In this 1981 essay in REAL LIFE magazine, art historian Howard Singerman proposes “the adolescent [as] the role model for Post Modernism” and assesses the early performance work of artists Chris Burden and Mike Kelley. He writes that Kelley and Burden “are smart, serious and sane and their willfulness and childishness, while it is poignant and energized, is in part a rhetorical and tactical critique of Modernism. Post Modernism is neither a coup nor a cure for art or its superstructure.” Source: Howard Singerman, “The Artist as Adolescent,” REAL LIFE magazine, 1981. Image: Mike Kelley, The Poltergeist, 1979.