In Memoriam: Mike Kelley1954–2012
"I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was going to be an artist. There was no doubt about that. There was nothing else for me to be."
ART21: The character of Pegleg is repeated in the paintings and prints. Why is he there?
GALLAGHER: He’s there for a kind of insistence. It’s hard to put it into language because it’s a form, but for me, Pegleg implies travel and worldliness. That ad appeals to me because of the way Pegleg Bates, the actual actor and comedian,...
ART21: Can you clarify what you mean by [the word] chance, especially with the collages you’ve been photographing?
HERRERA: By chance, I mean (in the photo work) that I usually don’t compose the way I’m photographing. I go through and take three or four photos of the same collage, but I’m not carefully composing what the final...
ART21: Who are the people in the photos, here, above your table in the studio?
HERRERA: The photos are of two of my favorite artists. One is Stravinsky, and the other one is Balanchine. They’re important for me just because of what they did—Stravinsky, music, and Balanchine, choreography—and their collaboration was very...
ART21: Can you talk about your work in relationship to fun?
STOCKHOLDER: Sometimes it’s fun, and there are moments when it’s exhilarating. In the end, it’s a kind of pleasure, at least in part—but it’s not always fun making it.
ART21: What about play?
STOCKHOLDER: Kids’ play is a kind of learning and thinking that doesn’t have...
ART21: Do you think abstract forms have meaning?
STOCKHOLDER: People sometimes think that formalism means the work is meaningless, empty. “He (or she) is a formalist”—that is thrown at different artists. Well, form means everything. We don’t make anything or think anything outside of form. We have conventions of form for every...
ART21: Talk about titles.
HORN: There’s so much written about titles. I don’t like descriptive titles. I don’t like titles that—if you don’t read them, you don’t get the piece. I want a title that can be an entrance to something but never an explanation. A title is more about staying away from certain things but sort of showing...
"At this time in my life, I’m ready to accept or own a kind of romance and melancholy or melodrama that I wasn’t ready to reveal before. It was always there in my inner life as an artist, but I was too afraid to share it."
—Laurie Simmons
