Michael Smith is an American artist born in Chicago, in 1951. He has been an influential figure in performance art, video art, and installation art since the early 1980s.
He is best known for his performance persona named Mike, the central figure in an ongoing series of narrative projects. Mike, an innocent character who continually falls victim to trends and fashions and his own naive ambitions, allows Smith to comment on discrepancies and absur...
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Michael Smith is an American artist born in Chicago, in 1951. He has been an influential figure in performance art, video art, and installation art since the early 1980s.
He is best known for his performance persona named Mike, the central figure in an ongoing series of narrative projects. Mike, an innocent character who continually falls victim to trends and fashions and his own naive ambitions, allows Smith to comment on discrepancies and absurdities in American culture while creating an unsettling and poignant mixture of humor and pathos.
Michael Smith received his Bachelor of Arts from Colorado College and attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. He has taught in the Master of Fine Arts programs at Yale, the Cranbrook Academy of Art, UCLA, Art Center College of Design, Columbia University, CalArts and Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), and...
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