I love how the New Year inspires the summing up of the year gone by. What’s the best movie you saw? What’s the best album you heard? I have a pretty sizable library of art books, artist biographies and exhibition catalogs, and this is the time of year when publishers send me their spring catalogs, looking for some press/blog buzz in the coming months.

Last year was a pretty good year for art books, but my favorite 2013 art books are two Mike Kelley titles that eclipse everything else in the category…

Pay for Your Pleasures: Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Raymond Pettibone – Profiling the edge of the Southern California art scene by illuminating three of its most controversial figures, Pleasures is an important volume the examines the artist’s separate oeuvres while also pointing to the overlap in their collaborative efforts. The book focuses on work produced in the 1970′s, 80′s and ’90′s, and author, Cary Levine’s investigations into the musical subcultures these artists were drawn to provides an intriguing jumping-off point for this tour of transgressive expressions which includes everything from disturbing statements on sex and gender to sculptures made of feces. The work here challenges the minds, hearts and stomachs of viewers – often simultaneously. And it’s Levine’s brave understanding of this work and these artists that makes Pleasures such a pleasure.

Mike Kelley is the most complete catalog yet produced on the work of the artist and it’s the companion book to the retrospective exhibition that followed Kelley’s death in 2012. The eponymous volume tracks the artist’s sculpture, works on paper, paintings, sound, music, installations, videos and performances from the 1970′s through Kelley’s last work, “Mobile Homestead.” The book suspends its audience between the harrowing and hilarious dichotomies that defined Kelley’s output and it’s an invaluable reference for writers, artists, teachers and the Kelley-curious, seeking a deeper, critical understanding of this important artist’s work.

Here is an experimental video project that features Kelley’s band Destroy All Monsters

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