LLEI D'ART 10

The Kitsch of Odd Nerdrum I was at a party. An African-American curator that worked for the New York Metropolitan sat next to me. I asked her: ‘What is missing from modern art? I mean, what has been lost?’ She replied ‘Well, maybe there is something missing, but I like modern art...and you? What do you think is missing?’ Her look betrayed an eagerness to hear my answer. ‘What about something as timeless as a sunset?’ She shook her head and replied: ‘That has nothing to do with art! It’s kitsch!’ During a speech given by the artists at the press conference prior to the Odd Nerdrum – Paintings 1978-1998 exhibition opening at the Astrup Fearnley Modern Art Museum in Oslo, Norway, in 1998, Odd Nerdrum announced his definitive rejection of art to define himself as a painter of kitsch: The kitsch painter should never be judged on grounds of nationality, race or religion, but only according to classical criteria. Within their representative discourse, they should attempt to depict some of the most sublime qualities in history. Kitsch is not art. It is related to sensuality and ephemerality: it is committed to the eternal; love, death and the sunrise. Neither innovation nor originality are important. According to the standards of kitsch, it is a complicated task to separate aspects such as who you are and what it is that you do. This is down largely to the difficulty involved in admitting certain things in life related to one’s own identity, which is in turn linked to lived experiences, especially during childhood. For years Nerdrum had to learn to assimilate the way in which critics defined him as an anti-artist. The story of Cézanne at the beginning of the 20th century, and the way in which art managed to gain the metaphysical applause of the new sciences, acquiring meaning in their conversion into the expression of a certain truth. This helped greatly in this process of stating that this truth could refer to a man as a social, rational or irrational individual, or even to the agonising, ironic relationship between artist and reality. Since the time of Cézanne, the existence of art has been justified according to its rebelling against tradition, history and power in all its possible forms. Subsequently, in this new concept of art, innovation substituted tradition, legitimising itself by applying factors beyond the art work. We can see the paradoxical results of this today: modern art has become a tradition that has taken over the Western world. The institutions, critics and artists themselves are all now bound to be receptive to ‘the new’. However, what is truly important in this context is no longer the general legitimisation of modern art, but what this has banished. Using the concept of Kitsch as an antithesis, the term brings together everything that is neither intellectual nor new: i.e. everything that is considered passé, melodramatic or mushy. The Austrian philosopher Herman Broch considered that ‘kitsch is the Anti-Christ, paralysis and death...but there are geniuses within kitsch, like Wagner or Tchaikovsky.´ With the rise of the modern an important process of exclusion took place that had serious consequences. Puccini was called kitsch, as was the Swedish painter Anders Zorn or the composer Sibelius. Many others, however, chose to accept their fate, such as Edvard Munch or the Finn Gallen-Kallela. Even Ilya Repin began to paint more loosely so as to satisfy what appeared to be the new reality of art. Kitsch deals with humanity in all its possible forms. It is a way to express passion on all its levels, without paying too much attention to the truth. An opera like Madame Butterfly awakens human vulnerability, not its reason. Kitsch is never ironic, because it treats the human being with respect. It searches for intensity, not originality, and its aim to get as close to the great masters as possible, whom it considers contemporary. Novelty is something uncomfortable for a creator of kitsch, who will always be in conflict with university, state and bureaucracies, because it represents human vulnerability. In kitsch, talent and skill are the essential criteria of quality, and this is an aspect that makes it especially vulnerable, since the rules by which it is based have some of history’s best art works as references. Nobody compares Warhol with Rembrandt unless they are doing so ironically. Art is protected from the past by the fact that it is different, but for kitsch, there is no such consideration. Odd Nerdrum. Mensajero/ Messenger Odd Nerdrum. Madre e hija/ Mother and daughter 63