planned failure
more art 21 interview-ese (this time from artist mike kelley):
ART:21: What about the idea of beauty?
KELLEY: This was a really big topic in contemporary art. The so-called “new beauty” camp—art becoming beautiful again. I think they’re talking about conventional ideas of beauty and I’m more interested in the sublime. I think it’s a kind of neo-conservatism that fits right in with Republican ideology. It’s backwards-looking and I’m not interested because the New Beauty is old-fashioned beauty as far as I see it.
ART:21: What do you think is beautiful?
KELLEY: I think what I make is beautiful. I think it’s beautiful because terms, and divisions between terms, are confused and divisions between categories start to slip. That produces what I think of as a sublime effect, or it produces humor. And both things interest me. When you use the word sublime, traditionally it’s associated with metaphysics. It’s a nineteenth century usage, like the sublimity of a mountain that becomes like nature and God. I don’t mean to evoke it in that way. I’m interested in a less elevated beauty.
ART:21: Can you say a little more about the sublime?
KELLEY: Well, like I said, I think that kind of discussion of the sublime is a nineteenth century metaphysical discussion, like Edmund Burke or the American Transcendentalists. And of course, that’s not where I’m coming from. For me psychedelia was sublime because in psychedelia your worldview fell apart. That was a sublime revelation, that was my youth, and that was my notion of beauty. And that was a kind of cataclysmic sublime. It was very interiorized, it wasn’t about a metaphysical outside, it was about your own consciousness. That’s my starting point of the sublime and I’ve had to take that into a more conceptual sphere, which is perhaps an analytical sublime, like how do you produce a sublime effect? Preaching is a production of sublime effect. Poetry is a production of sublime effect. Hypnosis is the production of sublime effect. And those are all examples of it produced through language. I think you can also produce it through image—image clash, image resonance—things like that.
ART:21: When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
KELLEY: I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was going to be an artist, there’s no doubt about that. There was nothing else for me to be. I didn’t even want to be the other things that at the time were outside general culture. I didn’t want to be a rock musician; I wanted to be an artist. And I think the reason I chose it was that at that time it was the most despicable thing you could be in American culture. To be an artist at that time had absolutely no social value. It was like planned failure. You could never be a success. And the fact that I’m now a professional artist? At that time it seemed like a contradiction of terms. I came from a milieu in which artists were despised, whereas rock musicians and drug dealers were—you know—hipster culture heroes.
ART:21: What about the idea of beauty?
KELLEY: This was a really big topic in contemporary art. The so-called “new beauty” camp—art becoming beautiful again. I think they’re talking about conventional ideas of beauty and I’m more interested in the sublime. I think it’s a kind of neo-conservatism that fits right in with Republican ideology. It’s backwards-looking and I’m not interested because the New Beauty is old-fashioned beauty as far as I see it.
ART:21: What do you think is beautiful?
KELLEY: I think what I make is beautiful. I think it’s beautiful because terms, and divisions between terms, are confused and divisions between categories start to slip. That produces what I think of as a sublime effect, or it produces humor. And both things interest me. When you use the word sublime, traditionally it’s associated with metaphysics. It’s a nineteenth century usage, like the sublimity of a mountain that becomes like nature and God. I don’t mean to evoke it in that way. I’m interested in a less elevated beauty.
ART:21: Can you say a little more about the sublime?
KELLEY: Well, like I said, I think that kind of discussion of the sublime is a nineteenth century metaphysical discussion, like Edmund Burke or the American Transcendentalists. And of course, that’s not where I’m coming from. For me psychedelia was sublime because in psychedelia your worldview fell apart. That was a sublime revelation, that was my youth, and that was my notion of beauty. And that was a kind of cataclysmic sublime. It was very interiorized, it wasn’t about a metaphysical outside, it was about your own consciousness. That’s my starting point of the sublime and I’ve had to take that into a more conceptual sphere, which is perhaps an analytical sublime, like how do you produce a sublime effect? Preaching is a production of sublime effect. Poetry is a production of sublime effect. Hypnosis is the production of sublime effect. And those are all examples of it produced through language. I think you can also produce it through image—image clash, image resonance—things like that.
ART:21: When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
KELLEY: I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was going to be an artist, there’s no doubt about that. There was nothing else for me to be. I didn’t even want to be the other things that at the time were outside general culture. I didn’t want to be a rock musician; I wanted to be an artist. And I think the reason I chose it was that at that time it was the most despicable thing you could be in American culture. To be an artist at that time had absolutely no social value. It was like planned failure. You could never be a success. And the fact that I’m now a professional artist? At that time it seemed like a contradiction of terms. I came from a milieu in which artists were despised, whereas rock musicians and drug dealers were—you know—hipster culture heroes.
posted by Lauren | 11:27 AM
1 Comments:
magnificent!
pretty much says it all.
it's great to hear him speak of psychedelia that way. i feel like poetry got surrealism, rock got psychedelia, which wasn't nostalgic like that american surrealism in poetry.
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