Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism

by Mike Kelley, John C. Welchman (Editor)

Critical writings and commentary by the Los Angeles based artist Mike Kelley. The work of artist Mike Kelley (b. 1954) embraces 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 recent work offers dialogues with architecture and with repressed memory syndrome, and a sustained inquiry into his own aesthetic and social history. The subjects on which Kelley has written are as varied as his artistic media. They include the work of fellow artists, sound, caricature, the uncanny, UFOlogy, and gender-bending. This book offers a diverse collection of Kelley's writings from the last twenty-five years. It contains major critical texts on art, film, and the wider culture, including his piece on the aesthetic he calls "urban Gothic." It also contains essays, mostly commissioned for exhibition catalogs and journals, on the artists and groups David Askevold, Öyvind Fahlström, Douglas Huebler, John Miller, Survival Research Laboratories, and Paul Thek, among others. Kelley's voices are passionate, analytic, and ironic, and his critical intelligence is leavened with touches of whimsy.

Genres: Art, Essays, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2002

Reviews

[ra · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was like yeah im gonna read this slowly and for the most part i did except last night and most of this morning i just lost my head and barrelled through. took loads of notes + found so many new things to read and artists to research he's just a fantastic writer, the essays on caricature and the uncanny were particular standouts

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Kelley was such clever writer and artist, anyone who likes his work or at least finds it interesting will get something from Foul Perfection.
He mixes high and low culture, life and death, fame and infamy, all in a way that is dense with references and connections but not intimidating, frequently funny.
As with any book you won't find everything interesting, but the parts you do are worth it.

MK on Paul Thek's sculpture 'Death of a Hippie' and Walt Disney:

"Next to his frozen body, Paul Thek has placed an amazing wax effigy of himself: a stinking hippie in permanent fixed decay—a pink raspberry shitsicle in answer to Walt’s porcelain-white vanilla bar."

[Al Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mostly read at this point. Kelley aspired to be a writer and his criticism is really sharp; if you have library access, check out his Academic Cut-Up in Easily Digestible Paragraph-Size Chunks, which I (think) appears in Grey Room.

[Roger]

I'm really enjoying this so far. I don't know if I haven't finished because I'm lazy or if it's because I'm hella jealous. Actually plain intimidated...his practice seems so fluid.

After every section I get side tracked and end up researching or renting films that were mentioned in the writings. If you want to see something a little screwed up watch the film The Baby from 1973. I think I was more into the structure of it...it was a movie, but it had this insane made for TV feel that held it together.

[Matt Savitsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

So cronic- I love an artist who can write far better than any of the people who do it as a job- actually is why he started writing. These dense essays blew my mind in a good way.

[Lytle]

Best artist writer since Smithson? Probably. At home, inventive (and free of received knowledge) equally with Zappa and Lacan.