Mike Kelley

Paper Summary:

This paper reviews, discusses and analyzes the work of Mike Kelley. The paper reports that Kelley was born in 1954, the generation of the 60's that was part of a generation forced to come to terms with oil droughts, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. The paper discusses how the abject is one of the most essential elements that Kelley integrates into his installations, sculptures, paintings and drawings.

From the Paper:

"Kelley understood the comic strip series as a modeling of the nuclear family during the Sixties. The characters in the series had specific roles that the children could connect with in relation to their own surroundings. New characters were introduced after the Sixties started to become more complex in regard to the shifting ego. The Sadie, who looks just like a female incantation of the Sad, becomes his female alter ego. Both of the characters in the new series represented the female and the male aspect of the child. Also within the series, there were sibling and father figures of the family. Additionally he introduces the Sarge, who is a representation of a maternal substitution. In effect, the Sarge is the identifiable father figure within the nuclear family. This patriarchal character represents the male figure as a dominant being in the world of the comic strip yet alludes to the feminine, which is surprising. "Kelley plays with double meaning and mistaken identities. Thus he draws Sarge into patriarchal figure of general, whose eyebrows become Sarge's female breast."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Foster, Hal. "Obscene, Abject, Traumatic." October 78, (Autumn, 1996): 106-124.
• Kelley, Mike. Foul Perfection. Edited by John C. Welchman. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2003.
• Kelley, Mike, Peter Fischli, and David Weiss. Mike Kelley- Peter Fischli, David Weiss. Edited by Rainald Schmacher. Germany: Rainald Schumacher, 2000.
• Kelley, Mike. "Cross Gender/Cross Genre." PAJ no. 64 (2000): 1-9.
• Oliver, Kelly. "Review: Kristeva's Imaginary Father and the Crisis in the Paternal Function." Diacritics 21, no. 2/3 (Summer - Autumn, 1991): 43- 63.

More papers on Mike Kelley:

• Descriptive Essay # 119066 : "Artist Mike Kelley"
• Comparison Essay # 115008 : "The Doll Motif"
• Article Review # 90754 : "'Playing for Keeps' by Robin D. G. Kelley"

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