I will confess right now that I am ready to give up on my resolution to be a better blogger. I just don’t enjoy it that much when there’s pressure have to do it. I recognize to be successful -whatever that means- you really need to post on a very consistent basis.
Well I only tried to do this in order to help my art career along and I don’t think it’s going to really be worth the struggle and aggravation. I am now embroiled in the midst of my master’s program in painting and the most important thing I can do for my art career is to excel in my classes to the best of my ability. And I am doing far too much thinking, reading and writing each week for Theories and Processes to devote time to a blog just because someone (blame the Huff Post) said I should.
So I’ll try to check in once in a while and keep anyone out there abreast of what I’m up to, especially since I haven’t been doing much painting or showing lately. But first things first so here is an example of what I have to do for class as grist for the mill today: A presentation of an example of avant-garde art and kitsch. I was actually assigned to skewer Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light!
Presentation 1: Avant-Garde and Kitsch
One of the most revolutionary of artists for his time and one who certainly can be viewed as avant-garde, is Gustav Courbet (1817-1877). A fiercely political individual throughout all of his adult life, his art work very quickly followed his philosophical beliefs in both execution and subjects depicted. “Through my affirmation of the negation of the ideal and all that springs from the ideal I have arrived at that emancipation of the individual and finally at democracy.”[1]
For purpose of this comparison, his landscape painting, “Le Ruisseau du Puits Noir” (1854, Louvre) is presented here.
Along with Courbet’s example of avant-garde art is presented another landscape by a contemporary American painter who is widely recognizable and commercially successful. Thomas Kinkade is to my mind the quintessential example of kitsch but not solely due to the aforementioned attributes.
Kinkade’s work is presented as kitsch because it fits the definition as put forth by Denis Dutton: “…the standard kitsch work must be instantly identifiable as depicting ‘an object or theme which is generally considered to be beautiful or highly charged with stock emotions.’ Moreover, kitsch ‘does not substantially enrich our associations related to the depicted subject’. The impact of kitsch is limited to reminding the viewer of great works of art, deep emotions, or grand philosophic, religious or patriotic sentiments.[2]
At first glance both are merely lovely, bucolic scenes of nature. Neither is specific to a particular place and could be any number of sites such as those found in the temperate woodland areas of Europe or the North American continent. Remarkably similar in their composition, neither departs from a very traditional horizontal orientation. And perhaps both would be looked at and mildly appreciated as nice if somewhat bland scenes and nothing more.
Yet Courbet’s choice of subject and his manner of painting it were considered highly radical for the time in which he lived. He very early on rejected the idealized, illusionary themes of imagination and emotions that was the Romanticism of his era. He desired to paint the reality of life and what he saw around him. He is probably more known for his “shocking” depictions of figures based on real life peasants and townsfolk. But he was fiercely proud of the rural environment of his hometown of Ornans in and scenes such as this one are representative of that.
Known as a “rough painter”, he was reviled by the members of the Salon just as much for his technique as for his choice of subject. What they saw as crude, rushed, and lacking in ability was his deliberate rejection of false illusions of an ideal of beauty in favor of a more energetic and spontaneous response to nature and what is real. In 1861 he wrote: “Realism is essentially the democratic art.”[3] One may enjoy “Le Ruisseau du Puits Noir” completely on the basis his formal and technical prowess. It is an extremely well composed and executed landscape, lovely to look at and imbuing the viewer with a real sense of calm and serenity. The balance of light and dark and the movement of line and form throughout the work are subtle, rhythmic and aesthetically pleasing. But what lies behind it in both why and how Courbet created this work of art tells the real and full story. Gustav Courbet was a revolutionary and politically passionate individual who embodied the true spirit of the avant-garde in his life and his work.
Thomas Kinkade is by contrast motivated by and employs in his work all of the ingredients set forth by Dutton as being those that define a work as kitsch. By his own admission the biography on his official website tells us: “Thomas Kinkade is America’s most collected living artist. Coming from a modest background, Kinkade emphasizes simple pleasures and inspirational messages through his paintings. As a devout Christian, Kinkade uses his gift as a vehicle to communicate and spread inherent life-affirming values.” [4] He is at least as much concerned with selling than creating if not more so. And what he is selling, whether is one of his actual originals or the dozens of mass-produced reproductions or “collector’s items, is the vapid illusion of an ideal than neither challenges nor stimulates the viewer. Furthermore it is directly linked with and plugged into the right wing, conservative Christian fundamentalist movement in American politics today.
So why is his work not also a sort of avant-garde of these times rather than kitschy schlock art? He trades in art that is safe, pandering to our on-going American tradition of consumerism and acquisitiveness. His work is about appealing to the need for escapism with its pretty, candy-coated colorful world of darling little cottages that could only be inhabited by Keebler elves and light that follows no logical, natural or even aesthetic rules of how and why it falls or occurs within a scene. He is even rumored to have encoded some of his DNA into his signature to prevent forgeries. That Kinkade is a mastermind of marketing is for certain and he should be given all due credit for that. Being, or marketing to, the fundamentalist Christian audience in particular should not specifically be seen as wrong either. Any business person worth their salt becomes a success by defining their niche and utilizing that. And many artists (myself included) make reproductions of work in an attempt to stretch one’s ability to support oneself or to make art more affordable to those who truly value it.
The case to be made for Kinkade as kitsch is simply this: There is no risk, no excitement, nothing to truly move one’s soul. Each and every original piece is a carefully contrived, formulaic product planned to hit a nerve with the masses of contemporary middle-Americans who fancy themselves as having a taste for fine art and culture. And it looks it. It’s very safe….and for Kinkade a very lucrative commercial venture. Still there is nothing inherently wrong with that –or even with kitsch art itself. But if Kinkade would have one believe, despite all his many marketing pitches and products that he is true artist and painter, more than just “the painter of light”, it would be an extremely hard argument to make.
[1] Finberg, Jonathan. Art Since 1940, Strategies of Being Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000
[2] Dutton, Denis. “The Dictionary of Art”, London, Macmillan, 1998
[3] Fineberg, Jonathan. “Art Since 1940, Strategies of Being”. Saddle River, Prentice Hall, 2000
[4] Thomas Kinkade.com 2009 01April2009 < http://www.thomaskinkade.com/http://www.thomaskinkade.com/magi/release/list.do>
