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Kitch
Kitsch is never ironic.
In kitsch, all human beings are rendered with respect
– regardless of age and social status.In a kitsch composition, human beings shall have contact.
If your foremost goal is originality, then you are no longer making kitsch.
Kitsch seeks intensity, not originality.
The goal is to approach the best of the old masters as closely as possible,
especially the Greek hellenism (300 b.C – 100 A.D.)
and the Baroque Renaissance (1500-1670).A kitsch creator seeks to
develop his skill
rather than give priority to the new.A kitsch creator does not dictate nature,
he studies it.A kitsch creator is dissatisfied with
his lack of knowledge.For a kitsch creator all masters are contemporary.
Making something “new”
is for a kitsch creator embarassing,
but as Aristotle says:
a story can be good even though it is new.For a kitsch creator, the standard of “development”
is if he has reached the standard of previous masters.
And even if they are surpassed,
he will never loose respect.The hellenistic idea of beauty
is
a dogma and not a religion.Because kitsch is not built on religion
(how one shall believe and feel)
but skill,
it is consequently dependant upon dogmas.Sentimentality is positive (Rembrandt) – sentimentalism is negative (Bougereau).
Sentimentalism is the enemy of sentimentality
because it harbors irony.
A work cannot become sentimental enough
– “too much” is really too little.
Ilja Repins “Ivan the Terrible”
is a sentimental painting.Morality is positive,
because it is built on humanism.
Moralism is negative.The skill of the hand
is the accompanying friend
of the head.Skill,
not “honesty”.Comparison is the only way
to understand quality.
Compare Picasso and Rembrandt:
time is no excuse.“Our time” and “originality”
are folklore,
and a hindrance.The longing to elaborate his own melancholy
through handcraft
is the quality of the kitsch creator.A kitsch person has lived many times,
he cannot betray his memory.The intensity in the perception of nature
makes it a magical common property.
When you try to make it better than when you first saw it,
then you are approaching high kitsch.There is a connection between you and the great works you admire.
You identify with those who did not follow
the metaphysics of the time.Painterly miracles give the most joy.
A kitsch creator wishes to see substance illuminated,
pure colors are but opaque darkness.If you hold back
out of concern for the demands of the time,
then you are no longer making kitsch.Kitsch will always be in conflict with
the university, the state and the bureaucracy
– because it represents human vulnerability.High kitsch exposes the clichèes of power.
The magician shall not conquer the world,
he shall only play with it.
So also with high kitsch.A good drawing
without a natural rhythm
is not a good drawing.Kitsch creator!
You are allowed to take pride in your work.The kitsch creator sees in suffering
a local problem
which is given a universal content.The kitsch creator
goes into the cave to search
for a little, dark flame.In a kitsch work
the surface reveals everything,
it is the only way to the undertext.A kitsch work always smells
of sweat.A kitsch work shall be seen with the eyes,
not with the ears.Time is incidental, quality is everything;
time is nothing.
The kitsch creator looks to the old masters
not because they are old,
but because they are masters.The goal is
the immortal master work,
not the sketch.
The kitsch creator lives only for the master work.The three stages of kitsch:
The egosentric
– look at me.
The geosentric
– look at what I can do.
The heliosentric (which can only be reached through the geosentric)
– look at what I have revealed.Kitsch
is
humanity
sensuality
light– Jan-Ove Tuv and students
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1 Odpoveď
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Odd Nerdrum (born April 8, 1944) is a Norwegian figurative painter.
Nerdrum was born in Oslo and studied traditional classical painting in the Art Academy of Oslo and, with Joseph Beuys, in New York. He began to teach himself how to paint in a classical manner, putting himself in direct opposition to the art of his native Norway. Nerdrum devised a method of painting of mixing and grinding his own pigments, stretching his canvas and the working from live models. He had his first one-person gallery exhibition in New York at the Martina Hamilton Gallery in 1983. He is now living in Iceland. Nerdrum became a controversial artist, claiming among other things that his art should be understood as kitsch rather than art as such.
Nerdrum divides his time between his home in Iceland and his farm in Norway
Art
Hermaphrodite, oil on canvas, 211cm x 205cm, by Odd NerdrumOdd Nerdrum’s art shows some affinity with Rembrandt and Caravaggio, particularly in regard to technique. This, however, is where the similarities end. His paintings are undoubtedly contemporary and depict many of the anxieties we feel about the modern world. In the 1980s, his work took on a more mythical appearance with figures roaming through an apocalyptic landscape. In the spring of 1986, Odd Nerdrum visited Iceland for the first time. He then started to use the landscape in Iceland as backdrops for his allegorical paintings. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether the paintings show the past, present or future. Perhaps this is the point they are timeless. There was growing unease and tension in his paintings in the early 1990s. Relations between men and women appear strained, but there is a more conciliatory spirit in some lighter works produced in the summer of 1997. Themes recently seem to be centred around gender and the metamorphosis of the human body, seen in any works depicting hermaphrodite figures in which man and woman merge. Other works show the images of the artist asleep. It is even possible that these images are metaphors for death or other anxieties. Of course in common with most of his work there is a degree of mystery and this is what gives his work it’s compelling and imaginative qualities.
Collections
His work is in several important public collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY, The National Gallery in Oslo, Norway, The New Orleans Museum in LA, The Portland Art Museum in OR, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art in CA, and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MNExhibitions
The kiss, oil on canvas, 98cm x 78cm, by Odd NerdrumKunstnersforbundet 1967-70-73 Oslo-76-84
Galleri 27 Oslo 1972
The Bedford Way Gallery 1982
Martina Hamilton Gallery 1984
Delaware Art Museum Wilmington 1985
The Museum of Contemporary Art ,Chicago IL 1988
Lemberg Gallery Birmingham 1991 MI
Gothenburg art Museum Sweden 1991
Bergen Art Museum Norway 1992
Edward Thorp Gallery New-York 1992
New Orleans Museum of Art 1994
Forum Gallery ,New-York 1996
Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo Norway 1998
Kunsthal Rotterdam ,The Netherlands 1999
Amos Andersson Museum, Finland 1999
Young Classic, Harry Bergman Gallery, Alands Art museum 2000 FinlandReviews
“There are more men than women here, but sexual pairing seems to occur only in death (or a sleep resembling death). Which is not to say desire is nowhere present. It is everywhere. If anything makes these pictures compelling, it’s their consistent fascination with the human body. The images–of paired corpses, madmen, men in pain, a man without eyes–may be frightful and abhorrent, but every limb and torso is lovingly rendered. Pale, muscular, sexual, the figures are painted so that one must take them seriously–in much the same way that it is music that grounds the otherwise bizarre stage spectacles of Wagnerian opera.”Odd Nerdrum by Justin Spring, part of a review first published in Artforum International, April 1st, 1993
Bibliography
Odd Nerdrum:Paintings,Sketches and drawings by Richard Vine.Odd Nerdrum: Paintings by Jan-Erik Ebbestad Hansen
Odd Nerdrum:Storyteller and Self Revealer by Jan-Åke Pettersson.
Odd Nerdrum: Drawings BY Odd Nerdrum.
Trivia
Dawn, oil on canvas, 284.5cm x 194cm, by Odd NerdrumThe 2000 movie The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn, which relied heavily on disturbing images and surreal landscapes to create the inner mind of a killer, was influenced by Nerdrum’s painting “Dawn” for one scene in particular. In the film three figures are depicted sitting down, looking upwards with painful trance like expressions on their faces and appear to be carbon copies of each other. They show the same disturbing presence as Nerdrum’s painting and are undoubtly influenced by his image. The painting was completed in 1990.Nerdrum created the cover of the progressive rock band Junipher Greene’s LP Friendship (1971).
Links:
http://www.artincontext.org/artist/n/odd_nerdrum/index.htm
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/nerdrum_odd.html/
http://www.nerdrum.com/
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