mcasd:

ART AUCTION 2012

Jean Lowe, Rollback 2008, collaged photographs, 19 5/8 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Quint Contemporary Art

Musee D’Art Comtemporain de Bordeaux.

Happy birthday, Audubon.

museumoflatinamericanart:

Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuela, b. 1923)

Induction of Yellow from the series Denise, 2007

chromograph on paper mounted on aluminum, ed. 2/8, 70 7/8 x 31 1/2 in.

Part Six of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, “The Grand March,” examines the idea of kitsch:

Behind all the European faiths, religious and political, we find the first chapter of Genesis, which tells us that the world was created properly, that human existence is good, and that we are therefore entitled to multiply. Let us call this basic faith a categorical agreement with being.

The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s—- has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which casse don’t lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner.

It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.

“Kitsch” is a German word born in the middle of the sentimental nineteenth century, and from German it entered all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

This reminds me of my interest in what I call beautyism, which is a kind of art that doesn’t merely exclude shit, but aggressively tries to fit as much “beauty” onto a canvas as possible. Chris Consani’s paintings of late celebrity gatherings come to mind.

But Kundera is more interested in the idea of exclusion. It’s worth pointing out that while he pursues a realization of the separateness of body and soul, he doesn’t want to exclude anything. He doesn’t want to exclude love or sex or shame or shit. He would rather take it all, but recognize each for what it is.

The Wikipedia article on kitsch has a nice passage on Kundera’s take on the subject (at least it does at press time).

Other theorists over time have also linked kitsch to totalitarianism. The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), defined it as “the absolute denial of shit.” His argument was that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.”

In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast, “everything that infringes on kitsch,” including individualism, doubt, and irony, “must be banished for life” in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, “Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.”

For Kundera, “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

The distinction between those two tears is an important one in my mind. I feel that a lot of unnecessary trouble and confusion is created when people are explicitly taught to respond emotionally to certain situations. It is totalitarian to say “you should understand that this is beauty, everyone knows it.” Kitsch makes this assumption.

Look out for it.

Photo by Reuters via The Atlantic.

laphamsquarterly:

The No. 1 quote critics give me is, “Thom, your work is irrelevant.” My art is relevant because it’s relevant to 10 million people. That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture.

“Thomas Kinkade dies at 54,” LA Times

Susan Orlean, “Art for Everybody,” The New Yorker, 2001. 

(via 990000)

endpiece:

Keith Haring (1958-1990). Unfinished painting, 1989.

Meditations on Symmetry – Kelsey Brookes