This fall, I had two conversations with friends about Mike Kelley, both following the late artist’s exhibition at MoCA. My friends’ opinions were dichotomous, which is pretty standard for reactions to Kelley’s work. While his practice in diverse modes and materials is difficult to sum up, a somewhat characteristic piece might be More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid, an expanse of stuffed animals from thrift stores that he sewed together into a bumpy, colorful, and disturbing blanket-like field. His work often troubles ideas of memory and privacy, a troubling that tends toward exacerbation rather than redemption. Put another way, when you look at his work, often nightmarishly bright, it often feels like he’s screwing with you.
I had only seen bits of Kelley’s art here and there, and was mainly familiar with him as a polarizing figure and significant influence on other artists. I was surprised, then, at how exactingly opposed my friends’ opinions were. One found Kelley deeply engaging, his work both honest and necessary as it mined pop materials to reveal an aspect of the human psyche that is often shadowed or ignored. The other friend, however, felt furious with Kelley, believing that the artist was just unveiling pain in the gallery with no intention of using it for a purpose other than experiencing more pain.
The conversations recalled a lot of conversations I’ve had around writing, and in particular nonfiction writing. Some readers and writers turn to the personal essay (and maybe in particular to memoir) for cathartic experiences, the genre allowing a making-public of trauma or tragedy that is often ignored or silenced. This type of literature is usually considered valuable even if it does not explicitly push toward a sense of healing or resolution because most empathetic people realize that speaking an experience is the first step in addressing it on a social or personal level. I also know a fair number of readers and writers who express disinterest in this type of writing, feeling that a work of literature that makes its primary mode the expression of tragedy often results in writing that lacks whatever sublime qualities we expect from “art.” It’s a conversation that has come up in particular in writing workshops, although I do think everyone who participates in it is aware that the implied dichotomies are false, or at least tenuous.
But Mike Kelley. When I spoke to each friend separately, I was convinced of their opinion. The one convinced me that Kelley’s twisted and bright masses were in fact no more than pain, and that there is enough pain in the world to make it redundant (and maybe even cruel) to craft more without also offering a salve. The other, in his ecstatic reaction to the dark wit and his experience of seeing familiar materials made new, convinced me of Kelley’s genius.
I don’t believe there is much room for answers or prescriptions in art or writing, nor that an essay or a sculpture should meet the needs of all people, or even of most people. Still, I struggled to wrap my mind around my own reaction to Kelley until I came across a quote of his. “I make art,” he claimed, “in order to give other people my problems.” And while I imagine my Kelley-critical friend would respond to this quote with a sort of “screw you, too,” it endeared me. I don’t know how Kelley might have expanded on that quote, or what values he and I might have shared. But the giving of “problems” seems ultimately a gesture of optimism, a light similar to the light of sharing our words or images with others rather than maintaining their seclusion. It’s why an essay, even if the essay concerns itself singularly with pain and refuses transcendence, is still an act of generosity. The quote flips the game for me, it upsets what we expect from an aesthetic experience, and it reminds me that when I read it means something has been given to me, which makes it a gift.