Jenni Sorkin

Softer Atrocities: An Introductionto Mary Reid Kelley's The Syphilisof Sisyphus (2011)

For Americans, modernist French culture has long represented the height ofsophistication: the nightlife of the demi-monde, and their louche world of cafés,brothels, and cabarets, or what art historian HoUis Clayson has caUed "the leisuremÜls and dives of bohemian Paris."' Epitomized in paintings and prints by Manet,Renoir, Degas, Signac, and Toulouse-Lautrec, the gas-Ht boulevards and thepleasures of absinthe have long been immortaUzed and celebrated for the betterpart of a century. These famous works have been emblazoned on posters, coffeemugs, mouse pads, umbreUas, and eagerly consumed by several generations of theAmerican bourgeoisie, peppering many middle class American girlhoods.

The artist Mary Reid KeUey (American, b. 1979) exploits this deep love ofImpressionist fare and turns it upside down, situating her own beUe epoch. TheSyphilis of Sisyphus (2011), at the end of the affair, so to speak, of the long nineteenthcentury. She undercuts the bohemian romanticism through the cautionary tale ofa young naif, known as Sisyphus, who is pregnant and impoverished, and is alsoinfected with syphUis.

Shot by coUaborator Patrick Kelley in a high-definition video in a starkpalette of black and white, there is a mournful quality to the hand-drawn stage setsand highly styUzed actors. Reid KeUey herself takes on the role of Sisyphus, yetaU the characters are only recognizable as archetypes, hidden by bulging golf baUsfor eyes. This creates a persistence of studied expressionlessness. Tightly scriptedin anapestic tetrameter, a now-archaic form, which combines metrical variationsof quatrains and sestets, the text offers a seductive and rhythmic narrative arc that

I. S. Hollis Clayson, "Wicked Paris," Lecture, March 29,2009, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown,Massachusetts.

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Jenni Sorkin

is somewhere between a comic morality tale and a riveting Greek tragedy. Coypunning abounds in visually delightful ways, but the ambiguity is perhaps bestreceived in script form, which follows in these pages. Reid Kelley's video has beenshown at a number of prestigious contemporary art museums and exhibitions,including MACRO, Rome; The Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio; and the ICA,Philadelphia; as well as a solo exhibition at Fredericks ôc Freiser in New York.

This inaugural collaboration with Gulf Coast marks the inclusion of a con-temporary art work with complicated literary credentials: it is written in a formof light verse more closely aligned with the nineteenth century rather than thetwenty-first. The artist's ribald wit is dependent upon an unambiguous punningthat is perhaps at its best when closely read. The images that follow in thissection are stills from the video work itself, and the text becomes as glitteringan addition as the vanity mirror itself, a way of extending the space for a videowork in which the pathos and humor are so dense with allusions and intrigue asto necessitate a guide.

Reid Kelley's video is filmic, but it is not a film; her script is poetic, but it isnot a poem; the sets and entrances are theatrical, but they are not staged. Rather, itis a masterful performance, once removed, set in a sketchbook-like universe of herown making. Her characters are hollow archetypes who trade in the histories ofliterature and art, and yet Sisyphus covering up the ulcerative lesions on her facemanages to be absolutely contemporary: conjuring the late night infomercials ofB-celebrities hawking Proactiv Solution. As Sisyphus learns, such treatments, ofsquid ink and rice powder, are short-lived fixes. Her condition is terminal, her babyon the way, and there is a Greek chorus that functions as a rather chilling alter-ego: it simultaneously mocks and reassures. Named the Saltimbanques—after amélange of references which include Daumier's drawings of itinerant street musi-cians and acrobats, as well as Picasso's painting. Family of Saltimbanques (1905)—Kelley's circus clowns are also performers.They chortle and recite in unison and oncommand, and in sly double entendres, cover the history of the French Revolution(complete with its guiUoteenagers). Enlightenment-era discoveries (Lavoisier'sGas, also known as oxygen), and in perhaps the wittiest moment, do battle overpaternity with French bread, yelling, "I baguette you! I baguette you!"

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If this witty physical comedy is more American-style riposte than Frenchburlesque, Kelley's mockery of her subject is earnest. Anne Hathaway's Fantineis perhaps the pop cultural equivalent of Sisyphus, but Les Miserables is to TheSyphilis of Sisyphus what mac and cheese is to a Camembert and Beaujolaispairing. That is to say, Kelley's video work has a biting, somewhat acidic quality.It does not come from a box that recycles previous cultural confections. Thevideo is performed in three acts, with a rhythmic patter that is unmistakablytheatrical, reminiscent of a modernist French farce in the manner of Genet orIonesco. In this way, her characters are strategically devoid of depth so as toposition them as simple representations that poke fun at the historical misun-derstandings surrounding modern French history, and the overblown Americanromanticism that surrounds the gUttering city of Paris. Yet her narrative, toldfrom a female point of view, is a strategic feminism, giving voice to the paintingsof the past: the hundreds of silenced barmaids, dancers, ballerinas, and nudes thatonce epitomized bohemian desire and yet still influence our own contemporaryideas of debauchery, because we think we know what theirs looked like: gaslightsshining on cobblestone, the lit cafés, and beautiful women in rouge, dancing.

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