MIKE KELLEY WAS HERE

Body

 Mike Kelley is a public figure I learned on the Facebook his id photo is the young Mike pic that was inside the Sonic Youth cd fold out he designed it seemed Mike mid-1990's. I always felt a fold over between Mike and the band in those days, a collaborator like with Jim Shaw and several other artists. Though Mike always lands on his feet as the frontman whatever the lineup. Mike came to MCAD as a temporary relacement for me in 1985 when I was hospitalized later he was our choice to start a performance art department which though it was successful , it sort of faded over time as performance faded (and now is back even stronger). One of the underlying ideas regards minimalism and formalism was that theater and drama were inappropriate in visual art, visual art that told a story was bad - this came from Clement Greenburg  and his acolyte Michael Fried. Indeed Fried's famous essay  Art and Objecthood was a public admonition that theatrical art was bad art. Of course art went it's own way, High Performance and Avalanche magazines covered the performance scene the magazines associated with formalism Artforum in particular seemed to be slow to report on this trend which seemed to dominate fine arts practice and theory in the mid-1980's. Of course Mike Kelley became well known and celebrated as much for his intellectual honesty as for his eccentric practice.

I stayed with Kelley in 1985 when I came to Los Angeles to do the Artpolice section of a artist's group show at L.A.C.E. Gallery , it was a pretty cool downtown show. This was the first time Artpolice bumped into Group Material the artist's group highly regarded in New York and elsewheres. It was fun it was always cool to do shows outside of one's home territory. The Latin group in the show ASCO was very young and very intense. The opening brought out a very diverse crowd including Robert Williams who was a fan of Artpolice another of the threads that connected Artpolice to the early Zap Comics. Georgianna Deen a cartoonist pal of Kelley's was very interested in Artpolice Installation which included paintings watercolors and a lot of original pen and ink drawings.

I was always interested in how artists are singled out - the sort of pecking order of greatness. When I first heard about Mike Kelley I had never heard of him before but several people in the school knew him and his work and his teaching excellence. In a way it's like any prominent artist you have scant knowledge how do they come to one's attention? Sigmar Polke I knew a bit before the Walker Art Center acquired that huge mural sized painting now a major post-modern work in their collection. I remember writing a short piece in the Artpaper  about the Polke acquisition, a piece Kathy Halbreich really liked. She asked me to speak about Polke's painting in a big Polke show at the Walker. I talked about the support one could see in the works themselves the materials the size the ambition. Your own project always is the first concern and we tend to interpret other work in reference to own experience me maybe more than most since I've had such an upsy downsy career and alot of poverty which seems to be the reward for using one's free speech. A society that has an attention disorder needs stars to be able to sort out art or music or whatever cultural activity - thing is the starts glow and fade and time still has it's say, how will all this busy scene be sorted out? Halbreich writes about canon who will be canon? Sigmar Polke and Mike Kelley both despite the differences but so much art is headed for Marx's dustbin not for not trying but maybe for trying too hard. Desire after all is as much trouble as it is blessing.