“Manly Crafts: Mike Kelley’s (Oxy)Moronic Gender Bending”

 

Mike Kelley, "More love hours than can ever be repaid" 1987

Article:

Levine, Cary. “Manly Crafts: Mike Kelley’s (Oxy)Moronic Gender Bending.” Art Journal May 2010: 74-91. Print.

Link to the article

This article starts by describing the piece pictured above, “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid”, a wall hanging made up of handmade toys, dolls, blankets, pot holders, and stuff animals sewn together.  The objects were found, abandoning in thrift store, not made by the artist.  Levine writes “The work highlights the gift-giving, in which pieces of thread and fabric are invested with deep emotional content- affection, adoration, sympathy, appreciation- to be passed on to friends, family members, and acquaintances, who are indebted to return the favor.”   She compares the piece to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.  While Pollock represents a safe co-optation of the feminine by a male artist, Kelley, says Levine, is an awkward, grotesque mixture of genders.

She continues the article in defense of Kelley against the claims that his work is “casual sexism”.  Cited in the article, Faith Wilding, a feminists artist/crafter key in the feminist art movement in the 70′s, “characterized his craft works as ‘a mere reversal of gender signifiers’ that does more to reaffirm his masculinity and his mastery of ‘the feminine’ than to disrupt gender stereotypes.”

This seems to be an issue of sincerity.  Wilding believes Kelly is being ironic.  Levine, the author, appears to avoid Kelly’s actual content and instead focuses on other reads of the work.  I, on the other hand, think I believe that Kelly actually is insisting a kind of literal honesty, that these craft items hold more love hours than can ever be repaid.  I am basing this read on my (limited) knowledge of Kelly’s other artworks and writings.  Irony is definitely a tool of his, but not the only one.  Kelly is an interesting artist.  After he had gained some success, he became unsatisfied with how people were perceiving and writing about his work.  In order to overcome issues conerning sincerity and irony, he started writing about the work himself; ”I decided I had to write about my own work if my concerns were to be properly conveyed,” (Welchman).  His works and writings will be revisited throughout my posts in a variety of contexts.

Works Cited

Kelley, Mike, and John C. Welchman. Foul Perfection: Essays and Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2003. Print.