Michael Smith (born 1951) is an American artist known for his performance, video and

installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

works.Johnson, Ken
"An Artist’s Concocted World, Starring Himself, Is Too True to Be Real,"
''The New York Times'', May 13, 2008. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Holden, Stephen

''The New York Times'', December 11, 1987, p. C1. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Dickson, Andrew
"Does your nuclear shelter have a bar? Michael Smith on 40 years of mocking America,"
''The Guardian'', December 9, 2015. Retrieved December 1, 2021. He emerged in the mid-1970s at a time when performance and narrative-based art was beginning to claim space in contemporary art.Joselit, David
"'Mike’s World' and 'Air Kissing,'"
''Artforum'', February 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2021.Hixson, Kathryn. "Michael Smith," ''artUS'', Spring 2008, p. 62–3. Included among the

Pictures Generation ''The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984'' was an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City that ran from April 29 – August 2, 2009. The exhibition took its name from ''Pictures'', a 1977 group show organized by art h ...

artists, he also appropriated pop culture, using television conventions rather than tropes from static media.Griffin, Tim
"In Conversation: Dan Graham and Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', May 2004. Retrieved December 7, 2021.Lobel, Michael
"The Pictures Generation: Outside the Frame,"
''Artforum'', September 2009. Retrieved December 7, 2021. Since 1979, much of Smith's work has centered on an

Everyman The everyman is a stock character of fiction. An ordinary and humble character, the everyman is generally a protagonist whose benign conduct fosters the audience's identification with them. Origin The term ''everyman'' was used as early as ...

character, "Mike," that he has portrayed in various domestic, entrepreneurial and artistic endeavors.Smith, Roberta
"Michael Smith and Joshua White,"
''The New York Times'', March 28, 1997, p. C26. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Withers, Rachel
"Michael Smith and Joshua White,"
''Artforum'', Summer 2002. Retrieved December 7, 2021.McClister, Nell
"Mike’s World: Michael Smith and Joshua White (and other collaborators),"
''Bomb'', Oct 1, 2008. Retrieved December 2, 2021.Castro, Leslie Moody
"Mike’s “Fully Curated Timeshare” — Michael Smith at Museo Jumex,"
''Sightlines'', January 23, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2021. Writers have described his videos and immersive installations as "poker-faced parodies" that sit on the edge between art and entertainment, examining ideas, cultural shifts and absurdities involving the American dream, consumerism, the art world, and aging.Schaffner Ingrid
Ingrid Schaffner, Institute of Contemporary Art interview with Michael Smith
''Herb Alpert Award'', March 2012. Retrieved December 1, 2021.Fox, Dan
"Only the Lonely,"
''Frieze'', April 23, 2014. Retrieved December 3, 2021. ''

Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the cr ...

'' critic

Jerry Saltz Jerry Saltz (born February 19, 1951, in Chicago, Illinois) is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and columnist for '' New York'' magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for ''The Village Voice'', he received the ...

called Smith "a consummate explorer of the land of the loser … limning a fine line between reality and satire na genre sometimes called installation verité."Saltz, Jerry
"Nailing Failing,"
‘’Village Voice’’, December 2001. Retrieved December 7, 2021. Smith's early performances took place at avant-garde venues like

The Kitchen The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...

Franklin Furnace Franklin Furnace, also known as the Franklin Mine, is a famous mineral location for rare zinc, iron, manganese minerals in old mines in Franklin, New Jersey, United States. This locale produced more species of minerals (over 300) and more differ ...

and Artists Space and downtown clubs such as

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kr ...

and

Mudd Club The Mudd Club was a nightclub located at 77 White Street in the TriBeCa neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It operated from 1978 to 1983 as a venue for underground music and counterculture events. It was opened by Steve Maas, Die ...

.Taubin, Amy
"Bringing It Back Home,"
''Artforum'', January 16, 2014. Retrieved December 7, 2021.Archives of American Art
"Oral history interview with Michael Smith, 2018 July 30-August 1,"
Smithsonian Institution, 2018. Retrieved December 1, 2021. He eventually performed in other, more mainstream clubs and institutions, such as The Bottom Line, Carolines, the

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

and

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

, and produced videos for ''

Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock. ...

'' and PBS and a comedy special for

Cinemax Cinemax is an American pay television, cable, and satellite television network owned by the Home Box Office, Inc. subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Developed as a companion "maxi-pay" service complementing the offerings shown on parent ...

.The Museum of Modern Art
Michael Smith
Artists. Retrieved December 8, 2021.Alemani, Cecilia
"Television Delivers People, Whitney Museum of American Art,"
''Artforum'', January 7, 2008. Retrieved December 7, 2021.''Artforum''
"Artists Announced for 2008 Whitney Biennial,"
November 16, 2007. Retrieved October 7, 2021. In later years, he has exhibited at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

New Museum The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. History The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sch ...

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ...

and

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery located in London. It houses the United Kingdom's national collection of international modern and contemporary art, and forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It ...

, among others.Ziolkowski, Thad
"Michael Smith and Joshua White,"
''Artforum'', September 1999. Retrieved December 7, 2021. In 2007–8, a retrospective, "Mike's World," was presented at the

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent col ...

and the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia The Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA is a contemporary art museum in Philadelphia. The museum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, and is located on its campus. The Institute is one of the country's leading museums dedicated to e ...

.Griffin, Tim
"'Mike's World': Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators),"
''Artforum'', September 2007. Retrieved December 7, 2021. Smith has received awards from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in addition to a 1985 Guggenheim Fellowship and an Alpert Award in Visual Arts in 2012.Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation
Michael Smith,"
Artists, 2007. Retrieved December 8, 2021.John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
"Michael A. Smith,"
Fellows. Retrieved December 1, 2021.The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts
Michael Smith
Artists. Retrieved December 1, 2021.

Early life and career

Smith was born in 1951 and raised in a middle-class Jewish family on the south side of Chicago. In 1968, he enrolled at

Colorado College Colorado College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It was founded in 1874 by Thomas Nelson Haskell in his daughter's memory. The college enrolls approxi ...

, where he earned a BA in painting (1973), focusing on abstraction; his older brother Howard, also an abstract painter, was a mentor during this time. He was accepted into the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York City in 1970 and returned again in 1973.University of Texas at Austin
Michael Smith
Department of Art and Art History, People. Retrieved December 1, 2021. After college, Smith returned to Chicago to work with his father at his real estate company. During this time, he felt that he had reached a dead-end with painting and his interests gravitated toward avant-garde performance work by artists such as

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...

Richard Foreman Richard Foreman (born June 10, 1937 in New York City) is an American avant-garde playwright and the founder of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Achievements and awards Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays, b ...

and William WegmanKlonarides, Carole Ann
"Interview with Mike Smith: 'Mike’s World,'"
''Glasstire'', December 12, 2007. Retrieved December 1, 2021.Hochschild, Mary
"Michael Smith,"
''BOMB Magazine'', Winter, 1982. Retrieved December 1, 2021. He started going to a weekly open mic in the city and in response developed a performance, "Comedy Hour," which he first gave publicly in his own studio in 1975. In 1976, Whitney curator Marcia Tucker invited him to perform in a performance series at the museum, providing early validation for his new direction. Smith relocated to New York in the fall of 1976, joining an art scene that included

Eric Fischl Eric Fischl (born March 9, 1948) is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, draughtsman and educator. He is known for his paintings depicting American suburbia from the 1970s and 1980s. Life Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on s ...

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captio ...

David Salle David Salle (born September 28, 1952; last name pronounced "Sally") is a Pictures Generation American painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He ear ...

and performance artists

Eric Bogosian Eric Bogosian ( hy, Էրիկ Բոգոսյան; ; born April 24, 1953) is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and a ...

and

Stuart Sherman Stuart Pratt Sherman (1881–1926) was an American literary critic, educator and journalist known for his philosophical "feud" with H. L. Mencken. The two men were very close in age, and their career paths have sometimes been compared, but Mencke ...

, in which he gained attention through performances at Artists Space, Franklin Furnace, The Kitchen and Castelli Graphics.Lawson, Thomas
"'The End of the World', New Museum,"
''Artforum'', April 1984. Retrieved December 7, 2021. In addition to his art production, Smith has taught performance art at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

since 2001, as well as at several other schools.

Work

Smith has produced performance works, commercial television and promotional business video simulations, adult puppet shows, immersive installations, drawings and photographs, often in collaboration with artists and directors such as Mike Kelley, Joshua White,

Doug Skinner Doug Skinner (born January 7, 1955) is an American composer, writer, and performer. Music Skinner has written music for many dance companies, including ODC/Dance in San Francisco and Margaret Jenkins. He has often written for the theater: in pa ...

and Mark Fischer. His deadpan, pathos-laden style of humor draws on influences including 1960s comics Jackie Vernon and fellow Chicagoan Shelley Berman and

Bob Newhart George Robert Newhart (born September 5, 1929) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery style. Newhart came to prominence in 1960 when his album of comedic monologues, ''The Button-Down Mi ...

, actor-directors Buster Keaton and

Jacques Tati Jacques Tati (; born Jacques Tatischeff, ; 9 October 1907 – 5 November 1982) was a French mime, film-maker, actor and screenwriter. In an ''Entertainment Weekly'' poll of the Greatest Movie Directors, he was voted the 46th greatest of all time ...

, absurdist playwrights Samuel Beckett and Alfred Jarry,

Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...

's '' Candide'', and comedy albums and TV shows from his youth.Blair, Dike. "Michael Smith's Bland Ambition," ''Purple'', Summer 2001, p. 94–5. Smith's work has often pushed the limits of entertainment, comedy and art with unconventional pacing, repetition, precise timing, subversive obtuseness, and a blurring of fiction and reality.Casavecchia, Barbara
"Michael Smith,"
''Frieze'', May 5, 2009. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Carroll, Mary Ellen. "Michael Smith," ''Modern Painters'', February 2008, p. 92–3. He often lampoons the practices and promises of the entertainment industry, art world and American capitalism, exploring themes of fitting in, ambition, the obsolescence of "just past" motifs and tastes, failure and aging. Some writers contend that his work prefigured genres and works such as "mockumentaries", reality TV and ''The Truman Show'', and adult-oriented "kid shows" (e.g., ''South Park''); his art is sometimes compared to that of anarchic, hard-to-categorize creators like

Andy Kaufman Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman ( ; January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a "comedian", Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes b ...

or Albert Brooks. Most of Smith's work has involved two characters: his everyman or "bland man" performance persona, "Mike," or an oversized infant called "Baby Ikki."

"Mike"

Smith's "Mike"

persona A persona (plural personae or personas), depending on the context, is the public image of one's personality, the social role that one adopts, or simply a fictional character. The word derives from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatr ...

has been described as a bland, naïve, "perpetually hapless, perennially upbeat everyman" or "

wise fool The wise fool, or the wisdom of the fool, is a form of literary paradox in which through a narrative a character recognized as a fool comes to be seen as a beholder of wisdom. A recognizable trope found in stories and artworks from antiquity to ...

," who stubbornly pursues small-time entrepreneurial schemes and social goals with knotted brows and a "peculiar combination of puppyish enthusiasm and quiet desperation." His attempts to achieve the American Dream—through exhausted trends, dominant viewpoints and ad-copy tropes—are presented with a mix of gullibility, can-do

Dale Carnegie Dale Carnegie (; spelled Carnagey until c. 1922; November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal ...

-like optimism, pathos and culpability and in environments employing knowingly tacky design. ''New York Times'' critic

Roberta Smith Roberta Smith (born 1948) is co-chief art critic of ''The New York Times'' and a lecturer on contemporary art. She is the first woman to hold that position. Early life Born in 1948 in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas. Smith studied a ...

described Mike as "a latter-day Willie Loman, who makes everything in sight ricochet between post-modern irony and a genuine sense of sorrow for the many Mikes drifting across the American landscape." Mike first appeared in performance works and then video collaborations between Smith and director Mark Fischer. In the video ''Down in the Rec Room'' (1979), Mike is presented endlessly waiting in signature boxer shorts for party guests that never arrive and interacting instead with cheesy media personalities heard on the audio track or viewed on a television. ''Secret Horror'' (1980) depicted a

Muzak Muzak is an American brand of background music played in retail stores and other public establishments. The name has been in use since 1934, and has been owned by a division or subsidiary of one or another company ever since. In 1981, Westingho ...

-scored nightmare in which Mike's apartment is besieged by a mysteriously dropping ceiling, a "party" attended only by tall ghosts, and 1960s pop-culture imperatives from TV game shows, sitcoms, music and commercial brands. Smith also performed as Mike in ''USA Free-Style Disco Championship'' (1979), competing at the twilight of the disco era in a real disco contest at New York's Copacabana nightclub and placing twelfth (last).Wilk, Elvia
"Michael Smith,"
''Frieze'', November 14, 2016. Retrieved December 3, 2021. Art historian David Joselit called ''It Starts at Home'' (1982, first shown at the Whitney Museum in the installation ''Mike's House'') "a watershed work" in video art that placed avant-garde practice within the debased rhetoric of the middlebrow TV

sitcom A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ...

and inverted the usual relationship between audience and spectacle. In its play on

public access TV Public-access television is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television specialty channels. Public-access television was creat ...

, Mike's mundane domestic life is being beamed to the world due to a cable installation snafu, making him inexplicably famous;Lawson, Thomas
"Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', Summer 1982. Retrieved December 7, 2021. among the work's other features were a purported agent (literally, a "deal-making piece of fur" named "Bob") and various disorienting sight gags, doublings and mismatches between the installation's home (also the cable-show set) and the video. In the satirical installation ''Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/...Snack Bar'' (1983),The Museum of Modern Art
Michael Smith, ''Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar'', 1983
Collection. Retrieved January 3, 2022. Smith examined cold-war anxieties by transforming Mike's rec room into a fallout bunker (based on a 1950s FEMA manual), complete with a yellow concrete snack bar and a video game programmed to always lose. Some of Smith's subsequent projects included the satirical music video ''Go For It, Mike'' (1984); the deadpan ''OYMA (Outstanding Young Men of America)'' (1996), which spoofed

Reaganomics Reaganomics (; a portmanteau of ''Reagan'' and ''economics'' attributed to Paul Harvey), or Reaganism, refers to the neoliberal economic policies promoted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. These policies are commonly associat ...

, the Horatio Alger myth and all-American stereotypes (e.g., the

Marlboro Man The Marlboro Man is a figure that was used in tobacco advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes. In the United States, where the campaign originated, it was used from 1954 to 1999. The Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954. ...

, individualism); and 1990s adult-oriented puppet/performance collaborations with Doug Skinner, collectively titled ''Doug & Mike's Adult Entertainment''. He also began to reflect on creative production and the business of the art world in the mock-instructional videos ''The World of Photography'' (1986, with William Wegman) and ''How to Curate Your Own Group Exhibition (Do It)'' (1996).Holden, Stephen
"'World of Photography' on Channel 13,"
''The New York Times'', August 1, 1986, p. C26. Retrieved December 3, 2021.Electronic Arts Intermix
Michael Smith
Artists. Retrieved December 8, 2021.

Collaborations with Joshua White

Smith began to work with artist-director Joshua White in the 1990s. Their collaborative installation ''MUSCO'' (1997) presented Mike as the owner of a once successful lighting business, now in the throes of bankruptcy.Moody, Tom
"Michael Smith and Joshua White,"
''Artforum'', May 1997. Retrieved December 7, 2021. It included a believable office (grimy fax machine, threadbare carpet, boxes and trash bags resulting from a "reorganization"), a showroom with aging wares and specially created misfires (“Mood Tube” table lamps, satin "Disco-Time" vests), and a promotional video.Cameron, Dan
"1997 In Review: The Endless Biennial,"
''Artforum'', December 1997. Retrieved December 7, 2021. ''Artforums Tom Moody called it an "exhaustively detailed, tragicomic installation … fusing the decline of '60s idealism and the downside of the American dream into a spectacle at once depressing and hilarious";

Dan Cameron Dan Cameron (born February 12, 1956 in Utica, New York) is an American contemporary art curator. He has served as senior curator for Next Wave Visual Art at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), an annual exhibition of emerging Brooklyn-based artists ...

declared it an "exhilarating and unbearably sad" journey from countercultural ethic to disco consumption to cutthroat 1990s business competition. For ''Open House'' (1997/2007), they converted the New Museum's basement into the convincingly lived-in basement studio of Mike, then a mediocre conceptual artist whose only success was the timely purchase of the "loft" he is now selling.Johnson, Ken
"Michael Smith and Joshua White – 'Open House,'"
''The New York Times'', May 7, 1999, p. E34. Retrieved December 3, 2021. Complete with examples of Mike's derivative art, tapes of his public access art show ("Interstitial") and squalid details, the show was described by ''Artforum'' as "corrosively funny …

Hans Haacke Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a Germany, German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique. Early life Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the ''S ...

meets Jerry Seinfeld" and a peculiarly American version "of failure, of utopian dreams sold down the river of compromise and capitalism."Hevesi, Dennis
"The Loft Law's Pursuit of Lofty Goals,"
''The New York Times'', June 20, 1999, Sect., 11, p. 1. Retrieved December 3, 2021. ''The QuinQuag Arts and Wellness Centre'' (2001–2) depicted Mike awash in loft-sale and dot-com money and the inadvertent owner of a fictional, mid-century Catskills Utopian artists' colony ("QuinQuag") fallen on hard times.Glueck, Grace

''The New York Times'', December 7, 2001, p. E33. Retrieved December 3, 2021. The pointed installation's dowdy exhibits, promotional videos, artifacts and folksy products (e.g., an artist-produced rocker Jackie Kennedy may have purchased for JFK) portray Mike's efforts to resurrect the colony under the auspices of a "Wellness Solutions Group" and corporate retreats. Smith and White also collaborated on the carnivalesque "Mike's World" traveling retrospective exhibition (2007–8, Blanton Museum and ICA Philadelphia), which featured videos (including an "orientation" based on those at presidential libraries), performances, installations, publications and drawings.Fallon, Roberta. "Mike’s World and Trenton Doyle Hancock," ''Philadelphia Weekly'', May 7, 2008.

Later work

Smith's later work often examines aging. ''Excuse me!?! ... I’m Looking for the 'Fountain of Youth (Greene Naftali/Tate Modern, 2015) was a sprawling project of drawings, videos, performance, photographs and a woven tapestry.Green, Kate
"Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', October 12, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2021. Its conceptual art-dance-performance piece distilled various late-life indignities—Mike's attempts at yoga, humiliating airport security searches, "encouraged" retirement, the feeling of invisibility—and included a surreal medieval dream sequence, in which an elixir reverts him from a knight into a court jester and then a baby, suggesting the futility of the titular search. ''Imagine the View from Here'' (

Museo Jumex Museo may refer to: * Museo, 2018 Mexican drama heist film *Museo (Naples Metro) Museo is a station on line 1 of the Naples Metro. It was opened on 5 April 2001 as the eastern terminus of the section of the line between Vanvitelli and Museo. ...

, 2018–9) critiqued the art world’s relationship to development and reflected on middle-class aging. Occupying the museum’s mezzanine, the exhibition presented tradeshow booths and promotional videos from Smith's long-running, fictional "International Trade and Enrichment Association" (ITEA) project offering art lovers (with Mike as surrogate) a faux, "Fully Curated Timeshare" in the museum as an investment and luxury destination.Green, Kate
"Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', January 19, 2019. Retrieved December 2, 2021.Jauregui, Gabriela
"Flipping the Gaze: Exhibitions Around Mexico City,"
''ARTnews'', February 25, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2021. Reviews described the work's sales pitch combining "the gleefully, ignorant optimism of Mike" and an "essentially underwhelming marketing display" as deadpan and bitingly satirical.

"Baby Ikki"

Smith's other recurring performance persona is "Baby Ikki," an oversized infant described as "pre-linguistic, genderless" and gorilla-like, with conspicuous facial hair, oversized diapers, a bonnet and undersized sunglasses. First created in 1975 in Chicago and performed by Smith with a tensed body and impulsive, precisely mimicked movements, the character was a crowd-pleaser that enabled direct audience interaction and elicited a combination of repulsion and concern; in the 1978 video ''Baby Ikki'', he ventures out into traffic, only to be dragged back to the sidewalk, bawling, by a visibly unamused policeman.Licht, Ala
"Mike Kelley and Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', December 2009. Retrieved December 7, 2021. Baby Ikki has appeared internationally in performances, videos and installations in New York (

Electronic Arts Intermix Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a nonprofit arts organization that is a resource for video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first develope ...

, MoMA), Los Angeles and Europe.Rimanelli, David
"Mike Kelley and Michael Smith,"
''Artforum'', September 2009. Retrieved December 2, 2021.Electronic Arts Intermix
Baby Ikki's Birthday Party
Titles. Retrieved December 8, 2021. He was featured in a collaborative exhibition with

Seth Price Seth Price (born 1973 in Palestine) is a New York City-based multi-disciplinary post-conceptual artist. He lives and works in New York City. Early life Price was born in the village of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, Palestine in 1973. His p ...

, "Playground" (2003, Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan), that included an installation of playground toys and video projections depicting him visiting various deserted meeting places. In 2009, Smith collaborated with artist Mike Kelley on a multimedia installation based on Baby Ikki’s adventures at Burning Man, ''A Voyage of Growth and Discovery'' (

SculptureCenter SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit, contemporary art museum located in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1928 as "The Clay Club" by Dorothea Denslow. In 2013, SculptureCentre attracted around 13,000 visitors. History Fo ...

, 2009; West of Rome, 2010). The project combined aspects of both artists' past work—dancing, dressing up, infantilism—with the festival's ethos of weeklong "radical self-expression." It included an eighteen-foot Baby Ikki junk sculpture and skeletal metal playground structures designed by Kelley and projected video of Ikki at the festival, playing tetherball, dancing, and interacting amid the mass of people.

Awards and collections

Smith has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1985) and

Herb Alpert Foundation In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicinal ...

(2012, Visual Arts), awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2007) and

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

(2007, with Joshua White), and grants from the

and Art Matters, among others.New York Foundation for the Arts. ''New York Foundation for the Arts Biennial Report 2007/2008'', 2008. p. 5.Art Matters
Grantees, 1995
Retrieved December 8, 2021. His work belongs to the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art,

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

,Centre Pompidou
Michael Smith
Artists. Retrieved December 8, 2021. Blanton Museum of Art,Blanton Museum of Art
Michael Smith
Artists. Retrieved January 10, 2022.

Inhotim The Inhotim Institute is home to one of the largest foundations of contemporary art in Brazil and one of the largest outdoor art centers in Latin America. It was founded by the former mining magnate Bernardo Paz in 2004 to house his personal art ...

Institute (Brazil),e-flux
"From the Object to the World – Inhotim Collection at Itaú Cultural."
Retrieved January 3, 2022. LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur (Munster),Skulptur Projekte Archives
Michael Smith
Projects. Retrieved January 3, 2022. Migros Museum of Contemporary Art (Zurich),Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst
Michael Smith
Collection. Retrieved January 3, 2022.

Paley Center for Media The Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television & Radio (MT&R) and the Museum of Broadcasting, founded in 1975 by William S. Paley, is an American cultural institution in New York with a branch office in Los Angeles, dedicated to ...

,Paley Center for Media
''Secret Horror'', Video Art by Michael Smith
Collection. Retrieved December 8, 2021. and

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in the United States and, to ...

,Walker Art Center
Michael Smith
Collections. Retrieved December 8, 2021. among others.

References

External links

Mike's WorldMichael Smith
Electronic Arts Intermix page.
Michael Smith – Performance Room
Tate Live
Michael Smith, ''The Mus-Co Story: 1969-1997''
2010 * ttp://artfcity.com/2012/08/17/blast-from-the-past-smith-and-wegmans-world-of-photography/ ‘’The World of Photography’’ William Wegman and Michael Smith
Michael Smith, ''Not Quite Under_Ground''
Skulptur Projekte 2017
Michael Smith, ''Timeline (1973 - 1996)''
Glasgow International 2014 {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Michael 1951 births Living people American performance artists Artists from Chicago Colorado College alumni Yale University faculty Cranbrook Academy of Art faculty University of California, Los Angeles faculty Columbia University faculty University of Texas at Austin faculty Franklin Furnace artists