MIKE KELLEY
The Territorial Hound.

Pen and ink on front free endpaper of Mike Kelley Phaidon monograph, 1999. 240x290 mm; 9½x11½ inches. Signed in ink, lower right recto.Kelley (1954-2012) was born in Detroit but made his career in Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s. He is often credited as a major factor in the creation of the LA contemporary art scene. While Kelley refuted his "bad boy" label, his broad range of art media brought attention to the burgeoning LA counter-culture movement. A victim of his own inner demons and trauma, Kelley's work is often a pastiche of humorous vulgarity, pop culture, and sweet nostalgia which forces us to reckon with our own inner contradictions and suppressed memories. Kelley's 1984 painting The Territorial Hound (now in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York), referenced by the present drawing, was a comment on the rivalry between New York and Los Angeles as cultural centers. Los Angeles, Kelley's adopted home clearly is the more appealing end of the dog as "the cosmetic front hides a diseased rear."