Mike Kelley - Editions & Works on Paper New York Wednesday, June 21, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Reconstructed History is a series of 50 ink drawings created by Mike Kelley in 1989. Using fragments of aged schoolbooks, Kelley graffitied pre-existing images with profanity and lewd scribbles... He explored the found textbook as a medium, imitating how tomorrow’s leaders of society – the next generation – make their mark on the past through the act of defacing textbooks with doodles and notations – signifying their own ‘reconstruction’ while moving towards the future. Often humorous, these juvenile images unveil a new way of looking at American history icons and challenge traditional attitudes towards history, as well as questioning the societal and cultural values embedded within the system of education. — Art Basel, 2016

     

    "Heroic images thrive on subtraction. Idealization occurs as things move away from the physical concerns of man. Only then, after the body and desire are no longer in proximity to them, are things worthy of adoration.... The photographs you see here are not truthful representations of the historical events they picture, nor are they meant to be. Like a printed word which gives up its graphic specificity to express a concept so these pictures leave behind historical specificity to convey general American values. The reality of these past events is a confused and gruesome one anyway. One better off buried. Murder, war, the struggle for power, the desire for wealth, and the disruption of social order: all passions fired by the flesh, of no consequence today when peace and satisfaction are the rule. The past is where these things belong — adored but not emulated." — Mike Kelly, from Reconstructed History

    • Provenance

      Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin

111

Reconstructed History

1990
The complete artist's book with photographic reproductions, with the publisher's decorated cloth in the format of a high school yearbook contained in the original mylar dust jacket printed in blue.
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 x 7/8 in. (31.8 x 24.1 x 2.2 cm)
Signed and numbered 103/250 in black ballpoint pen on the colophon (there were also 12 artist's proofs), co-published by Thea Westreich, New York and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$1,000 - 2,000 

Sold for $2,032

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Editions & Works on Paper

New York Auction 21 June 2023