Video screenshot: a man in a yellow sailor suit against a dark background

The Banana Man

Mike Kelley

  • Year 1982
  • Edition Unlimited edition
  • Material/Technique Single-channel video (color, sound)
  • Dimensions Variable
  • Length 28'
  • Category Media art
  • Collection Sammlung Goetz, Medienkunst, München

The Banana Man is an early video work by the American artist Mike Kelley. In it, Kelly slips into the role of the “Banana Man,” a minor character from the children’s television program Captain Kangaroo played by vaudeville artist A. Robins. 
The “Banana Man” was the subject of discussions and jokes among the young Kelley’s circle of friends. Yet, since the character rarely appeared on the show and never when Kelley was watching it, the artist never actually saw him. Thus, everything he knew about the character was based on hearsay. Given this limited information, the video work was Kelley’s attempt to reconstruct the psychology of the “Banana Man,” whom the artist embodied in yellow make-up and yellow clothing as an exaggerated slapstick character, whose silly and often crude jokes revealed him to be a tragic figure. 

Mike Kelley

271 pages, 150 ill., hardcover.
German/English
2008, Kunstverlag Ingvild Goetz GmbH, Hamburg
ISBN 978-3-939894-11-7
€ 25,00

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