Mike Kelley: Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism / Minor Histories: Statements, Conversations, Proposals (2003-2004)

Collected writings Los Angeles artist Mike Kelley. The first volume contains his critical writings and commentary, the latter focuses on his own work.

“The work of artist Mike Kelley (1954-2012) embraced performance, installation, drawing, painting, video, and sculpture. Drawing distinctively on high art and vernacular traditions, including historical research, popular culture, and psychology, Kelley came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of sculptures composed of craft materials. His more recent work offered dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley wrote are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending.

While the first volume, Foul Perfection, contains thematic essays and writings about other artists; the second collection concentrates on Kelley’s own work, ranging from texts in ‘voices’ that grew out of scripts for performance pieces to expository critical and autobiographical writings.”

Edited by John C. Welchman
Publisher MIT Press, 2003 and 2004
Writing Art series
ISBN 9780262112703, 0262112701 (1), 9780262112772, 0262112779 (2)
xx+238 and xxv+431 pages

Publisher (1)
Publisher (2)
WorldCat (1)
WorldCat (1)

Volume 1
Volume 2