Kelley’s kaleidoscopic career captured in three decades of essays and interviews
In Stopgap Measures, art historian and cultural critic John C. Welchman presents a collection of essays, interviews and shorter pieces on the groundbreaking American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012), spanning 30 years. These writings cover nearly all of Kelley’s oeuvre, from his early performance pieces Confusion and Monkey Island to his final work, Mobile Homestead. The volume includes reflections on Kelley’s innovations in photography, writing, physical comedy and verbal humor; memory, popular culture, dress-up and Americana; the uncanny, imaginative projection and dark fantasy; appropriation and giving; authorship and self-construction; and the artist’s little-remarked negotiation with histories of and ideas about Asia. The book concludes with a new essay connecting the refrains that punctuate Kelley’s career with specters of social catastrophe and nuclear annihilation. John C. Welchman (born 1958) is an artist and a professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California San Diego.
STATUS: Forthcoming | 2/3/2026
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Kelley’s kaleidoscopic career captured in three decades of essays and interviews
In Stopgap Measures, art historian and cultural critic John C. Welchman presents a collection of essays, interviews and shorter pieces on the groundbreaking American artist Mike Kelley (1954–2012), spanning 30 years. These writings cover nearly all of Kelley’s oeuvre, from his early performance pieces Confusion and Monkey Island to his final work, Mobile Homestead. The volume includes reflections on Kelley’s innovations in photography, writing, physical comedy and verbal humor; memory, popular culture, dress-up and Americana; the uncanny, imaginative projection and dark fantasy; appropriation and giving; authorship and self-construction; and the artist’s little-remarked negotiation with histories of and ideas about Asia. The book concludes with a new essay connecting the refrains that punctuate Kelley’s career with specters of social catastrophe and nuclear annihilation.
John C. Welchman (born 1958) is an artist and a professor of modern and contemporary art at the University of California San Diego.
