Robert Storr was a visiting artist/lecturer while I was in school, and the art dept posted a sign up sheet for individual studio visits. I signed up for a studio visit the afternoon after the lecture he was giving in the big auditorium in the art school. Before the visit I went and saw him give his lecture to the school. He is a really impressive speaker, and he gave a talk to the Univ of Iowa Art Dept that was epic in its scope, and overwhelming in its detail. I was sitting there trying really hard to take it all in, anyways it was interesting and helpful to hear his point of view.
I cleaned up my studio a little before the visit, and hung some pictures on the wall. That studio had an old, old non-reclining easy chair, several folding chairs, a big bookshelf that was a little precarious because I had stuffed it with books to the point of almost collapsing. Two tables. The floor was painted gray, and the walls were white with oil paint smeared on them.
Storr came in and I offered him the stuffed chair, he accepted, looked around the room. Then he started talking about the working class intellectual and Mike Kelley. "Did I know about Mike Kelley?" I think what he saw when he looked at me was a young guy with a lot of books and extremely cheap furniture...
At the time I did not know too much about Kelley, except having seen pictures of weird stuffed animals laying around in galleries like a strange little kid's room. But I picked up a book called Foul Perfection that was really interesting that contained a bunch of essays and interviews with Kelley. It turned out he was pretty smart, and was making something called "Abject Art," which was art that was meant to provoke through being unpleasant (Paul McCarthy and Jim Shaw are two other guys I associate with Kelley).
The recent catalog for T:BA08 has a two page entry for Mike Kelley, and a two page entry for Paintallica that has my name in it (misspelled).
I am such an art geek I had Robert Storr sign my copy of the "October 18,1977" Gerhard Richter catalog:
(I stuck Mr. Storr's photo on the book with photoshop...)
2 comments:
thanks for posting this bill! it's great to see two guys all wrestling for art. it makes me think of that painting of hercules that arbe kept trying to get right. except the guys were nude and excited.
No problem, I remember that painting. It came up in conversation when we were in Portland actually in regards to the specific picture... I have a few copies of the book if you want one.
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