Everyone looks at you as if to say, "How could you?"
I blame Guido Reni and Carlo Dolci for this.
Communist kitsch
Everyone smiles like an over-enthusiastic high school guidance counselor.
I haven't figured out exactly who to blame for this. Delacroix is too ironic, David is too classical, and Courbet is too detached and dry-eyed.
And then there are Pierre and Gilles who appreciate the camp quality of both, and how similar they can be.
The Virgin of the Blessed Heart, 1990
Le Petit Communiste, 1990My Memorial Day was a long stressful holiday of final grading and really bad asthma. I'm seeing the lung doctor tomorrow, and as you can tell from this intellectually undemanding post, my holiday finally starts today, and lasts until summer school starts the last week of June.
Yes, I will be working in my studio, just not today.
ADDENDUM:
And then there is that ultimate mother line, "Oh go ahead then, be a fine art major, just stick another knife in my heart!"
Is there Anglican kitsch? Yes, it's called the Pre-Raphaelite painters.
Love these pictures!
ReplyDeletePlease take care of yourself, Doug!
I hope the Doc has some stuff you can use that will make you feel all better!
Healing prayers rise.
The top picture reminds me of the small holy cards given out for good behavior by the nuns in my RC school. The Jesus and Mary cards with the exposed heart are a bit creepy.
ReplyDeleteOh, and prayers for relief from your asthma. "♫Get well, get well soon♫", as Elaine's co-workers would sing.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the virgin of the Blessed Heart (1990) look like Queen Amidala of Naboo (Star Wars I)?
ReplyDeleteNow don't you be slagging off on Guido Reni...the only man from that era who painted a nursing Madonna who looked real! ;-)
ReplyDeleteSurely the point about Catholic kitsch is that it's just bad art posing as good. But at least there were originals that were actually good: they just got copied and imitated badly over and over again until any artistic merit they might have had originally was lost and forgotten. Remi's contemporay portrait of St Philip Neri, for example, is a genuinely startling and inspiring work, and its countless reproductions should reinforce the reputation of the original rather than distract from it.
ReplyDeleteThe Communist kitsch art, on the other hand, which is almost indistinguishable from its fascist and socialist realist contemporaries, is just bad art in its purest sense - albeit trying to set up its own rival iconography to that of Christianity. It too, ironically, hearks back to the great artists of the Nineteenth Century and earlier. But it has no authenticity of its own.
It's also hard to see how the Pre-Raphaelites can really be said to have been kitsch. Much of their output was actually very realistic and transgressive and the exact opposite of kitsch.
"But it has no authenticity of its own."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the whole point of this post.
I come not to praise religious and political kitsch, but to laugh at it.
Sometimes the holy cards were given for not asking to use the bathroom. Just saying.
ReplyDeleteKitsch knows no ideological or sectarian bounds.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Protestant kitsch is that it is mostly verbal. See any number of new hymn books. And there is "inspirational literature," Protestantism's answer to Catholic devotional kitsch.
"Sometimes the holy cards were given for not asking to use the bathroom."
ReplyDeleteYou must have been ready to plotz after catechism class.
You must have been ready to plotz after catechism class
ReplyDeleteNot one class, Counterlight, all day with the nuns. Some of us were ready to plotz, but we competed to get the most holy cards. The nuns urged us to take advantage of the facilities during recess.
Must post in defense of the Pre-Raphaelites! While they were inspired by medieval works and sought to emulate their techniques, they were very original in many ways! They are some of my favorite artists!
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Protestant kitsch is that it is mostly verbal.
ReplyDeleteAll those gun-toting, RW&B flag-waving GeeZuses? (As we saw last week) rapturing His Born-Again sheeple? The US of A has Protestant kitsch, fer shur!
Re "Le Petit Communiste, 1990": be honest, Doug. Don't you want to see his vanguard seize your means of production? ;-p
ReplyDelete"Don't you want to see his vanguard seize your means of production?"
ReplyDeleteAnytime! Bring on the dictatorship of the proletariat, honey!
"The US of A has Protestant kitsch, fer shur!"
ReplyDeleteWell yes, there is that Jeezus monster truck I posted a while back.
And would I really put Edward Burne-Jones' "Seven Days of Creation" in the same league as a Jeezus monster truck, or even Our Lachrymose Lady of the Seven Sorrowful Swords?
ReplyDeleteNah, I wouldn't. Too fine for that.