LOS ANGELES — LA’s art world has been in mourning ever since artist Mike Kelley died earlier this month, an apparent suicide. At the College Art Association conference and at various events, artists and art lovers are finding ways to remember him and keep his work alive. The most poignant and effective I’ve seen so far continues through today at the Farley Building in Eagle Rock. Located in his former studio and organized by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, the exhibition is a 24-hour screening of the Detroit-born artist’s work.
February 26, 2012
Posted inOpinion
Required Reading
This week, whither Santa Fe? a newbie goes to the Miami art fairs, Marina Abramović makes German men cry, Elmgreen & Dragset Fourth Plinth sculpture unveiled, UK’s guerrilla tree sculptor and more.
Posted inArt
Poets and Popcorn
America, says Charlie Citrine in Saul Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975), is proud of its dead poets. Especially the mad ones: the bridge-leapers, the drink-guzzlers, the pill-snackers. Robert Lowell thought everyone was tired of his turmoil, but he obviously wasn’t thinking ahead to the possibilities he and his fellow scribblers presented to the movie business. You can only imagine the film gurus and movie execs surveying the poetscape of the twentieth century with nods of excited approval, foaming about their mouths. Drink, adultery, jealousy, madness, suicide: who knew poets led such cinematic lives!
Posted inBooks
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Once when I was breaking up with a girlfriend, she told me, “You act like a nice guy, but really you’re not.” Or maybe she said, “You pretend to be a nice guy,” I can’t quite remember. Anyway, I was taken aback. Would it be better to just habitually act like an asshole, rather than trying to do so as little as possible? Although I know my capacity for niceness is, like everyone else’s, limited, I try to cultivate my better qualities to the extent that I can. But then, what if, as a result, someone mistakenly comes to believe that I am nicer than I really am? Does that make me a bigger jerk than the guy who’s just self-evidently a jerk on the surface?
