER-HERMANN and LISA GABRIELLE MARK

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Foreword Ann Goldstein

WORK, 1974–2012 John C. Welchman

FAKE ROCK: MIKE KELLEY’S MUSIC Branden W. Joseph

MIKE KELLEY AND THE COMEDIC John C. Welchman

MIKE KELLEY: SUBLEVEL George Baker

INTERVIEW WITH MIKE KELLEY Eva Meyer-Hermann

Checklist of the Exhibition Exhibition History Performances, Readings, and Other Events Videography Discography Selected Bibliography Photo Credits

CONTENTS

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One of the most significant and influential artists of our time, Mike Kelley made an indelible contri- bution to contemporary art. Over a career that spanned thirty-five years, he produced a staggering, dazzling, fearless body of artworks in every form and medium, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, installations, performances, videos, photographs, collaborative pieces, critical texts, and music. Kelley acutely examined systems of cultural identity, production, power, and belief. He looked at history, art, craft, literature, popular culture, sexuality, philosophy, education, class, and religion, exposing their connections and contradictions, and in so doing, our own.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954, Kelley attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the early 1970s and moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to pursue his master’s degree at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), a school known for its roots in Conceptual art, also fundamental to his own practice. He studied with such artists as Laurie Anderson, David Askevold, John Baldessari, Jonathan Borofsky, Douglas Huebler, and Judy Pfaff, and his classmates included Ericka Beckman, James Casebere, Timothy Martin, John Miller, Tony Oursler, Lari Pittman, Stephen Prina, Jim Shaw, Mitchell Syrop, Benjamin Weissman, Christopher Williams, and Megan Williams, among many others.

Living and working in Los Angeles for over three-and-a half decades, Kelley was a dynamic and powerful presence through his artworks, writings, teaching, curatorial projects, and music, as well as his numerous collaborations with artists such as Cameron Jamie, Paul McCarthy, Oursler, Anita Pace, Prina, Mike Smith, Sonic Youth, and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, among others. He raised the bar by embracing virtually every medium and discipline available to him—producing a rich, complex, and voluminous body of work—but also by constructing and conducting himself as an artist with courage, conviction, and impeccable professionalism.

Kelley’s work has been influential not only to his many peers and students in the United States and Europe but also to subsequent generations of artists who have been challenged and inspired by his provocative oeuvre. With this exhibition, which opened less than a year after his sudden and tragic death, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is honored to bring his work to an even wider audience. It is especially fitting that the first major retrospective of Kelley’s work in nearly twenty years is initiated in Europe, where he has been represented in a wide range of exhibitions and included in numerous public and private collections, including those here in the Netherlands.

Kelley’s remarkable oeuvre is the inspiration and driving force for this exhibition, which former Stedelijk Museum Director Gijs van Tuyl envisioned and initiated with the artist in 2006, based on a deeply rooted respect and enthusiasm for his work as well as a recognition of his international significance. It was van Tuyl’s wish that when the Stedelijk reopened after its expansion and renovation, its first major international exhibition would be a large-scale survey of Kelley’s work. It is appropriate that this project was initiated at this institution, with its esteemed history of exhibiting internationally renowned artists and its impressive holdings of contemporary art, which include two major works from Kelley’s epic project Day Is Done, 2005.

FOREWORD

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generous efforts and assistance from the artist’s galleries, including Electronic Arts Intermix, Emi Fontana"/"West of Rome, Los Angeles and Milan; Gagosian Gallery, New York and London; Jablonka Galerie, Berlin and Cologne; Metro Pictures, New York; Patrick Painter Inc., Los Angeles; and Wako Works of Art, Tokyo.

We are especially grateful for the steadfast commitment of the Stedelijk Museum’s dedicated Supervisory Board, including Chairman Alexander Ribbink; current members Cees de Bruin, Rob Defares, Marry de Gaay Fortmann, Guusje ter Horst, Constantijn van Orange-Nassau, and Willem de Rooij; and recently retired members Yoeri Albrecht, Jacobina Brinkman, and Maria Hlavajova. We also extend our warm appreciation to the City of Amsterdam and Alderman Carolien Gehrels for their enduring support of the museum. We are deeply grateful to the Turing Foundation, which honored the Stedelijk with the prestigious and generative Turing Art Grant in 2009, which made this exhibition possible and led the way for subsequent funding. At the Turing Foundation, our special appreciation goes to Pieter and Francoise Geelen, and Milou Halbsema and Ellen Wilbrink. I also want to express our sincerest gratitude to Cees and Inge de Bruin-Heijn, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and All Art Initiatives for their generous support, as well as to Rabobank, principal sponsor of the presentation of the exhibition here in Amsterdam.

Van Tuyl invited independent curator Eva Meyer-Hermann to serve as guest curator for the project. She had previously organized the acclaimed exhibition Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms for the Stedelijk Museum in 2007 and conceived the Kelley survey as a thematic retrospective titled Mike Kelley: Themes & Variations from 35 Years. I am exceedingly grateful to Meyer-Hermann for her invaluable and exhaustive contributions to the foundation and development of the exhibition and to this catalogue, for which she serves as coeditor. A highlight of the publication is the very important and insightful interview that she conducted with the artist in November 2011, the last before his death.

Before I came to the Stedelijk to serve as director in 2010, while I was still working at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), I was connected to this exhibition as one of the partici- pants in the international tour. It certainly added to my excitement at assuming my position that I would inherit this project, largely because I knew and admired the work—and Mike—so deeply. It has been a privilege to be able to honor and fulfill the museum’s commitment to him and shepherd the exhibition to fruition, buoyed by the anticipation of seeing our beautiful new galleries filled with his extraordinary work.

In its early stages, this project was enriched immeasurably by the consultation and participation of the artist himself. Following his untimely death at the beginning of 2012 and in consideration of the profoundly transformed circumstances, the exhibition concept shifted from a thematic approach toward an overview that would focus primarily on bodies of work in roughly chronologi- cal order. My colleagues and I were privileged in that the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts joined us to bring the project to fruition as a celebration of his life and work. We are truly indebted to Executive Director Mary Clare Stevens and to the trustees of the foundation for their tremen- dous support and for collaborating with me in organizing the exhibition. I want to express my utmost gratitude to Paul Schimmel, Jim Shaw, Mary Clare Stevens, Marnie Weber, and John C. Welchman for their kindness, encouragement, and indefatigable efforts. Though they were thrust into an extremely difficult situation, they have assumed their new roles with tremendous thought- fulness and care, committed to maintaining the best interests of Kelley’s work and legacy. I also wish to extend my deepest appreciation to the Kelley Studio, including Scott Benzel, Tim Jackson, Mark Lightcap, and Abel McHone, as well as Lilit Barseghyan, Matt Connolly, Molly Fitzjarrald, Kate Hoffman, Sarah Lee, Tobjorn Velvi, Jennie Warren, and all of the individuals who worked with the artist over the years. Not only have they enriched this project; it could not have been realized without their invaluable knowledge, expertise, and passion.

Our deepest gratitude goes to each of the institutional and private lenders for their generosity and goodwill. Many of them had longtime, close personal and professional relationships with the artist; this project is enriched by their insights, support, and counsel. We are also indebted to the

We are delighted that following its presentation in Amsterdam, the exhibition will tour to Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. We extend our appreciation to Alfred Pacquement, Sophie Duplaix, Didier Ottinger, Yvon Figueras, and Annalisa Rimmaudo at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Glenn Lowry, Klaus Biesenbach, Connie Butler, Peter Eleey, Ann Temkin, and Ramona Bronkar Bannayan at The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1, New York; and Jeffrey Deitch, Bennett Simpson, Susan Jenkins, Rosanna Hemerick, Naomi Abe, and Jang Park at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for their steadfast support and close cooperation.

The most comprehensive publication on the artist to date, this beautiful volume was envisioned by Kelley to be an overview of this work, which would have been impossible without the collaboration and expertise of many individuals. We are proud that it is copublished with DelMonico Books"/"Prestel and we are deeply grateful to Mary DelMonico for her enthusiasm and dedication. We extend our sincerest appreciation to Eva Meyer-Hermann, for her tremendous contributions and distinctive vision, and to Lisa Gabrielle Mark, who brought this publication to fruition with her magnificent expertise and unwavering commitment to excellence. This remarkable book is designed by acclaimed Los Angeles–based graphic designer Lorraine Wild of Green Dragon Office, who worked closely with Kelley on most of his publications of the past two decades; theirs was a remarkable collaboration between and artist and a designer, and this book testifies to Lorraine’s inestimable talents, empathy, and loving devotion to the artist’s vision. We also wish to thank Ching Wang of Green Dragon Office for her extraordinary and exhaustive efforts and Stedelijk Museum Project Manager Sophie Tates for her early editorial assistance. We are very proud that this catalogue significantly advances

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Throughout the years of its organization, this project has been honored by many other individuals, who in numerous ways have contributed to and enriched it with their inspiration and support: Juana de Aizpuru, Sandra Alvarez de Toledo, Richard Armstrong, Joe Austin, Stephanie Barron, Ulrike Baumgart, Arno Bergmans, Caitlin Bermingham, Petra Blaisse, Michael Black, Michael Yasmine Bouzou, Wendy and Robert Brandow, Blake Byrne, Eileen and Michael Cohen, Stuart Comer, Rena Conti, Benoit Dagron, Donna De Salvo, Eric Decelle, Ernst van Deursen, Douglas Druick, Julia Dzwonkoski, Sjarel Ex, Fiona Elliott, Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz, Harald Falckenberg and Larissa Hilbig, Angelika Felder, Rosamund Felsen, Emi Fontana, Mark Francis, Petra Franz, Larry Gagosian, Vicky Gambill, Susanne Ghez, Barbara Gladstone, Joni and Monte Gordon, Michael Govan, Trulee Grace Hall, Bärbel Grässlin, Thomas Grässlin and Nanette Hagstotz, Channing Hansen, Richard Hawkins, Joanne Heyler, Julian Heynen, Stephanie Hodor, Maja Hoffmann, Barbara Honrath, Ghislaine Hussenot, Rafael Jablonka, Cameron Jamie, Marc Jancou, Natascha and Allard Jakobs, George and Debbie Kelley, Franz König, Kasper König, Walther König, Rem Koolhaas, Barbera van Kooij, Karola Kraus, Jutta Koether, Marion Lambert, Kourosh Larizadeh and Luis Pardo, Margaret and Daniel S. Loeb, Carey Loren, Patricia Marshall, T. Kelly Mason, Alberta Mayo, Paul and Karen McCarthy, Dana Miller, John Miller and Aura Rosenberg, Ivan Moskowitz, Matt Mullican, Fredrik Nilsen, Albert Oehlen, Magnus Olafsson, Sam Orlofsky, Tony Oursler, Anita Pace, Patrick Painter, Peter and Mischi Pakesch, Anne Pontégnie, Emily and Mitch Rales, Bob Rennie, Carey Fuchs, and Wendy Chang, Janelle Reiring, Michael and Ellen Ringier, James Rondeau, Vivian Rowan, Ralph Rugoff, Christina Ruf, Beatrix Ruf, Karel Schampers, Johannes Schmidt, Wilhelm and Gaby Schürmann, Prof. Bernhart Schwenk, William Vargas Silva, Per Skarstedt, Barry Sloane, Mike Smith, Valerie Smith, Norah and Norman Stone, Elisabeth Sussman, Benedikt Taschen, Diana Thater, Franco Ubbriaco, Joel Wachs, Kiyoshi Wako, Alissa Warshaw, Adam Weinberg, Ari Weisman, Detlef Weitz, Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner, Christopher Williams, Helene Winer, Iwan Wirth, and Christopher Wool.

Initiated during his lifetime and, sadly, realized after his death, this exhibition is underscored by Kelley’s expansive brilliance, tremendous integrity, intellectual acuity, and impeccable profession- alism. He left us much too soon, and while his absence is still painfully present, we are grateful that he left us with an extraordinary oeuvre and a legacy that will only become more and more vivid as time passes. It is our sincere hope that this project begins to fulfill our responsibility to honor his exceptional example as we celebrate his life and work.

ANN GOLDSTEIN Director

the scholarship on Kelley’s work, and we are profoundly grateful to John C. Welchman, Branden W. Joseph, and George Baker for their outstanding essays. Those essays—together with Welchman’s remarkable project descriptions and Meyer-Hermann’s in-depth interview with the artist— ensure that this will be a significant and lasting resource.

Six years in the making, this project has been graced by the support of numerous colleagues here at the Stedelijk Museum, and its successful realization is a testament to the dedication of the entire staff. I thank former Business Director Patrick van Mil, Interim Business Director Erik Gerritsen, and Managing Director Karin van Gilst for their advice and encouragement. I am deeply indebted to Executive Assistant Saskia van der Geest for her indefatigable efforts and professionalism, as well as to the members of our management team: General Counsel"/"Board Secretary Vanessa van Baasbank, Head of Collections and Presentations Nicole Delissen, Head of Operations Nicole Kuppens, Head of Development Maudy van Ommen, Head of Education and Visitor Services Rixt Hulshoff Pol, Head of Marketing and Communication Emelie Schuttevaer, and former Manager of Human Resources Petra de Graaf. Assistant Curator Claire van Els provided essential support during the last months of the exhibition’s development and installation. Management of the project was ably overseen by Project Managers Lucas Bonekamp and Anniek Vrij, along with Project Assistants Menno Dudok van Heel, Henri Sandront, and Els Visscher. I am particularly grateful to Senior Registrar Ankie van den Berg for organizing the transportation of hundreds of objects, and to our remarkable exhibition installation and art handling team, including Feroza Verberne, Hans Lentz, Gert Hoogeveen, Moniem Ibrahim, Joppe Claassen, Marc Bongaarts, Jan Koops, and Johan Rietveld. I also extend my deepest appreciation to our magnificent conservation staff: Sandra Weerdenburg, Susanne Meijer, Rebecca Timmermans, Monica Marchesi, Tessa Rietveld, Soji Chou, Meta Chavannes, Louise Wijnberg, and Netta Krumperman.

Curator of Public Programs Hendrik Folkerts, along with his colleagues Britte Sloothaak and Menno Dudok van Heel, enriched the project with a wonderful roster of related public programs. I also wish to thank our education department colleagues, including Rixt Hulshoff Pol, Marlous van Gastel, and Dorine van Kampen. It is a particular delight that our fantastic peer educators, the Blikopeners, have included work by Kelley in their “Blikopeners Spot.” Deepest gratitude goes to our development team, including Maudy van Ommen and Kyra Wessels, for their invaluable support and fundraising efforts. I wish to acknowledge the terrific work done by our marketing and communications team, including Emelie Schuttevaer, Marie-José Raven, Annematt Russeler, Willemien Broekman, and Inge Willemsen. I also thank Head of Corporate Security Geert Schreurs and Head of Finance Dennis Ewald.

My appreciation also goes to Philippa Polskin, Stuart Klawans, Jennifer Essen, and Justin Holden, and Lillian Goldenthal of Polskin Arts & Communications Counselors. And I am always grateful to our fabulous graphic designers, Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen of Mevis & van Deursen, Amsterdam, for their inspiration and for the beautiful design of our exhibition-related materials.

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Destroy All Monsters (DAM) EARLY PERFORMATIVE SCULPTURES AND OBJECTS (1977–79) Birdhouses (1978–79) PERFORMANCES (1976–86) The Poltergeist (1979, with David Askevold) The Little Girl’s Room (1980) Meditation on a Can of Vernors The Banana Man (1983) Confusion (1982–83) Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985) The Sublime (1984) Australiana (1984) Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1985–86) Half a Man (1987–93) DRAWINGS Incorrect Sexual Models (1987!/!2003) Pay for Your Pleasure (1988) From My Institution to Yours (1987!/!2003); Loading Dock Drawings (1984) Seventy-Four Garbage Drawings and One Bush (1988) Sack Drawings (1988) Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof (1989!/!2009) Liquid Diet (1989!/!2006) Reconstructed History (1989) Empathy Displacement: Humanoid Morphology (1990) Banners from College Campus Flyers (1990–93) Nostalgic Depiction of the Innocence of Childhood and Manipulating Mass Produced Idealized Objects (both 1990) Alma Pater (Wolverine Den) (1990) Craft Morphology Flow Chart (1991) Mike Kelley’s Proposal for The Decoration of an Island of Conference Rooms (with Copy Room) for an Advertising Agency Designed by Frank Gehry (1990–92) Lumpenprole (1991)!/!Riddle of the Sphinx (1991–92) Lump Drawings and Related Works (1991) Ahh!…!Youth! (1991) The John Reed Club (1992) Documenta IX (1992) Heidi: Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative Media- Engram Abreaction Release Zone (1992, with Paul McCarthy) Beat of the Traps (1992, with Anita Pace and Stephen Prina) Roth!/!Mouse!/!Wolverton Drawing Exercises (1993) VIDEO The Uncanny (1993!/!2004) Missing Time: Works on Paper 1974–1976, Reconsidered (1993–94)

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Untitled (Dust Balls), Silver Ball (both 1994), and Related Works The Thirteen Seasons (Heavy on the Winter) (1994) Towards a Utopian Arts Complex and Educational Complex (both 1995) We Communicate Only through Our Shared Dismissal of the Pre-linguistic (1995) Untitled, (1996–97) Land O’ Lakes (1996) The Poetics Project (1977–1997, with Tony Oursler) An Architecture Composed of the Paintings of Richard M. Powers and Francis Picabia (1997, with Paul McCarthy) Sod and Sodie Sock Comp O.S.O. (1998, with Paul McCarthy) Odd Man Out (1998–99) Sublevel (1998) Missing Time Color Exercises (1998!/!2002) Categorical Imperative and Morgue (both 1999) Unisex Love Nest (1999) Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses (1999) Framed and Frame (Miniature Reproduction “Chinatown Wishing Well” Built by Mike Kelley after “Miniature Reproduction ‘Seven Star Cavern’ Built by Prof. H. K. Lu”) (1999) PHOTOGRAPHY Runway for Interactive DJ Event (1999–2000) Katy Keene Drawings (2000) Memory Ware (2000–2010) Black Out (2001) Lingam and Yoni (2002) Reversals, Recyclings, Completions, and Late Additions (2002) Light (Time)-Space Modulator (2002) Carpet and Wood Grain Paintings (2003) A Fax Transmission from: Oct. 21, 1986, 1:07pm (1986!/!2004) Kandors (1999, 2007, 2009, 2011) Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #1, #2–32, #33, #34, #35, #36, #36B (2000–2011) Hermaphrodite Drawings (2005–06) Rose Hobart II (2006) Profondeurs Vertes (2006) Petting Zoo (2007) Horizontal Tracking Shots (2009) Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Party Palace (2009) A Voyage of Growth and Discovery (2009, with Michael Smith) Mechanical Toy Guts (1991!/!2012) Mobile Homestead (2005– )

The material, generic, and conceptual profusion of Mike Kelley’s work as an artist over some four decades is remarkable and sometimes confound- ing. As plans for the exhibition developed, Kelley produced or sanctioned most of the headings of the illustrated summaries on the following pages in discussion with Eva Meyer-Hermann, which I have some what revised and augmented. They are intended as a road map for his work in performance, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, video, large- scale intermedia installation, music, and sound—as well as their many overlaps and combinations. Neither complete nor exhaustive, these outlines—with some projects discussed in little detail and a few barely mentioned—nonetheless offer brief descriptions of Kelley’s richly var- iegated practices and indicate the relations staged between them. Texts and images are arranged in generally chronological order. So while a few of the subject headings (Performance, Drawings, Photography, Video) summarize Kelley’s use of these particular modes and materials, which span his career, the majority pick out individual bodies of work, organized under the titles used by the artist to designate specific works or projects (e.g. Unisex Love Nest, Light (Time)-Space Modulator); works made over the course of several years under recurring thematic headings (Kandors, Extracurricular Activities Projective Reconstructions); major collabora- tions (Sod and Sodie Sock Comp O.S.O. or A Voyage of Growth and Discovery, with Paul McCarthy and Michael Smith, respectively); and both focused (Liquid Diet, Hermaphrodite Drawings) and more complex, multipart exhi- bitions (Half a Man, Educational Complex, Black Out). Written shortly before he passed away, one description (for The Little Girl’s Room, 1980) is by Kelley. I have also included bibliographical references to extended analyses by the artist and others of the work discussed in each individual entry; again, these are brief selections signposting the most relevant texts and passages in the main anthologies of Kelley’s writings (Foul Perfection and Minor Histories) and the catalogues and secondary literature. Please note that these references appear here in abbreviated form; complete infor- mation can be found in the selected bibliography that begins on pages 393.

WORK 1974–2012

JOHN C. WELCHMAN

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Destroy All Monsters (DAM) This experimental band was formed by Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, and Niagara (born Lynn Rovner) in 1973, while Kelley and Shaw were attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. DAM’s improvisational style was rooted in an aesthetics of noise and collage-based composition that created layered combinations of sounds, downplaying conventional musicality. Kelley described DAM as “a pastiche of serious avant-garde music, free jazz, and hard rock, leavened with black humor—a mixture that could definitely be considered proto-punk.” The band took its name from the Japanese film Kaijû sôshingeki (1968), released in the United States in 1969 as Destroy All Monsters. Loren utilized the same name for a magazine he made and distributed from 1976 to 1979. Although Kelley and Shaw moved to the Los Angeles area in 1976 to attend graduate school at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), the band contin- ued for another nine years with numerous other members. In 1995, a “deluxe” box set of recordings from its first three years was released on the Ecstatic Peace"/"Father Yod label. The original lineup of Kelley, Shaw, Loren, and Niagara reunited in 1995; since then the band has performed at exhibitions and music festivals. Additional live and stu- dio recordings have since been released, and in 2007 a selection of films documenting DAM in the 1970s was released as Grow Live Monsters (2007, MVD Visual). Exhibitions devoted to the band’s history include Destroy All Monsters Archive (with Shaw and Loren), Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (1998), in conjunction with the exhibition I Rip You, You Rip Me: Honey, We’re Going Down in History; Hungry for Death, curated by James Hoff and Loren at Printed Matter book- store, New York, (2009); and Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters, PRISM, Los Angeles (2011–12).

page 14 Mike Kelley (right) with John Reed (left) and Jim Shaw (center) in the basement of God’s Oasis, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1975

page 15 Mike Kelley (foreground) performs with Cary Loren and Jim Shaw (on screen via live video feed) as Destroy All Monsters for A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality, 2009, curated by Mike Kelley and Mark Beasley as part of Performa 09, Gramercy Theater, New York, 2009

pages 16 and 17 Murals from Strange Früt: Rock Apocrypha, 2001, an installation by the Destroy All Monsters Collective (Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren) Acrylic on canvas with video; 4 murals: Greetings from Detroit (p. 16, top), 120 × 228 inches (304.8 × 579.12 cm); Mall Culture (p. 16 bottom), 96 × 138 inches (243.84 × 350.52 cm); The Heart of Detroit by Moonlight (p. 17, top), 120 × 204 inches (304.8 × 518.16 cm); Amazing Freaks of the Motor City (p. 17 bottom), 96 × 138 inches (243.84 × 350.52 cm); video: Strange Früt: Rock Apocrypha, (color, sound, 62:11 min.). Dimensions variable

Destroy All Monsters: Geisha This, a compilation of the first six issues of Destroy All Monsters magazine, 1975–1979, 2nd ed. (Oak Park, MI: Book Beat Gallery, 1996).

Liner notes to Destroy All Monsters: 1974–76, Ecstatic Peace"/"Father Yod, 1994, 3 compact discs.

Joseph, Branden. “Live Dead: Mike Kelley’s Music.” See in this volume, pp. 312–31.

Kelley, Mike. “The Futurist Ballet (1973).” In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 176–79.

____. “Missing Time: Works on Paper, 1974–1976, Reconsidered” (1995). In Minor Histories (2004); see especially p. 65.

____. “To the Throne of Chaos Where the Thin Flutes Pipe Mindlessly (Destroy All Monsters: 1974"/"77)” (1993). Available at http://www. mikekelley.com/DAMthrone.html.

____, and Dan Nadel, eds. Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters, 1973–1977, exh. cat. (2011); see especially Nicole Rudick, “In God’s Oasis,” pp. 4–14.

Welchman, John C., ed. On the Beyond: A Conversation Between Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and John C. Welchman (2011), pp. 32, 44–65.

16 17Destroy All Monsters (DAM)

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EARLY PERFORMATIVE SCULPTURES AND OBJECTS (1977–79) This group of works subsumes several categories, the largest being a series of Early Performative Sculptures, sometimes referred to by Kelley or his commentators as

“demonstrated” objects. Some were conceived for the artist’s early performances as instruments to be “played” or activated—whether in the form of drums (Moaning Drum and All Seeing Eye, both 1977); megaphones and their variants (The Base Man, 1979; Perspectaphone, 1977–78); or the handmade, cardboard instruments related to Tube Music—Wind and Crickets (1978–79), The Flying Flower (1977–78), and Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object (1978–79). Others were more complex com- posite assemblages, such as The Spirit Collector (1978) and Spirit Voices (1977–79), which incorporated playback and recording devices (a tape recorder and audio deck, respectively). Kelley classified the Birdhouses as Early Performative Sculptures.

A second category, described simply as “Early Sculptures,” includes Faux Woodgrain Frame (1977), Infinity on a Stick (1977), Last Tool in Use (1977), Nest, Thread Balancer (1977), and Two Sound Producing Objects from A Dream (1978). The referential allu- siveness of these works, signaled in their titles, is underlined by Kelley’s description of one of them—Upward Creative Spiral (1977–79), a phonograph player with a spiral image on its turntable—as an “allegorical sculpture.” A third group of works, including Indianana—main prop (1978), a small circular fortification, and the hourglass-shaped Big Tent Prop (1979), functioned as props for specific performances.

page 18 Kelley in his CalArts studio circa 1977 with the main performance prop from Indianana (1978)

page 19 Performance Related Objects, 1998 Mixed-media Dimensions variable. Wood platform: 6 × 239.75 × 96.125 inches (15.24 × 609 × 244 cm) left to right The Spirit Collector (1978), Spirit Voices (1978–79), Indianana— Three B!/!W leitmotif photographs (1978), Indianana—main prop (1978), Two Machines for the Intellect (1978–79), The Base Man (1979), Tube Music— Wind and Crickets (1978–79), Tube Music—The Flying Flower (1977–78), Tube Music—Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object (1978–79)

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page 20 left to right Perspectaphone, 1977–78, Moaning Drum, 1977

page 21 Clockwise from top left Amber-Gray, 1982; Nest, 1977–78; and Big Tent Prop, 1979

Early Performative Sculptures and Objects (1977–79)

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page 22 Top to bottom Bouncing Sheep Head, 1977–78

Two Sound Producing Objects from a Dream, 1978

page 23 Top to bottom The Monitor and the Merrimac; The Monitor and the Merrimac (Three Leitmotifs), 1979!/!2005; Performance Prop Models, 1979; and The Spirit Collector, 1978

Early Performative Sculptures and Objects (1977–79)

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Kelley, Mike. Interview with John Miller. In Mike Kelley (1992, Art Resources Transfer), p. 8.

Kelley, Mike. Interview with Isabelle Graw. In Mike Kelley (1999, Phaidon), pp. 15–16.

Birdhouses (1978–79) I wanted!…!an artwork that you couldn’t raise, there was no way that you could make it better than it was. Its function as art actually makes it more uncomfortable. —Mike Kelley

Mostly made during his final year at CalArts and shown as part of his MFA exhibition in 1978, Kelley’s series of eight birdhouses (Home for a Pair of Birds has been lost) and the associated Existence Problems Chute (1977, also lost) and Chicken Brooder (1978"/"90) use an ironic DIY vernacular, often associated with manly acts of fatherhood, to strike back at the mannerisms of Conceptual art. Cued, at first, by how-to woodworking manuals, the handcrafted, plywood birdhouses were named for seemingly arbitrary conditions, as each structure was designated for use only by certain types of birds (“Upside Down,” “Near” or “Far,” “Wide” or “Tall”), correlated with apparently un- avian concepts (such as “Gothic,” “Catholic,” “Infinity”), or—as in the last of the series, Birdhouse with an Egg Chute (1979)—associated with the ridiculous artist"/"bird two- step noted in the subtitle: A Collaboration: the bird has to build the floor so the eggs won’t roll out. Sometimes exhibited with associated demonstration drawings, also known as

“title drawings,” the oddball blank nostalgia of these fabrications was an early manifes- tation of Kelley’s interest in crafts and other “debased” cultural products. They also inaugurate his career-long investigation of imaginary or remembered architectural forms, detached from—often flouting—the practical requirements of habitation.

page 25 Catholic Birdhouse, 1978

2726 Birdhouses (1978–79)

page 26 Title Drawing for Birdhouse for a Bird That Is Near and a Bird That Is Far and two views of Birdhouse for a Bird That is Near and a Bird That is Far, both 1978

page 27 Title Drawing for Birdhouse for Wide Bird to Tall Bird and two views of Wide Bird to Tall Bird, both 1978 Title drawing: ink on paper; birdhouse: wood, paint Title drawing: 9.5 × 6 inches (24.1 × 15.2 cm); birdhouse: 11.5 × 40.5 × 12 inches (29.2 × 102.9 × 30.5 cm)

page 28 Birdhouse with an Egg Chute, 1979

page 29 Gothic Birdhouse, 1978

28 29Birdhouses (1978–79)

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The various parts of Poetry in Motion (programmed in “An Evening of Performance, Audio Tape, and Film” at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions [LACE], March 4, 1978) established the early orientation of Kelley’s performances around a series of exchanges between objects or “demonstrational sculptures,” writing, and vocalization. The projected voice itself was the organizing principle of Perspectaphone, which used large and small megaphone prop-objects to collide notions of amplification and per- spective. In Tube Music, a suite of short performances including Tower of Babel, Wind and Crickets, The Flying Flower, and Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object (all 1978), Kelley “played” various handmade cardboard instruments to open up questions about

“pop spiritualism.” This was also the subject of Spirit Voices (performed with Krieger at LACE, 1978; associated objects, 1977–79)—which used tubes, foil diaphragms, a bass drum, and off-stage “Spirit Collector” to generate, recycle, and interrupt white noise, imbued (or otherwise) with voices from the beyond—and the photographic works that make up The Poltergeist (1979, with David Askevold).

EARLY PERFORMANCES Between the late 1970s, while he was still at CalArts, and the mid-80s, Kelley produced a remarkable cycle of performances that launched his career as an artist. His earliest pieces included Dancing Partner (fall 1976), The Pole Dance (spring 1977, with Donald Krieger and Tony Oursler; remade by Kelley, Oursler, and Anita Pace as a performance for video in 1997), and Oracle at Delphi (spring 1978), which initiated his sustained interest in contemporary dance and “embodiment.” The first performance was an investigation of partnering and personification; the second a humorous critique of pro- grammatic Bauhaus ideas about space, movement, and geometry (especially those of Oskar Schlemmer); the third a lampoon of artsy ritualization. All were antithetical to the reduction and austerity of then-prevalent Minimalist and Conceptualist practice.

PERFORMANCES (1976–86)

Oracle at Delphi, 1978 Performance, CalArts studio view

Two performance views of Perspectaphone, 1978 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 1978; right: with Donald Krieger

Kelley in studio performing Tube Music—Unstoppable Force vs. Immovable Object, 1978–79

Performance view of Spirit Voices, 1977–79 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 1978, with Donald Krieger

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Performance view of Indianana, 1978 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 1978

top to bottom (left to right) Performance view of The Big Tent, 1979 Foundation for Art Resources, Los Angeles, 1979

Performance view of The Monitor and the Merrimac, 1979 Foundation for Art Resources, Los Angeles, 1979

Mike Kelley in rehearsal for The Parasite Lily, 1980

Performance views of The Parasite Lily, 1980 Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 1980; The Kitchen, New York, 1980, with Michael Smith

Performances (1976–86)

PERFORMANCES, 1978–86 Between 1978 and the early 80s, Kelley’s performances became less compartmental- ized and episodic, and their circulation around specific props became more open and hectic as the performative supports morphed first into contextual environments and eventually into installational arrangements of drawings, acrylic paintings, and other materials. Although Indianana (LACE, 1978) still turned on the model of a spiral fort placed in the center of the performance arena, and The Monitor and the Merrimac (Foundation for Art Resources [FAR], Los Angeles, 1979) was likewise oriented to miniature versions of the eponymous ironclad battleships from the American Civil War, The Parasite Lily (at The Kitchen, New York, and part of the performance festival

“Public Spirit: Live Art L.A.,” LACE, 1980) was an introverted bio-Romantic solilo- quy on decay, organized around a cardboard flower and various tokens of “humdrum domesticity” but performed in overblown rhetorical clichés under vampiric pink light. Performed along with The Big Tent (a meditation on the scale of things—and thoughts) at FAR on the same evening as The Monitor and the Merrimac, My Space also featured an exchange with a flower, accompanied by the artist’s frantic drumbeats. As Kelley put it in his annotation to an associated diagrammatic drawing, My Space was “a space where my behavior is not influenced by another living thing.”

Three Valleys (performed in a private space, sponsored by FAR, Los Angeles, 1980) launched another move in Kelley’s burgeoning repertoire of genres: the travelogue— an idiom he also adopted in parts of Monkey Island (1983), Australiana (1984), Black Out (2001), and other projects. While The Banana Man (1983) was initially intended as a performance, Kelley realized that the need for multiple perspectives necessi- tated a change in medium, thus inaugurating three decades of profound experiment with video. Prompted by the logo of a winking, bearded man on the Vernors ginger- ale label, Meditation on a Can of Vernors (1981) inaugurated a celebrated sequence of discursively prolix reflections on social, aesthetic, and philosophical issues: American landscape painting and theories of nature (Meditation); order and disorganization (Confusion: A Play in Seven Sets, Each Set More Spectacular and Elaborate Than the Last, 1982–83, and Monkey Island, 1982–83); and ideas of transcendence, sublimity, and exploration (The Sublime, 1984), interlaced with conjectures about names and the

“possessive” (Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile, 1986). At this point “per- formance” was virtually dissolved into installation and published “script.”

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LATER AND RELATED WORK In addition to live “solo” performances and appearances with various bands (Destroy All Monsters, The Poetics, Extended Organ, and others), Kelley made several radio broad- casts—including The Peristaltic Airwaves, a live radio performance aired on KPFK, Los Angeles, on September 30, 1986—and participated in a number of collaborative and

“interactive” performances, readings, and video presentations with Michael Smith (“The Artist in Television,” Telesatellite Conference, University of California, Los Angeles, 1982); Oursler (“X-C,” Beyond Baroque Literary"/"Arts Center, Venice, California, 1983); Ericka Beckman (“Ericka Beckman"/"Mike Kelley,” Hallwalls, Buffalo, New York, 1983); Bruce and Norman Yonemoto (“Godzilla on the Beach,” Beyond Baroque, 1984); Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose (“100 Reasons—Spank O Rama,” The Lab, San Francisco, 1993); and Paul McCarthy (Heidi House, 1992; Sod and Sodie Sock, 1998).

Beginning with Dancing Partner (1976) and The Pole Dance (1977"/"97), Kelley also made a number of pieces comprising or incorporating dance and movement, several (from 1989 forward) in collaboration with the Los Angeles–based choreographer and dancer Anita Pace. These works include Pansy Metal"/"Clovered Hoof (1989), a zany fashion-show spoof set to music by Motorhead; Beat of the Traps (1992; Kelley, Pace, Stephen Prina), a cacophonous performative overlay of drumming, dance, singing, and recitation; and Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses (1999), which featured two related videos of A Dance Incorporating Movements Derived from Experiments by Harry F. Harlow and Choreographed in the Manner of Martha Graham (1999), choreographed by Pace and danced by Pace and Carl Burkley. Kelley also collaborated with choreographer Kate Foley on the dance sequences in Day Is Done (2005).

Kelley’s later performances included Runway for Interactive DJ Event (1999) and The Thin Monotonous Piping of an Accursed Flute at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California (in conjunction with the exhibition “Beyond the Pink,” spon- sored by the Cortical Foundation, 1998), as well as the theatrical performance A Haute Voix, a collaboration with Franz West at Espace Franquin, Angoulême, France (2000). Beginning in 2004, Kelley performed in benefits at various private residences in and around Los Angeles for the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS): 2004 (with Extended Organ), 2006 (with Ann Magnuson and others), 2007, and 2009 (at a Listening Party with Raymond Pettibon). His last per- formance work and final appearance as a performer was in Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #33 (The Offer), as part of an evening titled “Extracurricular Activity"…"#32, Plus” at Judson Memorial Church, New York, part of Performa 2009.

Kelley, Mike. Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1986).

Martin, Timothy. “Janitor in a Drum: Excerpts from a Performance History.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 56–88.

Production still from Sod and Sodie Sock, 1998

Performances (1976–86)

Top to bottom Performative object, Two Machines for the Intellect, 1978–79

Two performance views of Three Valleys, 1980 Performance sponsored by Foundation for Art Resources, Los Angeles, 1980; with Jill Giegrich, Tony Oursler, and Mitchell Syrop

Video still from 100 Reasons—Spank O Rama, 1991 (with Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, related to 100 Reasons— Spank O Rama, performance at The Lab, San Francisco, 1993)

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Kellein, Thomas. “Is Evil Really Evil?” In Mike Kelley (1992, Kunsthalle Basel), pp. 7, 11–13.

Kelley, Mike. “David Askevold: The California Years” (1998). In Foul Perfection (2003), pp. 194–204.

____. “The Poltergeist” (1979). In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 252–56.

Welchman, John C. “The Mike Kelleys.” In Mike Kelley (1999, Phaidon), pp. 52, 84.

The Poltergeist (1979, with David Askevold) In the late 1970s, Kelley worked with David Askevold, who was teaching at CalArts, to create seven photo-based works—some with text borders and some in color—reminis- cent of nineteenth-century spirit photographs. Kelley performed the role of a medium who makes contact with spirits and other metaphysical forces, which manifest as fake ectoplasm ejected from his orifices. As Kelley noted, the images turn on analo- gies between art and spiritualism: “Occult rituals interest me because they are akin to art-making.” They also correlate spiritual emission with sexual release and the erotic drives associated with adolescence. Their interpretation of performer-cum-medium twists the idea of creative expression (now akin to a type of secretion), while captur- ing a sincere attempt by Kelley (along with Askevold) to investigate the “visionary” persona that makes invisible processes visible through psychosocial practices, akin to desublimation and counter-repression.

page 36 The Poltergeist, 1979

page 37 The Poltergeist, 1979 David Askevold’s part of the work

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The Little Girl’s Room (1980) Kelley wrote the following description for the catalogue accompanying Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–81, curated by Paul Schimmel for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, October 1, 2011, to February 13, 2012:

The Little Girl’s Room and Oh the Pain of it All (both 1980) [see p. 110] were first exhibited at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in 1980 in a three-artist exhibition titled “By-Products.” The other exhibiting artists were Mitchell Syrop and Tony Oursler, who I had met while attending CalArts. In addition to the works men- tioned I also presented prop sculptures related to the performances Indianana (1978) and Three Valleys (1980).

The Little Girl’s Room was my first attempt to present an “installational” version of a performance script. The project grew out of a dream within a dream in which a “little girl” envisioned the face of a pimplike man whose smile revealed an infinity of sharp teeth. After she awoke from her dream she immediately changed the décor of her bedroom from flowery and girlish to geometric (with “Minimalist” gridlike artworks created by her own hand) and illuminated with black light. This stylistic transformation symbolized her entrance into puberty. According to my notes, I initially intended to have a recording of a reading of the performance script play back inside the room, but I did not do this. On the exterior of the room, drawings, photographs, and objects related to the script were dis- played. My notes also reveal that I intended to use, or refer to, these objects in performance, perhaps at the opening of the exhibition. But I did not do this either. As I recall, I decided that the installation should function on its own, and I never did a live version of the script.

Metaphors linked to adolescence especially interested me at this time. For example, the photographic series The Poltergeist (1979) (made in dialogue with David Askevold) explores similar subject matter.

page 38 The Little Girl’s Room, 1980!/!2011 Mixed-media installation Dimensions variable

page 39 Detail of interior of The Little Girl’s Room

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Meditation on a Can of Vernors (1981) Taking the form of what Kelley described as “essentially"…"a monologue,” Meditation on a Can of Vernors was performed at a private residence in Los Angeles, sponsored by LACE, on June 10, 1981, while an exhibition of related drawings, paintings, objects, and props was shown at Riko Mizuno Gallery, Los Angeles, in June and July of 1981. As with many of Kelley’s performances (and some later works) Meditation was prompted by a popular cultural image, in this case the bearded, winking, gnomelike figure fea- tured since the early twentieth century on cans of the artist’s hometown beverage, Vernors ginger ale. Like the Indian maiden on the Land O’ Lakes butter package, the emblem was one of those points of childhood focus and obsession that stayed with the artist well beyond his adolescent years. Studded with puns and innuendos, Kelley’s script offers animated, sometimes unstable, reflections on the conditions of ruling and overlordship, drawing enumerations of the attributes of kings alongside wisecracks about the “seat of power"…"the hot seat.” Meditation is clearly linked to Kelley’s other aberrant disquisitions on American history, such as The Monitor and the Merrimac (1979), while the qualities of greenness and its diminutive and superficial cuddliness connect the gnome to Kelley’s interests in frogs and other green phenomena convened in Confusion (1982), as well as to the work with soft toys and animals made in the later 1980s. No still or moving images exist of the performance itself, but several “set-up photos” including The One-Eyed King (1981) also respond to the Vernors logo (see Photography). A partial transcript of the spoken part of the performance was pub- lished in High Performance, Spring–Summer 1982, p. 101.

page 40 Top to bottom The Future, 1980, and The Past, 1980

page 41 top The Logo on a Can of Vernors Drawn from Memory, 1981

bottom (Left to right) Early American Landscape #1, 1980; Early American Landscape #2, 1982–83

Singerman, Howard. Review of “Reflections [sic] on a Can of Vernors” at LACE, Artforum, December 1981, p. 78.

Welchman, John C. “History and Time in the American Vernacular: Mike Kelley’s Work with Photography.” In Imaging History: Photography after the Fact (2012), pp. 107–09.

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Kelley, Mike. “The Banana Man” (1983). In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 184–87.

Welchman, John C. “Survey: The Mike Kelleys.” In Mike Kelley (1999, Phaidon), pp. 63–64.

The Banana Man (1983) Beginning the script in 1981 and shooting in 1982 with the assistance of students while he was teaching in Minneapolis, this complicated study of character from mul- tiple fragmentary perspectives was Kelley’s first completed video-based project and runs for just over twenty-eight minutes. The piece was based on the vaudeville-style figure the Banana Man, who appeared, among several other places, as a periodic guest on the long-running children’s television program Captain Kangaroo. Despite never having seen the Banana Man perform, Kelley created a structure of improvisation and scripted reenactment based on accounts of those television appearances as reported by the artist’s childhood friends. Motivated by a desire to accommodate rapid shifts in viewpoint, Kelley’s decision to use video permitted additional exploration of character and narrative fragmentation during postproduction, as described in the artist’s state- ment later published in Minor Histories.

page 42 Video stills from The Banana Man (1983)

page 43 Production still of Mike Kelley as the Banana Man

pages 44 and 45 left and right Studies for “The Banana Man,” 1981–82 2 of 4 parts: acrylic, ink, pencil on paper 11 × 14 inches (27.94 × 35.56 cm) each; 2 of 4 parts shown

44 45The Banana Man (1983)

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Confusion (1982–83) Confusion: A Play in Seven Sets, Each Set More Spectacular and Elaborate Than the Last was first performed at the Mandeville [now University] Art Gallery at the University of California, San Diego, in 1982 and presented on April 14 of that year as part of Film in the Cities, Minneapolis, and at the Pilot 1 Theater, Los Angeles, in 1983. It was shown as an installation at the Mandeville Art Gallery in April, 1982; the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1982; and (with Monkey Island works) at Metro Pictures Gallery, New York, in 1982, as well as in two group exhibitions: 5 from L.A.: Kiki Maclinnis, Michael Kelley, Mary Jones, Michael McMillen, Jeffrey Vallance; and the Fifth Biennale of Sydney, Private Symbol: Social Metaphor, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1984). As with many of Kelley’s earlier performances and associated works, Confusion takes up large, imponderable questions about order, rationality, and sequence, beginning with conjectures about the decay of “linear devel- opment” and “the limit of knowledge” interspersed with a Kelleyan disquisition on

“set” theory and punctuated by the refrain: “it’s so confusing.” Riffing on memory and plagiarism, solipsism, and self-identity, the piece concludes with a cascade of associa- tive allusions to frogs—conceived as bored, existential, cannibalistic, disgusting, and finally as “protean blob[s]” “representative of the universe.” The sets and installations featured a schematic image of a frog face on a quilted bedspread that doubled as a stage curtain; a projector and slide show titled “An Actor Portrays Boredom and Exhibits His Frog Knick Knack Collection,” featuring Kelley’s then-landlord (later made into a set of photographs); a green, circular, segmented table, Six-Seventh and One-Seventh Table (with a wrapped “present” on top in its final incarnation); and a series of asso- ciated photographs, drawings, acrylic paintings on paper, and performative objects. The installation Confusion (1982–83) is in the permanent collection at the Abteiberg Museum, Mönchengladbach, Germany.

page 46 Installation view of Confusion 1982–83, University of California, San Diego, 1982

page 47 Top to bottom Performance view of Confusion: A Play in Seven Sets, Each More Spectacular and Elaborate Than the Last, 1982 Pilot Theater, Los Angeles, 1983

Performance view of Confusion: A Play in Seven Sets, Each More Spectacular and Elaborate Than the Last, 1982 Mandeville Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, 1982

page 48 Cluck Cluck Croak Croak, 1982 Acrylic on paper, framed 42 × 55.25 inches (106.68 × 140.34 cm)

page 49 Top to bottom Untitled Photograph, 1982 (from Confusion) 10 × 8 inches (25.4 × 20.32 cm) each

View of Mike Kelley’s studio, ca. 1982

48 49Confusion (1982–83)

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Kriesche, Richard, ed. Artificial Intelligence in the Arts: Nr. 1

“Brainwork” (1985), pp. 94–101.

Singerman, Howard. “Charting Monkey Island with Levi-Strauss and Freud.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 89–110.

Welchman, John C. “Image and Language: Syllables and Charisma.” In Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945–1986 (1986), pp. 279–81.

Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985) Taking as its point of departure a series of photographs snapped by Kelley of the “mon- key island” at the Los Angeles Zoo, Monkey Island was a high-energy disquisition on order, organization, and corporeal and epistemological entropy centered on images of “bilateral symmetry” and “infinite multiplication” with figures notating “sym- metrical sets” or various abstract “expansions.” Corralling a heterogeneous range of sources from entomology and anatomy to structuralism and geomorphology, Kelley’s performative monologue—performed at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California, in 1983—offered a tartly poetic reverie on the recursive relations between form and content, privileging and cross-associating elements such as compound eyes, sacklike containers (tears, bladders, whales), and emblematic substances and forms (amber- gris and mandrake roots), as well as wider social and developmental issues (sexuality, anthropogeny). Defined by the figure “X,” the diagram of “the insect connection” (one of the three parts of The Landscape Figure) is built, for example, on the polarities between life and death, solitude and society, landscape and biosphere, and the symme- tries between various body parts (nose"/"bladder, ear"/"foot, eye"/"ovary). Monkey Island was shown as an installation at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1983 and at the Fifth Biennale of Sydney, Private Symbol: Social Metaphor, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (April–June 1984).

Based on a “ridiculous pseudoscientific” experiment with hypnosis, Kelley developed Monkey Island Part II (1985) in response to the dense web of psychological associa- tions generated by the first iteration. “Instead of performing it myself,” he noted, “I plan to use volunteers who under hypnosis will respond to the same images I did previ- ously and then they will produce their own works”. Created for the exhibition Artificial Intelligence in the Arts: Nr. 1 “Brainwork,” organized by Richard Kriesche for the 1985 Steirischer Herbst festival, Graz, Austria, the performance (which took place on July 20, 1985), exhibition, and a related symposium were presented later at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in July, 1985.

page 50 Installation view of Monkey Island, 1982–83 Mixed-media installation Dimensions variable Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, 1983

page 51 Monkey Island (Los Angeles Zoo #1), 1982–83

page 52 Top to bottom Compound Eye, 1982–83, and Fence Figure!/!Compound Eye, 1982

page 53 Top to bottom Expansions, 1982, and The Bug Eye, 1982–83

pages 54 and 55 Monkey Island: Travelogue, 1982–83 Clockwise from top left The Two Islands Merge to Form a Boat, They Mount the Island, The Baggy Pants Comedian, The Celibate Genius, (p. 54); and The Green-Black-Green Flag, The Singing Root, Spurting Whale, Stand Up! (p. 55)

52 53Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985)

54 55Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985)

56 57

page 56 Ambergris Landscape and Mercurochrome, 1982 2 parts: acrylic on paper 10.5 × 8.25 inches (26.67 × 20.96 cm)

page 57 Top to bottom The Tiny Insect Magnified Becomes Its Own Farm, 1982–83; and The Bells, 1982–83

page 58 Symmetrical Sets, 1982 Includes (clockwise from top) Splitting All, Two Hemispheres, Two Tents, Red Reefs, Two Mounds, Two Buttocks, Ass Insect, Compound Eye

page 59 Shock, 1982–83

page 60 Top to bottom Cell Dividing, 1982 Performance view of Monkey Island Part II, 1985 Los Angeles Municipal Theater, July 20, 1985; hypnotist Melvin Ross with participant

page 61 Detail of The Landscape Figure, 1982–83 3 parts: acrylic on foam core 40 × 30.125 inches each, 40 × 90.25 inches overall (101.6 × 76.52 cm each, 101.6 × 229.24 cm overall)

Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985)

58 59Monkey Island (1982–83) and Monkey Island Part II (1985)

60 61

62 63

Gardener, Colin. “Let It Bleed: The Sublime and Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 112–34.

The Sublime (1984) Named for a concept that perhaps more than any other has been associated with Romanticism, metaphysics, and the transcendent, The Sublime was articulated in three interleaved actions. Kelley’s recitation of a National Geographic article on the discovery in Borneo of the world’s largest flower was punctuated by fifty aphoristic propositions or bathetic put-downs delivered by Ed Gierke, while Mary Woronov—

“pregnant” for most of the performance—generated an interactive substrate of corporeal and physical gestures. Addressing the formation, zoning, and disruption of rational categories and the very capacity of language to describe or represent, the per- formance oscillated, unpredictably, between ideas of grandiosity, infinity, and vastness and their diminished returns as abridgment, redaction, and simulation. Thus, natural wonders are serviced by highlight tourism; literary masterpieces or poetic aspiration reduced to crib notes or clichés; and cosmological speculation cross-dressed in the false comforts of the homely. The Sublime was performed at MOCA, Los Angeles, in association with CalArts, Valencia, as part of the Explorations performance series on March 15, 1984. A concurrent exhibition of props, drawings, and other materials at Rosamund Felsen Gallery; the work was also exhibited at Hallwalls, Buffalo, New York (1983), and Metro Pictures, New York (1984).

page 62 Installation view of The Sublime, 1984 Comprising various works Dimensions variable Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, 1984

page 63 The Sublime!/!The Sublime Framed, 1983 10 parts: acrylic on paper 140 × 407.5 inches overall (355.6 × 1035.05 cm) overall

page 64 Left to right The One-Eyed Parrot, 1983; and Janitorial Banner, 1984

page 65 Performance views of The Sublime, 1984 The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984; with Mary Woronov and Ed Gierke

pages 66 and 67 Know Nothing and If You Don’t Want to Know the Definition Don’t Open The Dictionary, both 1984

page 68 The Silent Scream, 1984

page 69 Infinite Expansion, 1983

64 65The Sublime (1984)

66 67The Sublime (1984)

68 69The Sublime (1984)

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Martin, Timothy, and Benjamin Weissman. Assignment: Outback. Pamphlet in First Newport Biennial 1984 (1984).

Australiana (1984) This ironic “travelogue”—or “territorial hounding”—comprising some forty works in acrylic on paper loosely associated with a country Kelley had never visited was first shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of the Fifth Biennale of Sydney,

“Private Symbol: Social Metaphor” in spring, 1984, then at the First Newport Biennial at the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California) in fall of that year and later in the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art’s traveling show Sunshine & Noir: Art in L.A. 1960–1997 (1997–98). As suggested by the triptych Blackness and Surrounding Blackness (1984), the central panel of which shows a map of the US in white outline over a similarly scaled black outline of Australia on a white ground, Australiana riffed on the antipodean nature of “down under,” offering a series of disquisitions on fundamental antitheses such as good"/"evil, male"/"female, East Coast"/"West Coast, God"/"the Devil, and “upright”"/"“fallen” natures. Kelley noted that he made a deliberate bid to “materialize” the “sightlines” of the exhi- bition “by running strings between various works, literally connecting them” so that

“the disparity between the system of hanging, which reiterated the architecture, and the system of associational ties between the various artworks was much easier to see”—in comparison to the “salon-style” arrangement of Monkey Island. With many of its drawings made using a slide projector—including the large-scale, twelve-panel, black-and-white Cave Painting (1984), based on a scientific illustration—Australiana marks a key point of commencement for Kelley’s characteristic graphic style, which he described as “dead” and “informational” (Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes, p. 24).

page 70 Installation view of Australiana, 1984, at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, 1984

page 71 Junior High Notebook Cover, 1984 Acrylic on paper, framed 60 × 43 inches (152.4 × 109.22 cm)

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Gardner, Colin. “Let It Bleed: The Sublime and Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 112–34.

Kelley, Mike. Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1986).

Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1985–86) The last of Kelley’s pioneering sequence of performances, and the first to focus primar- ily on the installation, Plato’s Cave refers some of the inquiries begun in Meditation on a Can of Vernors, Monkey Island, and The Sublime back to Plato’s parable of the cave (set out in book VII of The Republic), crossing them with questions of lightness and darkness, interiority and exteriority, representation and simulation, the ideal and the contingent. At the same time, Kelley was fascinated by the grammatical form of the possessive that ordered relations between the three proper nouns and the objects they governed. As Gardner noted, “Kelley’s three subjects act as a synopsis of the heroic male archetypes (visionary idealism, spiritual transcendence, bourgeois individual- ism) that dominate Western philosophy, modernist American painting, and American history respectively” (p. 130). The centerpiece of the installation, The Trajectory of Light in Plato’s Cave—which uses banners and bedsheets to conjugate colors (of bodily fluids and racial pigmentation) with Rorschach tests, artistic subjectivity, and mor- tification and religious symbolism—could be accessed only by crawling through a one-and-a-half-foot-high entrance situated below a painting of a cave infested with stalagmites and stalactites (Exploring, 1985). The work was exhibited in Art in the Anchorage, Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, New York, 1985. Plato’s Cave was presented in exhibitions at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles (1985); Metro Pictures, New York (1986); and Wako Works of Art, Tokyo (1997), and performed at Artists Space, New York (1986), with Sonic Youth. An edited version of the script was published as an illustrated book in 1986.

page 72 Screamin’ Smoke, 1985 Acrylic on paper 42 × 107.5 inches (106.7 × 273.1 cm)

page 73 Top to bottom Detail of Sic Semper Tyrannis, 1985

Installation view of The Trajectory of Light in Plato’s Cave, 1985!/!1996 Acrylic and acrylic latex on canvas, cotton, wood, electric lights, fake fireplaces, paint chips, felt 150.39 × 128.74 × 556.30 inches (382 × 327 × 1413 cm) Rooseum, Malmo, Sweden, 1997

page 74 Entrance to The Trajectory of Light in Plato’s Cave, 1987 List Center for the Visual Arts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 1987

page 75 Interior view of The Trajectory of Light in Plato’s Cave, 1985–86

page 76 Top to bottom Nazi War Cave #1, 1985, and Nazi War Cave #2, 1986

page 77 Trickle Down and Swaddling Clothes, 1986

74 75

76 77Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1985–86)

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page 78 Clockwise from left Freedom, 1985; A Hippie’s Bedroom, 1985; and Untitled, 1986

page 79 Clockwise from top Rainbow Coalition, 1985; Twinkling Coppers, 1986 (acrylic on canvas, penny and electric lights, 60 × 60 inches [152.4 × 152.4 cm]); and Lincoln’s Beacon, 1985

pages 80 and 81 Alphabet and Bee Beard, both 1985

pages 82 and 83 Performance views of Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile, 1986 Artist’s Space, New York, 1986; Mike Kelley with Molly Cleator and Sonic Youth

Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1985–86)

80 81Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile (1985–86)

82 83

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Half a Man (1987–93) Begun in 1987, Half a Man is a sprawling project comprising distinct groups of works that, Kelley noted, converge “in one way or another” on “issues of gender-specific imagery and the family” (Minor Histories, p. 14). The interwoven groups are akin to episodes in an object-based psychodrama about lost innocence. Each mobilizes a specific material, found object, or technique to generate a distinct set of visual effects. Half a Man was first shown at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1987, and an expanded version was exhibited the following year at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and Metro Pictures, New York; further modified versions were presented at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., in 1991 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1994.

SUBGROUP I (STUFFED-ANIMAL WORKS) The first cluster of works inaugurated Kelley’s creative use of stuffed animals and yarn dolls, which he described as “pseudo-child[ren], cutified, sexless being[s] that represent[ed] the adult’s perfect model of a child—a neutered pet” (Minor Histories, p. 14). More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid (1987) incorporates a dense array of these and other handcrafted objects into an abstractly tactile wall hanging, the title of which alludes to the familial obligation or emotional debt foisted onto children by acts of “giving.” The craft objects in the three-part Frankenstein (1989) assume the mon- strous qualities of accumulation and deformation; Eviscerated Corpse (1989) creates a humorously macabre trail of serpentine forms leading to a central humanoid mass; and Plush Kundalini and Chakra Set (1987) extends its linear sequence of color-coordinated clusters of animals from ceiling to floor. The Manly Craft series (1989–90) addresses (and interrupts) stereotypical associations of craft objects with “women’s work.”

SUBGROUP II (ARENAS, DIALOGUES, AND AFGHAN WORKS) In a series of eleven Arena works, exhibited at Metro Pictures (1990), stuffed ani- mals and other found objects are arranged on or under blankets that have been laid out on the floor. Seemingly passive and innocuous, the series title and the objects’ positions, facing-off, also imply violent or traumatic confrontation. Ten additional floor-mounted works with stuffed toys—including Innards, Transplant, and Untitled (Three Octopi) (all 1990)—are not part of the numbered series but remain closely related. An exhibition at Galerie Ghislane Hussenot, Paris (1990), showed a selection of afghan works along with wall pieces and the “Female Roommate” felt banner. The Dialogues series (1990–91), shown at Jablonka Galerie, Cologne (1991), along with

“Satellite” pieces including Brown Star (1991) and Citrus and White (1991), also pairs stuffed animals with blankets, though portable stereos supply each of the seven works with added sound components. Kelley published the dialogues as “Theory, Garbage, Stuffed Animals, Christ (Dinner Conversation Overheard at a Romantic French Restaurant,” in Forehead, volume II (1989), pp. 17–18, and performed two readings of them at Beyond Baroque, Venice, California, in 1989 and then in 1991.

SUBGROUP III (BANNER AND FELT WORKS) Appropriating the style of inspirational fabric banners made by and for churchgoers in the 1960s and 70s and popularized by Sister Corita Kent, these felt compositions use the languages of symbolism (a cookie jar and a Christian dove) and abstraction (a blood-red work alluding to Rothko’s suicide or a nude figure in the style of Matisse’s paper cutouts), as well as pseudo-uplifting slogans (“Let’s Talk about Disobeying,” “I Am Useless to the Culture But God Loves Me"…"”). The two-part Animal Self and Friend of the Animals (1987) features a full-length, snake-bisected likeness of the artist flanked by symmetrical halves of animal forms (Animal Self), while the black-and- white Friend of the Animals shows a bearded, robed figure communing with diverse species. Other works using felt but not the banner format include the wall-hung sequence of shapes in Descending Order and Ascending Hosts (both 1989); a large

page 84 Eviscerated Corpse, 1989

pages 86 and 87 More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin, both 1987

8786 Half a Man (1987–93)

88 89

composition with prize ribbons and an oval-shaped void filled by a bound, hanging toy (No Place, 1989); the narrow felt strip of Skinny University of Michigan (1989); a double-sided, upside-down cross (Reversible Cross, 1989); and an untitled yellow-and- black bannerlike piece with a stuffed panty-hose snake (Untitled, 1989).

SUBGROUP IV (PAINTINGS) The paintings associated with Half a Man include the five-work series Unwashed Abstraction (1989), which uses different combinations of similarly washed-out colors; four Poetic Paintings (1988) containing elliptical sayings rendered in 1950s-style graphics that sprawl goofily across monochromatic pools of color; and a number of black-and-white works (some augmented by found sculptural elements) that make use of Kelley’s typically deadpan, diagrammatic humor: The Bounty (1989), Pagan Altar (1989), Hierarchical Figure (1989), and the two-part Wallflowers (1988).

SUBGROUP V (FURNITURE) The final subgroup comprises furnishings for domestic interiors, such as the refin- ished chest of drawers with built-in vanity Antiqued (Prematurely Aged) (1987), which Kelley painted the typically “feminine” shade of bright pink (though it has also been antiqued with dark stain). Nine cutout images of Kelley from various art magazines are set under glass on the top of the chest, suggesting he is a heartthrob for an anonymous teenage girl. The coming-of-age theme carries to the underside (visible in a mirror set under the piece), which is the hiding place for a diary, a case for birth-control pills, and a sex-education manual. By mobilizing a set of associations with adolescent female sexuality, this domestic object personifies the absent figure, but it also tells a tale of sexual discovery and familial repression. The combination of wall hanging and draw- ers with a mirror beneath recurs in the collage-covered Nature and Culture (1987) and the stark-white No Exit (1987). Additional furnishings include two mattresses covered with multicolored modernist patchwork patterns, a keepsake chest of articles and press clippings, and The Wages of Sin, a side table with candles shown alongside More Love Hours.

page 88 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Estral Star #3, 1989; Manly Craft #2, 1989; and Number One and Number Two, 1989

page 89 Four Wire Sculptures, 1990

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DEODORIZED CENTRAL MASS WITH SATELLITES (1991–99) Comprising twelve globe-shaped, suspended accumulations of color-coordinated furry toys clustered around a slightly larger central orb and supplied with its own “atmo- sphere” by ten custom-made, human-size, fiberglass deodorizers, this major installation links Kelley’s breakthrough series using stuffed toys and animals commenced in the late 1980s with his move toward the larger-scale, thematic pieces developed through the 1990s. It also summarizes some of the artist’s main preoccupations as his atten- tion shifted from performance to sculpture and installations. In a signature volley of Kelley’s own form of institutional critique, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites satirically sanitizes not just the soiled craft objects that make up the mass and its sat- ellites, but also the gallery space, and by implication all interaction with the piece by art-world professionals, general viewers, and collectors. First exhibited in its pres- ent form at the Kunstverein Braunschweig in 1999, the piece was conceived almost a decade earlier and had a preliminary outing (using different arrays of stuffed animals) at the Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, in 1991. The materials discarded during prepara- tions for the Braunschweig show became the founding elements of an associated work, Runway for Interactive DJ Event (1999), which took off (quite literally) from the clothes and outfits stripped from the stuffed animals used in Deodorized Central Mass.

Kelley, Mike. “Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure” (1988). In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 12–20.

Kelley, Mike. “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites.” In Mike Kelley: Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (auction cat.). Phillips de Pury & Co., November 16, 2006, n.p.

Levine, Cary. “Pandora’s Blankets: Mike Kelley’s Arenas in Cultural Context.” In Mike Kelley: Arenas (2010), pp. 2–11.

Singerman, Howard. “Mike Kelley’s Line.” In Mike Kelley: Three Projects (1988), pp. 5–13.

Welchman, John C. “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites.” In Mike Kelley: Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (auction cat.). Phillips de Pury & Co., November 16, 2006, n.p.

page 90 Top to bottom Arena #10 (Dogs), and Arena #8 (Leopard); both 1990

page 91 Left to right Ouija, 1990 Afghan, kitty litter tray, double cat-food dish, 3 cat toys 41 × 37 × 4.5 inches (104.14 × 93.98 × 11.43 cm)

Mooner, 1990 Afghan, pillow, double cat food dish, 4 cat toys 39.6 × 36 × 4.5 inches (100.58 × 91.44 × 11.43 cm)

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page 92 Top to bottom Arena #7 (Bears), 1990

Dialogue #5 (One Hand Clapping), 1991

page 93 Brown Star, 1991 Stuffed animals, rope, steel, pulley system Dimensions variable

pages 94 and 95 Installation view of Deodorized Central Mass With Satellites, 1991–99 Fiberglass, car paint, electric machine with disinfectant mixture, found plush toys sewn over wood and chicken wire frame with Styrofoam packing material, steel frame, nylon rope, pulleys, hardware, steel hanging plates 10 deodorizers: 85 × 20 × 17 inches (215.9 × 50.8 × 43.18 cm) each Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany, 1999

page 96 Pink and Gray, 1991 Stuffed animals, weight, rope, pulley system Dimensions variable

page 97 Installation view of Citrus and White, 1991 Stuffed animals, rope, hardware, steel pulley system, 2 fiberglass deodorizers, auto enamel, spraying mechanism 84.625 × 23.625 × 17 inches (215 × 60 × 43 cm) each; overall dimensions variable Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, 1991

Half a Man (1987–93)

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96 97Half a Man (1987–93)

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page 98 left to right Animal Self and Friend of the Animals, 1987

page 99 Clockwise from top left Three-Point Program!/!Four Eyes, 1987; Trash Picker, 1987; Let’s Talk, 1987; and Black-Eyed Susan, 1987

Half a Man (1987–93)

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page 100 Left to right Ascending Hosts, 1989, and Descending Order, 1989

page 101 Stained Glass Mattress, 1989

pages 102 and 103 Wallflowers, 1988

page 104 Pagan Altar, 1989 Acrylic on 3 panels, 2 boards, and 2 bunches of corn 98 × 100 × 8 inches (248.9 × 254 × 20.3 cm)

page 105 Antiqued (Prematurely Aged), 1987

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104 105Half a Man (1987–91)

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DRAWINGS Throughout his career, Kelley made drawings that referenced his adolescent “fan- tasies,” which “found form in endless notebook pages filled with Arshile Gorky–like blob drawings—each blob the illustration of some newly invented genital” (Minor Histories, p. 84). Produced during the period just before the artist developed his signature performance style in the late 1970s, the Early Drawings (1977–82) are not obviously associated with any of his major projects, though a few relate to spe- cific performances, including Perspectaphone (1978) and My Space (1978); The Dream State (1979) uses text that would be redeployed in The Poltergeist. Several of the drawings, such as Slow Blinkers (c. 1978–79), Tender Loving Care (1978), and drawings from the multipart work Oh The Pain of it All (1980) feature lists and speculative descriptions, some generated by a word-association game and rendered in Kelley’s signature capital lettering, so that the image occupies half or less of the sheet—and is absent altogether in the 1980 sheets. Others, including Taking Up Time Making (1978), emphasize the scale and composition of the image anticipating the text"/"image adjudication characteristic of Kelley’s black-and-white acrylic paint- ings, which would achieve their definitive appearance in the mid-1980s. During this period Kelley made drawings for other projects and performances, notably the series of forty black-and-white pieces created between 1981 and 1983 for Monkey Island and the series from 1984 associated with From My Institution to Yours.

The fifty or so Notebook Drawings in graphite, ink, and colored crayon on notebook paper from the later 1980s and early 90s have a wide range of subject matter and styles related to Half a Man; associated stuffed-animal, afghan, and yarn pieces; and other contemporary projects. Several use text only, either thickly hand-painted (as in a sheet marked “Faeces . Penis . Child”) or in the form of pages appropriated from Freud’s writings (or commentaries on them) with all but a few lines—on the Riddle of the Sphinx—canceled out. As with the text pieces, many of the drawings address questions of sexuality, including the crowned male member in a study for Master Dik (1989), a silkscreen on silk from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof (also used in Pagan Altar, 1989). Others investigate “Disobedience,” “Drugs on the Job,” or self-con- sciously skewed, projected associations, such as “Irish Nazi Twisted Clover,” which relates to Kelley’s investigation of “Irishness” in Liquid Diet (1989"/"2006) and his use of the swastika in Reconstructed History (1989), his Jesse Helms Protest Sign (1990), and the Candle Lighting Ceremony of Day Is Done (2005).

Building on a drawing dated “8–13–89, 3:15,” Kelley made a series of Shrink Drawings in March 1994 in pen or pencil marked on photocopies of front and rear schematic body outlines. Of the studies for a series based on medical ailments, pharmaceuti- cal prescriptions, and mind"/"body dysfunctions shown at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Los Angeles, later that year, six are associated with specific times and dates, while the seventh is described as “Outside of Time.”

page 107 Diagram for My Space Performance, 1978

109108 Drawings

Another group of drawings, dated 1994 and 1995, connects more directly to the clus- ter of issues that would converge in Educational Complex in 1995. Works from this notebook include the antics of lustful clowns and donkeys (derived from the ram- pant donkey mascot of the Bray’s hamburger franchise in Detroit), with speculations on the wider social and cultural implications of “the complex.” One sheet, marked at the top “mixture of all the educational institutions and the DC plan (central),” aligns the stylized elements of modernist centralized architecture with a key associative chain beginning with “Outlying: all secular memories” and then proceeding in a series of linked oval boxes to “Institutional Life,” “Daily Life,” “Symbolic Life,” and

“Unconscious Symbolic Life.”

Drawings featured in several specific exhibitions or projects, including the Garbage Drawings (1988), Sack Drawings (1988), Lump Drawings (1991), Roth"/ "Mouse"/"Wolverton Drawing Exercises (1993), The Poetics Project (1977–97, for which Kelley and Tony Oursler made fifty each), Katy Keene Drawings (2000), and Hermaphrodite Drawings (2005–06).

Welchman, John C. “L’arte e le instituzione: Riempire (e cancellare) dei vuoti.” In Le funzione del museo (2009), pp. 36–37.

page 108 Worldly Problems, 1978

page 109 A Really Big Mess, 1978 Marker on paper 34 × 39 inches (86.36 × 99.06 cm)

page 110 Oh The Pain of it All, 1980 6 pigment prints, 2 ink-on-paper drawings, wood, paint, and 26 black-and-white photographs, 1 with acrylic paint Dimensions variable

page 111 Jesse Helms Protest Sign, 1990 Acrylic on poster board 20 × 15 inches (50.8 × 38.1 cm)

page 112 Notebook Sketch for Entry Way (Genealogical Chart) (Victim Culture), 1995 Pencil on paper 12 × 9 inches (30.5 × 22.8 cm)

page 113 Notebook Sketch for Entry Way (Genealogical Chart) (Welcome to Waste Land), 1995 Ink on paper 12 × 9 inches (30.5 × 22.8 cm)

110 111Drawings

112 113Drawings

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page 114 Notebook Drawings (Related to Educational Complex: Bray’s Burgers), 1994 12 × 9 inches (30.5 × 22.8 cm)

page 115 clockwise from top left Schematic Architecture 30 (Petting Zoo), Schematic Architecture 6 (Kelley Family Bathroom), Schematic Architecture 1 (Kandor), and Schematic Architecture 3; all date unknown

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Incorrect Sexual Models (1987) Each of these eight two-panel, black-and-white acrylic paintings derives its formal structure from the bilateral symmetry of the human body, with one specific visual pat- tern composed of a few rearranged parts—eyeballs, intestine, brain, kidney—providing the basic template. As modified in the two-part structures, different connotations are distributed across a variety of categories: Homosexual Couple, Hermaphrodite, Envy, Thalassa, Utopia, and Mommy’s Penis. Following a similar technique of mirroring, two additional works in this series reproduce close renderings of Gothic decoration, implic- itly lending this historical style a psychosexual dimension. This group of works was exhibited in the Half a Man section of Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure at the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago (1988), and later as part of Why I Got into Art: Vaseline Muses at Jablonka Galerie, Cologne (1989). Selected works were also included in Eye Infection, curated by Jan Christiaan Braun at the Stedelijk Museum (2002).

page 116 Installation view of Incorrect Sexual Models, Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, 1989

page 117 clockwise from top Hermaphrodite, Utopia, and Mommy’s Penis, all 1987

Kelley, Mike. “Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure” (1988). In Minor Histories (2004), p. 15.

Welchman, John C. “Glossary” (Sexual Dysfunction). In Mike Kelley (2008), p. 235.

119118

Pay for Your Pleasure (1988) In each of the forty-two brightly colored banners that form the central part of Pay for Your Pleasure, a portrait of a well-known philosopher, poet, politician, or artist is paired with a quotation by that person addressing the presumed sanctity of art and art-making, especially as distinguished from undignified, dysfunctional, or criminal behavior. The texted portraits were originally displayed in a corridor as part of Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (1988). Kelley mandated two site-specific requirements: the inclusion of an artwork made by a local murderer or violent criminal (the inau- gural Chicago installation included a painting by convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who was awaiting execution at the time) and a donation box for contributions to one or more local victims’ rights groups. Kelley described how the Chicago installation created “a situation where we can at the same time condemn Gacy and have access to his crimes. But since no pleasure is free, a little ‘guilt’ money is in order” (Kelley, Minor Histories, p. 20).

page 118 Details of Pay for Your Pleasure, 1988

page 119 Installation view of Pay for Your Pleasure, 1988 Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, 1988

pages 120 and 121 Installation view of Pay for Your Pleasure, 1988 Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, France, 1992

Cooper, Dennis, and Casey McKinney. “Criminality and Other Themes in Pay for Your Pleasure.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 135–48.

Kelley, Mike. “Three Projects: Half A Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure” and

“Quotations on Art and Crime for Pay for Your Pleasure” (both 1988). In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 12–27.

120 121

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From My Institution to Yours (1987-/-2003); Loading Dock Drawings (1984) For his installation in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art group show Avant- Garde in the Eighties (1987), curated by Howard Fox, Kelley used hand-drawn figures and slogans found on anonymously authored flyers posted around his institutional workplace (CalArts), which had been circulated from office to office by fax. Struck in the common currency of grievances shared by manual or clerical workers, the flyers pair animal imagery or cartoon-like humans with textual references to labor practices and were typically posted at sites of menial labor or “grunt work”—such as that indi- cated in the title of Kelley’s series Loading Dock Drawings (1984). Kelley’s installation alcove contains visual enlargements of the drawings arrayed around a stereotypical symbol of incentive (a carrot dangling from the ceiling) and an emblem of worker soli- darity (a stenciled fist). This dislocation of found material from its original contexts challenges the expectations of museum visitors (following the “From"…"to” construc- tion in the title), and such an obviously inappropriate deployment of tasteless humor signals a fissure between the routines of workers and museum-goers. However, the new arrangement suggests that these folk drawings display an awareness of social difference and indicate an actual, if underutilized, capacity for workers to become organized independently.

page 122 Loading Dock Drawings #1–4, 1984 Acrylic on paper 72.25 × 44 inches (183.52 × 111.76 cm) each

page 123 Installation view of From My Institution to Yours, 1987!/!2003 Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, 2006

Fox, Howard. “Artist in Exile.” In Mike Kelley: Catholic Tastes (1993), pp. 193–95.

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Seventy-Four Garbage Drawings and One Bush (1988) Based on Sad Sack, an American comic strip from the 1940s and 50s created by George Baker depicting the tribulations of a private in the US Army, Kelley’s series of seventy- four works renders only those parts of the original images representing garbage or filth and alludes to the common military term that engendered the strip’s title (“sad sack of shit”). The gesture of removing the main content of the appropriated imag- ery—its characters, symbols, and text—mimics and subtly parodies various modernist strategies in which a repeated procedure displaces more traditional approaches to composition, while also emphasizing those peripheral elements that come to define the predicament of various characters and to color their outlook on life. A closely related series of six larger-scale works, Disembodied Militarism, similarly removes the central elements from the original sequences, rendering only the background sym- bols and marks relating to trash, as well as preserving their spatial relationship within a conjoined sequence of frames. The works were first shown in Three Projects: Half a Man, From My Institution to Yours, Pay for Your Pleasure (1988) and were considered by Kelley as the final body of work in the exhibition.

page 124 Disembodied Militarism #1, 1988 6 parts: acrylic on paper (1 of 6 shown) 54 × 35.75 inches (137.16 × 90.81 cm)

page 125 Garbage Drawing #17, 1988

page 126 Clockwise from top left Garbage Drawings #25, #34, #73, and #36; all 1988

page 127 Clockwise from top left Garbage Drawings #58, #71, and #68; all 1988

Kellein, Thomas. “Is Evil Really Evil?” In Mike Kelley (1992, Kunsthalle Basel), p. 10.

127126 Seventy-Four Garbage Drawings and One Bush

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Sack Drawings (1988) Originally shown in the exhibition Why I Got into Art: Vaseline Muses at Jablonka Galerie, Cologne (1989), the seventeen black-and-white acrylic works on paper in this series stage formal and conceptual associations between several naturalistically ren- dered garbage bags (each tied with ribbon) and other, more loosely defined “sacks”: bodily parts or organs, various types of handmade doll, and a brain obscured by incon- gruous halves of male-female hair. Additional references to caricature and comic books add further layers of graphic intimation to representations of diverse modes of contain- ment, crossing particular instances with more general notions of “baseness.”

page 128 Girl and Figure II (Hair), both 1989

page 129 Ascending and Descending Testicles, 1989 Acrylic on paper 40.25 × 32 inches (102.24 × 81.28 cm)

page 130 Garbage Bag I and Garbage Bag V, both 1989

page 131 Clockwise from top Male and Female Brain Halves, Comedy and Tragedy Lung, and Kissing Kidneys, all 1989

Welchman, John C. “Glossary” (Sad Sack). In Mike Kelley (2008), p. 234.

130 131Sack Drawings (1988)

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Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof (1989-/-2009) This series of silk scarves, produced in an edition of forty in 1989, presents a range of imagery riffing on the theme of clovers and their purported luck, playing on the artist’s Irish-American heritage. One unfortunate specimen breaks into two parts in Unlucky Clover (1989), while a clover-ended green swastika fits into a Nazi-inspired composition in Twisted Shamrock (1989). This series includes a cloven-hoofed devil on multicolored ground, a two-tone skull, a tie-dyed depiction of a heavy-metal enthu- siast, and a rudimentary face made from a potato-qua-hoof print. Presented alongside small- and full-scale renderings on paper of the designs, these ten fabric works were used as costumes in the 1989 performative presentation of the same name (con- ceived by Kelley and choreographed by Anita Pace), organized by Rosamund Felsen Gallery and presented at a private loft in Los Angeles (also presented in conjunction with the current exhibition). The works also appeared with The Riddle of the Sphinx at the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia in 1992. In 2009 Kelley produced an edition of related photographs of Pace performing a “dance of the veils,” the “pictorialist” soft focus effects of which were achieved by smearing Vaseline on the camera lens.

Welchman, John C. “Glossary” (Vampires). In Mike Kelley (2008), pp. 236–37.

page 132 Studies for Pansy Metal!/! Clovered Hoof banners, 1989 Mixed-media 14 × 11 inches (35.56 × 27.94 cm)

page 133 Blood and Soil (Potato Print), from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof, 1989

page 134 Clockwise from top left (from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof, 1989): Hangin’ – Heavy – Hairy – Horny, Twisted Shamrock, Peat Spade, and Unlucky Clover

page 135 Clockwise from top left (from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof, 1989) The Orange and Green, Satan’s Nostrils, Country Cousin, and Master Dik

page 136 Emerald Eyehole, from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof, 1989

page 137 Detail from Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof, 1989A/A2009

134 135Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof (1989!/!2009)

136 137Pansy Metal!/!Clovered Hoof (1989!/!2009)

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Liquid Diet (1989-/-2006) First shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and other venues in 1989 (and later in the exhibition Liquid Diet and Related Works at Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, in 2006), Liquid Diet includes a large-scale mural in which the artist’s logo (the name “Kelley” marked in white cursive script inside a green clover leaf ) is set in a field of brown concentric circles, forming the backdrop to a low-slung bar or buffet decoratively fringed with more clover leaves. Kelley collided the rote commemoration of Irish heritage in the US—in the ubiquitous annual St. Patrick’s Day booze-up—with a topical allusion to the “dirty protests” by H-Block IRA prisoners who fouled their cells with their own feces beginning in March 1978, the preface to a series of hunger strikes in 1980 that led to ten deaths before the following year’s end. Kelley noted, sar- donically, that if you combine the green of Catholic republicanism with the orange of the Protestant “loyalists”—as he did in another wall-scaled part of the installation (inscribed “This Is What Comes o’ the Minglin”) and three tinted videos with appro- priated news footage about the hunger strikes—the result is brown.

page 138 Installation view of Liquid Diet, 1989!/!2006 Wood, steel, aluminum, wrought iron, acrylic and enamel paint, cloth, mud, ceramic, glass, plastic, cork, beer taps, paper, 3 DVD discs, 3 DVD players, 3 TV LCDs, cable, 3 remote control units, various hardware, up!/!down power transformer 96 × 152 × 288 inches (243.84 × 386.08 × 731.52 cm) Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris, 2006

page 139 top to bottom Detail from an early site-specific installation of Liquid Diet at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, 1989

Detail of Liquid Diet, 1989!/!2006, Galerie Ghislaine Hussenot, 2006

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Reconstructed History (1989) This limited-edition artist’s book contains sixty-one photographs and illustrations selected from a much larger group that Kelley found in used and yard-sale books on American history that he then graffitied over. The embossed cover of Reconstructed History, with its crest and scholastic “Lamp of Knowledge,” mimics the look of a high- school yearbook or historical coffee-table tome and features a clear dust jacket defaced with morbid adolescent doodles. The book’s interior, on the other hand, resembles a high-end photography book, with protective barrier sheets between each isolated image. Kelley’s introduction was printed in script on faux parchment, emulating

“Colonial” design. Its style, tone, and range of references—even the original graphic layout using a pseudohistorical typeface—are all duplicitous. The images in the book are not “found” but made, and the voice of the text deliberately stilted. The result is an elaborate hoax, one of the more vivid of Kelley’s many efforts to perform, write, and represent through adopted fictitious personae.

page 140 Reconstructed History: The Lincoln Memorial, 1989

page 141 Reconstructed History: China Relief Expedition, 1989 Black-and-white photograph 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm)

page 142 Clockwise from top Reconstructed History: Dancing The Quadrille, 1989 Black-and-white photograph 10 × 8 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm)

Reconstructed History: The Father of Our Country, 1989

Reconstructed History: With Malice towards None; with Charity For All, 1989 Black-and-white photograph 10 × 8 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm)

page 143 left to right Reconstructed History: The Capitol Building, 1989

Reconstructed History: The Gateway To Freedom, 1989

Kelley, Mike. “Introduction to Reconstructed History” (1990). In Minor Histories (2004), pp. 28–31.

Welchman, John C. “History and Time in the American Vernacular: Mike Kelley’s Work with Photography.” In Imaging History: Photography after the Fact (2012).