Mike Kelley: Death and Transfiguration

Abstract

OCTOBER 139, Winter 2012, pp. 183–191. © 2012 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I had a standing date with Mike Kelley to visit him at his studio. “Just to talk,” he reassured me. An essay on his work had taken me most of the last two years to research and compose, and I had kept my distance, wanting not to come under the artist’s sway. But now it was done. Kelley’s reactions to the essay arrived in a string of emails, and he asserted little desire to control or influence anything I had to say; encouraging notes, full of minor moments of disagreement (“you can ignore my comments if you wish,” he clarified). There were also details, now precious, of process or context: I described a glistening color used in one of Kelley’s Missing Time paintings (1974–75) as “nail-polish red,” and the response arrived: “I actually painted with nail polish in some of these early works. Usually black.” Proto-punk, the artist was also, it seemed, pre-Goth (one of these early paintings was in fact entitled Gothicism, and another Gothic Lift). The last time I saw Mike was at his opening for the gallery exhibition Destroy All Monsters in Los Angeles in late November. He was in uniform, big black combat boots, trench coat, leather vest, his hands covered in writing, ink from a ballpoint pen, like something I haven’t seen since the self-adornments of some of my punk-leaning peers in high school. He was surrounded by old friends, but also by many strangers, photographers, Los Angeles celebrities, by people claiming his time. “We are going to get together,” he reiterated, smiling. “Just to talk.” His smile seemed ironic, at least to me, as if he were saying, “What had you been worried about?” But our standing date has been left standing. It was not to be.