Robert Melee’s deliberately-campy photographs explore themes of intimacy, kitsch, sexuality and subculture. Many of these works take as their subject the artist’s relationship with his outlandish mother, Rose Melee, who often appears in flashy, provocative clothing and heavy make-up, and in various states of intoxication. The artist’s staged compositions offer an intimate glimpse at this bizarre mother-and-son dynamic, blurring the boundaries between private life and theater. In Me and Mommy Drinking II, the pair becomes an unsettling modern Pietà, the mother cradling her grown son in her lap in an unconventional updating of traditional depictions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.This work is currently on view in the exhibition “Religion, Ritual, and Performance in Modern and Contemporary Art” through  June 30, 2013.Image:Robert Melee (American, b. 1966)Me and Mommy Drinking II, 2000Cibachrome print, plastic slip cover, frameRuth Roush Fund for Contemporary ArtAMAM 2000.17 
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Robert Melee’s deliberately-campy photographs explore themes of intimacy, kitsch, sexuality and subculture. Many of these works take as their subject the artist’s relationship with his outlandish mother, Rose Melee, who often appears in flashy, provocative clothing and heavy make-up, and in various states of intoxication. The artist’s staged compositions offer an intimate glimpse at this bizarre mother-and-son dynamic, blurring the boundaries between private life and theater. In Me and Mommy Drinking II, the pair becomes an unsettling modern Pietà, the mother cradling her grown son in her lap in an unconventional updating of traditional depictions of Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

This work is currently on view in the exhibition “Religion, Ritual, and Performance in Modern and Contemporary Art” through  June 30, 2013.

Image:
Robert Melee (American, b. 1966)
Me and Mommy Drinking II, 2000
Cibachrome print, plastic slip cover, frame
Ruth Roush Fund for Contemporary Art
AMAM 2000.17 

12 Notes/ Hide

  1. rubegoldbergsdevice reblogged this from oberlin-college and added:
    I wrote a paper about this my first semester at Oberlin. I still think about this piece from time to time.
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