File:Michael Smith Shelter 1983.jpg

Installation by Michael Smith, Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar (Installation view, Castelli Graphics, New York City, 1983). The image illustrates a key early body of work in Michael Smith's career beginning in the late 1970s, when he created deadpan immersive installations and performances in the guise of his everyman or "bland man" performance persona, "Mike.". The character has been described as a perpetually hapless and upbeat "wise fool," stubbornly pursuing small-time entrepreneurial schemes and social goals with a combination of puppyish enthusiasm, can-do optimism and quiet desperation. In this work, which examined cold-war anxieties, the character transforms his recreation room into a fallout bunker based on a 1950s FEMA manual, complete with a yellow concrete snack bar and a video game programmed to always lose. This work has been publicly exhibited in prominent venues, discussed in major art journals and daily press publications, and acquired by a major museum.

Artist Michael Smith. Copyright held by the artist.

Michael Smith (performance artist)

Installation view

Yes

The image serves an informational and educational purpose as the primary means of illustrating a key early body of work in Michael Smith's career beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s: his immersive installations and performances in the guise of his everyman or "bland man" performance persona, "Mike." This work has often pushed the limits of entertainment, comedy and art with unconventional pacing, repetition, precise timing, subversive obtuseness, and knowingly tacky design, blurring fiction and reality and exploring themes of fitting in, dominant viewpoints, the obsolescence of "just past" motifs and tastes, and failure. Because the article is about an artist and his work, the omission of the image would significantly limit a reader's understanding and ability to understand this early stage and body of work, which brought Smith recognition through exhibitions and performances in art-world and mainstream venues and media outlets and coverage by major critics and publications. Smith's work of this type and this series is discussed in the article and by critics cited in the article.

There is no free equivalent of this or any other of this series by Michael Smith, and the work no longer is viewable, so the image cannot be replaced by a free image.

The image will not affect the value of the original work or limit the copyright holder's rights or ability to distribute the original due to its low resolution and the general workings of the art market, which values the actual work of art. Because of the low resolution, illegal copies could not be made.