Don't Cut the Mother Loose too Soon: Reevaluating the Art of Ken Kesey's 'Jail Journal'

dc.contributor.authorSwartzlender, Kyle
dc.date.accessioned2014-10-09T21:00:00Z
dc.date.available2014-10-09T21:00:00Z
dc.date.issued2014-06
dc.description85 pages. A thesis presented to the Department of Art History and the Clark Honors College of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for degree of Bachelor of Arts, Spring 2014.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis thesis addresses the topic of Ken Kesey's Jail Journal, a fully illustrated narrative poster series that was constructed during the author's 1967 incarceration in the San Mateo County Correctional System. Not published until nearly forty years after its completion, Kesey' s Jail Journal remains a relatively unknown work to this day. Part of the reason for this work's obscurity can be attributed to its inaccurate categorization as a piece of literature. Through close examination of the Jail Journal's many different parts and genres, this paper demonstrates how the work would be better suited classified as an example of an artist's book; a composition which consists of multiple stylistic and compositional elements, and which is not bound by a single restrictive categorization. Following a model of overlapping classification for the artist's book genre first outlined by Johanna Drucker in her book The Century of Artists' Books, Kesey's Jail Journal is broken down and evaluated in this thesis based on its five most prominent functions as an artist's book. Discussions of the journal's roles as document, written and illustrated narrative, agent of social change, and as a unique and auratic object formulate the different sections of this paper, and provide support for the work's classification as an artist's book.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1794/18470
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Oregonen_US
dc.relation.ispartofseriesUniversity of Oregon theses, Dept. of Art History, Honors College, B.A., 2014;
dc.rightsAll Rights Reserved.en_US
dc.subjectArtists Booksen_US
dc.subjectKen Keseyen_US
dc.subjectReviewen_US
dc.subjectComic booksen_US
dc.subjectCollageen_US
dc.subjectPrisonen_US
dc.subjectIllustrationsen_US
dc.titleDon't Cut the Mother Loose too Soon: Reevaluating the Art of Ken Kesey's 'Jail Journal'en_US
dc.typeThesis / Dissertationen_US

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