Mike Kelly: “I see all art as being kind of a materialist ritual.”

Mike Kelly’s work appealed to me.  For composition, for color, for nuances of meaning, and for being, as he put it “reactive” — a feedback loop to our zeitgeist. He was funny and sad and intellectual all at once.

He was discovered dead this Tuesday in his South Pasadena home. Those close to him suspect suicide but this is unconfirmed. He was 57.

Watch Memory on PBS. See more from ART:21.

“I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was going to be an artist. There was not doubt about that. There was nothing else for me to be.” ~ Mike Kelly