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Odd Nerdrum on "Kitsch"
An artist I admire greatly is Odd Nerdrum. He has written an interesting article about his ideas. I enjoy his thinking, because I am often astonished at how vehemently some people in art react to ideas which are contrary to their own. I attended a talk recently, where the lecturer stated that because an artist painted from an elevated perspective, and painted people sailing in boats, he was a racist! There was no corroberative evidence given: letters or such- just the images.Such absurdity is taken as serious scholarship in some university circles. Mean spiritedness infects many it seems- and it often is expressed as a kind of "humanitarian concern." Nerdrum cuts through it.
The full article can be found here.
Here are a few excerpts:
The kitsch painter occupies himself with the eternal things in life- like love, death and the sunrise.
Renewal or to locally belong to your own time is uninteresting; as is personal expression. Absorption is the goal, for in nature itself lies the personal.
As modernism and the state together have taken over the art world, kitsch is the savior of talent and heartiness.
The same way Christianity demonised its competitors, modernism did with its competition.
Sibelius, the great Finnish composer was accused of being kitsch, and began in the 6th and 7th symphonies to fumble after new disharmony, but gave up, and lived in silence for forty years.
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