Daddy Issues: Mike Kelley’s Rebellion Against His Painterly Forefathers

Hans Hofmann hung over this exhibition of Mike Kelley’s paintings like an oppressive father figure to rebel against. Epitomizing painting with a capital “P,” the early Abstract Expressionist’s work heavily impacted the curriculum taught at the University of Michigan when Kelley attended school there, in the 1970s. Kelley chafed at the formal, painterly, and, above all, academic version of art that his teachers espoused, calling his education “a form of mental abuse,