LLEI D'ART 10

Art exists for its own sake and to please the public. Kitsch works like life itself and only pleases the individual. If you fall asleep on horseback, the horse will stop by the rock. Art is a car. Kitsch is a horse. Today everybody is in agreement that modern art has had a liberating effect, for better or for worse. We can find the same installations and sets all over the planet, whether it be New York, the Mururoa Islands or in Hong Kong. The concept of kitsch – in the meaning of cheap decoration was adopted more than one hundred years ago when modern art burst into retrograde European culture. Many believe that if Rembrandt had lived in the current day he would have been a conceptual artist. I’m not so sure. Time is no excuse. The dilemma is the same as the one faced by the figurative painter. Should he just consider himself a failed, second-rate artist or merely choose to be considered a kitsch painter? Bearing in mind that the name has become a common designation for everything that is not in agreement with the new century, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Gershwin and many others were also artists of kitsch. They stoically bore their label their whole life, as did Auguste Rodin, an excellent representation of the kitsch phenomenon; I have never understood why he is considered a modern artist. The solid superstructure of current art has an overwhelming strength beyond compare. It shelters all kinds of intellectual aberrations, but a beautiful drawing of a nude is criticised mercilessly and only for lacking a respectable structure to support it. When a man becomes king, he automatically takes on an aura, a metaphysical superstructure. The same thing happens in art: the predominant has become implacably uniform, whether one agrees with it or not. Anything else is but a remnant of the past and has been stepped on. Modern art requires constant renovation, experimentation and adherence to the canons of contemporary style; something that, according to various arguments, figurative painting is not capable of. However the style of the great masters is sensual and seeks to represent eternity without prejudice. Now, the question is not whether the work is well executed or not, but whether it has the right idea. If this sensuality that art cannot incorporate were given a different name, everything would be different. Kitsch must be separated from art because a kitsch painter has different aims to that of an artist. Art is an expression of what is valid at a given moment. What characterises this art, I think, it the overcoming of the non- sensual expression in favour of philosophical purity: a purity that has its best and most consistent exponent in cold, hard conceptualism. Pleasure is obtained by contemplating and evaluating a work of art, but if the evaluation is involved with the sensual experience, the work is then considered too corporeal and thus disdained. After reading Kant’s Critique of Judgement (1790), I realised that the importance of the piece lay in its contribution in shaping the concept of art because he distinguished aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline, where art and beauty are considered different categories. According to Kant, the genius creates that which there are no rules for, while originality appears as his stamp. Another important exponent of art history, Hegel, defended that art should be linked to its time. This implies an optimistic evolution that invites the artist to always create something new and original, distancing themselves from the traditional. As such, historically speaking, their first triumphs came from the hand of the impressionists and their style which bore little in common with the Salon painting of the entire 19th century. There are a set of rules that stipulate what art is. If someone attempts to introduce something else, they are condemned to be confronted with these rules. For this reason I state that I am not an artist, and I have never been one. All my rules are contrary to art. I do not think in terms of progress or irony. I do not use modern colours. Rather, I think about leather, tradition, the past and eternity. 20th century art has helped to create a lighter, more luminous atmosphere. It has cultivated thought and has committed itself to the progress of its fight against the intimate and the antique. However, the drawback of this historic triumphal march of art is exactly what has been banished, because there will always be people that do follow neither order nor trend. They are considered the losers of this progression and I am one of them, because I have not followed the rhythm of things nor have I been able to recognise myself in art, however much I respect it. I also respect jazz and football, but I do not see myself as an integral part of those disciplines. I do see myself, even since I was a child, as a part of obsolete values, where the transcendent goes right through your body, skin and eyes, and gazes at you from the depths: the age of the masterpiece. Odd Nerdrum Helsingborg (Sweden), 1944 Extract from some of his inaugural speeches provided to the publishers by courtesy of the artist’s son, Bork S. Nerdrum, Odd Nerdrum. La noche/ The night 67