KITSCH BIENNALE 2010

22

Odd Nerdrum
Running Bride
oil on canvas, 56x48 cm.
 World Wide Kitsch

On art:
since talented painters have been replaced with bureaucrats,
sincere painting is ostracized.
4
Palazzo Cini in San Vio, Venice
September 17 - October 15 2010
 Initiative

World Wide Kitsch

www.worldwidekitsch.com

Exhibition and catalogue curated by

Helene Knoop, Jan-Ove Tuv, David Dalla Venezia

Press office and communication

Davide Federici, Federicistampa - Venice

With the support of

Sponsored by

CITY OF VENICE?
Province of venice?
VENETO REGION?
 Acknowledgements

With this exhibition we participate in the resurrection of the word

kitsch, in order to polish it and make it shine as Odd Nerdrum
expressed, and we want to thank him. Through the drama and sincerity
of his works and thought, he is the gathering figure for kitsch painters.
He has kindly allowed us to reprint his speech Kitsch Serves Life, which
constitutes the official vantage point of what we are doing.

We would like to thank David Dalla Venezia, for his decisive and
indefatigable driving force, Frode Borge, Bjørn Li (The Nerdrum Institute),
Giuliana Mazzola (Entroterra, Brescia), Toni Dalla Venezia and
Alessandro P. and The Great Nude Invitational.

Special thanks to Shane Young, for his generous and indispensable help
in the design of all KB 2010 material.
 8

The kitsch painter sees the fly... and takes pleasure in it.
 1

WHY “KITSCH”?

The painters invited to exhibit at The Kitsch Biennale 2010 in Venice have been chosen from their
ability to create life on canvas – an idea deeply rooted in European Humanism that presupposes insight
into anatomy and human psychology, a mind for pathos and a sense for the archetypical narrative.
Yet, these values are rootless in contemporary art, which generally disregards skill and aims to reflect
the time. They were not included in the modern concept of art (originally “fine art”), which was born
about 250 years ago. Rejecting handcraft and sincerity, art represents a break with the values of the
Renaissance and Baroque and not a continuation of them.

Because of this situation an alternative to art is needed, and The Kitsch Biennale seeks to present it.
But why use the word “kitsch”?

The term is about 150 years old, and has commonly been used in a negative and disparaging sense.
It denotes sentimentality and pathos in music, sculpture and painting.

From the 20th century on, ”kitsch” started to be used more theoretically and afterwards as the negative
opposite of art. Painters who still wanted to make paint look like living skin, were considered
old-fashioned and labelled with this term. According to Hermann Broch: «In art the evil is represented
by kitsch». Thus, kitsch is not even ”bad art”, but forms a system of its own.

In 1996, however, Odd Nerdrum discovered the positive potential in the term. He started to claim
“kitsch” as a positive superstructure for figurative, non-ironic and narrative painting to which the
concept of “kitsch” fits better than “art”.
Consequently to this redefinition of “kitsch”, a growing number of figurative painters are now calling
themselves “kitsch painters”.

According to the positive view of kitsch:

• The eternal perspective is preferable to a contemporary, limited horizon.

• A “sentimental” or “pathetic” image is no cause of shame (unless badly painted...).
• Quality is more important than originality.

With this exhibition and catalogue, we welcome you into a living discipline.

Helene Knoop & Jan-Ove Tuv

WorldWideKitsch
2
 3

THE DIFFICULT PATH

by Odd Nerdrum

THE KITSCH PAINTER SHOULD NOT BE JUDGED ON NATIONAL, RACIAL OR

RELIGIOUS GROUNDS IN HIS DEPICTION OF LIFE - BUT ON THE BASIS OF

TIMELESS QUALITIES.

THE KITSCH PAINTER IS NOT PROTECTED BY THE TIME IN WHICH HE LIVES.

HE STRIVES TO REPRESENT HISTORY’S MOST SUBLIME QUALITIES, AND SHOULD BE

JUDGED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THESE.

A WORK OF KITSCH IS EITHER GOOD OR BAD, AND GOOD KITSCH MUST

NOT BE CLASSIFIED AS ART. THIS WOULD BE AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT.

KITSCH IS NOT ART. KITSCH REFERS TO THE SENSUAL AND THE TIMELESS.

THE KITSCH PAINTER IS COMMITTED TO THE ETERNAL: LOVE, DEATH

AND THE SUNRISE.

INNOVATION IS OF NO IMPORTANCE, NOR IS ORIGINALITY. GOING IN

DEPTH IS THE GOAL, FOR IN THE DEPICTION OF NATURE ITSELF LIES THE

INDIVIDUAL EXPRESSION.

BECAUSE MODERNISM AND THE ART ARE THE SAME,

KITSCH IS THE SAVIOR OF TALENT AND DEVOTION.
 44

Odd Nerdrum
Bride in Void
 5

Kitsch Serves Life

By Odd Nerdrum

Speech given at a press conference before the opening of the exhibition “Odd Nerdrum – Paintings 1978-
1998” at The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Norway, September 24th, 1998. With these
words Nerdrum took a definite leave with art and defined himself as a kitsch painter asking to be evaluated
according to the standards of kitsch.

The understanding of who you are and what you are really doing does not always come
easily. Most people need time in order to mature and acquire full insight into these
complicated matters. This is often related to the fact that certain things are difficult to admit
to oneself and are perhaps even more difficult to admit to others. In my case it might have
taken longer than usual. But now, at an occasion such as this, I believe the time has come.
For me, as for most others, the question of your true identity is linked to experiences and
conflicts in childhood. I was captured by painting at an early age and painted Poliakoff-like
abstractions until the age of nine. A reason for this was probably my stepfather. He was a
cultivated man who collected modern art. Often he took me on skiing trips. Because he was
a rationalist and fond of exercising he wished for the trips to be quite lengthy. Once, when we
were at a great height on a mountain, we stopped to look at the scenery. The valley before us
was bathing in the light of a magnificent sunset. For that moment we spent gazing we were
enthralled. Then he said to me: “It is beautiful, but remember to never paint anything like
this if you become a painter because you will not be accepted at the Autumn Exhibition1”.
My mother is also a cultivated person. In her opinion, to be religious is to go uneducated.
I remember one time we stopped in front of a shop window in Oslo to look at a painting of
a Gypsy girl by Roka2. It was painted in the manner of Sargent and cost 2,000 Norwegian
kroner. My mother and I were impressed and admired the picture even though I thought
it to be too expensive. However, it was one of my first crucial experiences with painting.
I immediately felt at home in this painter’s direct expression of his experience of the body.
 6

Many years later, during the end of the 70’s, Norwegian television asked me to choose
some paintings and compare them to each other. I chose a nude in the collection of the Na-
tional Gallery by the modernist painter Jean Heiberg (my grand mother’s cousin) and placed
one of Roka’s gypsy girls next to it. To me, the difference was striking: Roka’s painting was
more alive – it had more skin.
Even though it was painting that captured my interests earliest, I soon came into contact
with something else that grabbed my attention. By the age of 20 my eyes were caught by
the red light of the sunset, but I could still hear my stepfather’s warning: ‘Remember the
moderns. Things go well for them. If you go on like this you will do badly.” As I forced my
way into the art world during the late 60’s I still heard the echo of his words bouncing around
in my head. The reactions to my work were ferocious. The harassment that I endured had
deeper roots than the opposition Edvard Munch faced during his early career, which, inci-
dentally, soon turned into boisterous appreciation as soon as he became a modernist. During
that time in the late 60’s I understood that something was wrong, but as to what it was exactly
was beyond my comprehension, so in order to cope I tried to act the part of an artist to the
best of my ability, and for many years I actually believed I was in fact an artist.
The first time I got an idea of what might be wrong was in the late 70’s. I had been al-
lowed to hang two of my larger paintings – The Arrest and The Murder of Andreas Baader
– in the new dormitory at the University of Oslo. Though this was a time when artists were
paid to exhibit I must confess that I had to bribe the University board with free prints in
order to enjoy the same privilege. I obviously did not want to do that sort of thing, however,
I felt it served it’s purpose as long as I could fulfill my dream of displaying my large compo-
sitions to the public. They were beautifully hung in a staircase, which almost looked like a
Caravaggio chapel, but it did it did not take long before someone voiced their disdain for the
show. Soon, a committee at the Academy of Art decided that the paintings in that particular
staircase had to come down. They surprised me with a letter saying that all “decorations”
had to be removed within a fortnight. Afterward I ran into one of the members of the
academy’s committee, the acknowledged artist Arvid Pettersen. I looked at him straight in
the eyes and asked: “How could you do this to a colleague”? He just stared back and could
not answer. Then I got the feeling that he understood something that I had failed to grasp:
 7

I was not a real artist. For some time people had written that I was an anti-artist and other
such things, but still it was impossible for me to comprehend that I was not a real artist.
It was only later that I came to think differently. Later, I finally discovered what Pettersen had
known immediately.
Integral to my eventual realization was the story of the great Cézanne breakthrough at the
beginning of the century3 – how art became the metaphysical applause for the new sciences
and how it got its meaning and substance by existing as the expression of a certain truth.
It could be the truth about man as a social being, as a rational or irrational being, or the
truth about the agonized or ironic relationship between the artist and reality. From the time
of Cézanne onward, art would receive its justification for existence by its rebellion against
tradition, history and power in all its forms. Subsequently it became a characteristic trait
for the new art to seek innovation instead of tradition and to legitimize itself by something
outside the work of art.
Today, at the end of the century3, we see the paradoxical result: Modernism itself has
become a tradition that has conquered the entire Western world. Institutions, critics, artists
and educated people are obliged to be “open for the new”. What is important in this context
is not Modernism’s all-embracing legitimization of the existing order. My concern is what
Modernism has pushed out as its “other”. In the same way that Christianity demonized
its competitors, so too did Modernism, and the ruler of Modernism’s Hell was christened
“Kitsch” – signifying the antithesis of Modern art. Kitsch became the unified concept for all
that was not intellectual and new, all that was conceived as brown, old-fashioned, sentimental,
melodramatic and pathetic. As the Austrian author and philosopher Herman Broch put it in
the 1930’s: “Kitsch is the Anti-Christ, stagnation and death.”
We all know the Gypsy girl and the little boy with a tear, the Grandmother with a child on
her lap and the fisherman with his pipe, the two silhouettes against a sunset, and not the least,
the moose by the lake. All of this became a forbidden area for the tastes of the educated. The
so-called “simple” and “blind” taste for this imagery stood in contrast to Marx, Freud and the
entire Modern elite who were looking into everything down to its smallest particle. But the
Devil is not just stupid and Kitsch is not just low. There are also higher forms of Kitsch, or to
use Broch’s words again: “There are geniuses within Kitsch like Wagner and Tchaikovsky”.
 8

The process of exclusion that began to occur at the breakthrough of Modernism – this terri-
ble moment – brought immediate consequences. The composer Puccini was declared Kitsch,
as was Zorn, the Swedish painter of luscious female nudes. Zorn suffered from allegations
that he was Kitsch and was confused about it for the rest of his life. These were unfortunate
cases but most other artist acclimated quickly. Edvard Munch became a Modernist, as did
the Finn, Gallen-Kallela. Even Ilya Repin in Russia began to paint sloppily in order to satisfy
the new truth. Sibelius, the great Finnish composer, was also accused of being Kitsch. In the
6th and 7th symphonies he started to fumble for the new disharmonies but then gave up and
remained in silence for another 40 years. Now that the epoch of Modern art faces its 100
year anniversary we can look back at what it strove to demonize and what it wanted to get rid of.
Kitsch is about the eternal human questions; the pathetic, whatever be its form, about
what we call “the human”. The task of Kitsch is to create a seriousness in life – at its best,
to be so sublime that it brings laughter to silence. In contrast to art’s irony and dispassion,
Kitsch serves life and seeks the individual. Some people have tried to tie Kitsch to the advent
of political propaganda, but Kitsch has nothing to do with Stalin or Hitler. Those two built
a propaganda machine for the masses, in which all of the arts should serve their politics. For
this type of a machine to work the propaganda had to reach the masses of people in a bla-
tantly clear language, like the language in commercials. But an opera like Puccini’s Madame
Butterfly only appeals to an individual’s vulnerability and not her rationality.
Kitsch is passion’s form of expression at all levels and it is not the servant of truth. On
the contrary, it keeps relative to religion and truth. A well-painted Madonna transcends its
holiness, and Kitsch leaves truth to art. In Kitsch, skill is a decisive criterion of quality. The
work of the hand is self-revealing in the light of long-established norms. In this way, Kitsch
goes without protection because the standards by which it is judged are the best works that
have been created throughout all of history. For Picasso and Warhol it was different – they
were protected by contemporary values and still are. You do not compare Warhol with
Rembrandt unless ironically. Art is protected against the past because it is something
different. For Kitsch there is no such mercy.
As opposed to art’s craving for the new, Kitsch roams within the domain of the familiar
forms in history. Kitsch becomes engrossed and spans expression to the utmost – the kind of
 9

exaggeration that Baudrillard calls “the obscene”. If Kitsch happens to create something
new it would be an exception, like what we find in Rodin’s insatiable passion.
Looking at the conditions for Kitsch at the end of the Modernist era, you might think that
its opportunities to exist would increase after because of Post-Modernism’s rebellion against
“the one and single truth”, but it continues to surprise me that there is so little room for “the
human voice”. Is then a sunset only water and air; only broken rays of light?
After I discovered the nature of art and the nature of Kitsch I understood where I belonged,
and therefore I would like to take this opportunity to apologize. With a foul taste in my mouth
I have called myself an artist but now I know that I am not one. I have addressed myself by
a false name and abused the attention given to me by the media – and the intelligentsia have,
of course, been rightfully angry about it. There is nothing more to my work. God knows
I have striven to become skillful enough to depict Humanity’s longings in my Kitsch. And what
could possibly drive us with a stronger force than the longings of our childhood and youth?
If there is a truth in these longings it must be found in the Gypsy girl wandering
into the sunset.
Art exists for its own sake and appeals to the room of officials. Kitsch serves life itself and
appeals to the individual.

If you fall asleep on horseback, the horse will stop before it hits the boulder.
Art is a car. Kitsch is a horse.

1
 he Høstutstillingen is an annual art exhibition born in 1882 in Oslo (still existing)following the example of Paris Salons. It became the major national artistic event to
T
which all artists aimed to participate.
2
Charles Roka (Róka Károly, 1912-1999) was a Hungarian painter living in Norway. Born in Hungary in 1912, he went on an European journey after ending his studies at
The Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 1937, he settled in Norway, where he stayed until his death. In 1939 he painted his first picture of the half-naked Gypsy Girl.
Numerous variations and reproductions of the motif made his financial success as a painter, but misfortune as an ”artist”.
3
Means 20th century.
 10
10

Odd Nerdrum

Self Portrait in Three Windows

 Next page:
After the Flood
 12
12

Odd Nerdrum
13
 14
14

Stranded
16
16

Armed
 17

Running Bride
Kitsch is never ironic
J U RY M E M B E R S
Helene Knoop
 21

Mediterranean
 22
22

Self Portrait with Pipe

 23

Pygmalion
 24
24

Vampire
 25

Pregnant
David Dalla Venezia
 27

No.617 (Self Portrait)

 28
28

No.609 (Self Portrait)

 29

No.577 (Self Portrait)

 30
30

Jan-Ove Tuv

Old Woman
 31

Fallen
 32
32

Pregnant Woman
 33

Crossroads
The longing to elaborate his own melancholy through handcraft
is the quality of the kitsch creator
SELECTED WORKS
Jonny Andvik
 37

The Water Spirit

Davide Battistin
 39

Charon
Roberto Ferri
 41

The machine of Apollo

Fereidoun Ghaffari
 43

Self Portrait
Sampo Kaikkonen
45

Sibyl
Thomas Klevjer
47

Pond
Maria Kreyn
 49

Head from a Block

Jonathan David Matthews
 51

Hooded Figure with Pendant

Mattias Sammekull
 53

Self Defender
Richard Thomas Scott
 55

Self Portrait as Dorian Gray

Patricia Traub
 57

Savannah Hornbills
Conor Walton
 59

Allegory of Knowledge
For a kitsch creator all masters are contemporary
A kitsch work cannot become sentimental enough,
”too much” is really too little.
 62
62

Rembrandt van Rijn: The Return of Prodigal Son, ca. 1669, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
 63

THE TIMELESS

By Odd Nerdrum

We all have our time here on earth

... and place too.

”Influenced by time and place”

they say ...

In this way, every painter, sculptor,

composer or poet can

find their place, big or small.

All…determined by the society to which one belongs.

It is said that the work of a culture carrier

can be classified as to time and place.

These restraints are a compliment

to an arbitrary state.

There would be no end to the applause

should I dance for the random epoch that holds me prisoner.

But a talented painter can gaze far ahead, if he so chooses,

transcend history, find inspiration ...

Because he knows ... that

free individuals have more to offer than epochs.

 64

The painter prefers isolation perhaps, because the present time

is but noise and whirling dust.

He longs for the timeless painting…

the ancient sign of eternity!

The modern city grows ever distant,

likewise the university with its codes.

Within the “fire in the darkness”, he discovers

that archetypes lend themselves to recognition,

in the mother nursing her child, in the sunset’s farewell,

in the distinct light of dawn and in the delicate growth of a flower.

Shameless …

Far too many painters have struggled as suppliers to

the ruthlessness of a contemporary era.

Even Rembrandt, (1606–1669) ...

before he abandoned his submissiveness to Amsterdam.

No longer a baroque painter, he became a ”portrayer of humans ”.

There are timeless works scattered throughout history.

Rembrandt’s painting, ”The Return of the Prodigal Son”

(Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg)

is one of them.

In the great picture,

 65

a few bodies stir ... but quietly.

That which is timeless ”knocks” and

the spectator pauses to listen. The ones in the darkness

are more alive than himself.

An art scholar would say

that this smells of ”Greco-Roman” propaganda.

But if one digs deeper, there are numerous examples of other cultures’ penchant

for the “timeless expression”

Consider the Nigerian (classical) bronze heads,

found in the sea along the African coast.

Or the exquisite seated male portraits

from 12th century China.

And look at the rich Egyptian culture under

Akhnaton…the head of Queen Nefertiti…

It seems as though all great cultures have “the human expression”

as their creed…separate from the national focus.

Western cultural history emphasizes such characteristics

without understanding the reason.

They hammer away on style and age,

but are unable to admit that the Egyptian…

... is so like the Chinese, so like the Nigerian heads….

and a Greek torso glides right into this context.

 66

Uncensored, our sensuality chooses

all of it on its own level.

Rembrandt passes by and the children are watchful.

There is an ominous quality to the timeless expression,

because it speaks of abnegation and weakness.

Not something for winners who seek time and length.

Self meets self outside the city wall,

and the timeless offers a home

to the destitute.

There is comfort…in the dark flame…

held by the extraordinary painter.

Western weakness: Embarrassed by the ”timeless expression”,

as though it is something “colonial”,

while the untalented demand sympathy…

there is always room for research in that.

The psychoanalyst, the psychologist…have always been spokesmen for such things.

Had the western world been less obsessed by style and time,

Rembrandt might not have been hidden and forgotten for 150 years.

Frightening.

Had I lived in the 17th century, I would never have found him.

How poor I would have been!

 67

Such are the times, proper and rational

as it conceals what I search for.

That which is created through submission to the times

diminishes over the years…

and he who defies the lethargy of the times, is disregarded

and lives in angst.

The beauty of the West is its cathartic culture

… its turmoil.

The painter van der Helst was popular in his day,

while the defiant Rembrandt is known to us now.

The crocodile reminds us of the times,

with its reptilian brain, short-sighted, snapping…

as it waddles off in self-satisfaction.

 Index of Illustrations

Odd Nerdrum, Bride in Void, oil on canvas, 260x205 cm. p. 4

Self Portrait in Three Windows, oil on canvas, 134x169 cm. 10

After the Flood, oil on canvas, 200x288 cm. 12/13

Stranded, oil on canvas, 151x194 cm. 14

Armed, oil on canvas, 76x71 cm. 16

Running Bride, oil on canvas, 56x48 cm. 17

Helene Knoop, Mediterranean, oil on canvas, 100x145 cm. 21

Self Portrait with Pipe, oil on canvas, 100x85 cm. 22

Pygmalion, oil on canvas, 145x100 cm. 23

Vampire, oil on canvas, 70x60 cm. 24

Pregnant, oil on canvas, 100x120 cm. 25
David Dalla Venezia Self Portrait (n.617), oil on canvas on wood, 70x70 cm. 27
Self Portrait (n.609), oil on canvas, 233x126,5 cm. 28
Self Portrait (n.577), oil on canvas, 195x97 cm. 29
Jan-Ove Tuv Old Woman, watercolour on paper, 24x34 cm. 30
Fallen, watercolour on paper, 43,4x36 cm. 31
Pregnant Woman, watercolour on paper, 39x64 cm. 32
Crossroads, watercolour on paper, 48,5x38 cm. 33
Jonny Andvik The Water Spirit, oil on canvas, 105x125 cm. 37
Davide Battistin Charon, oil on canvas, 100x100 cm. 39
Roberto Ferri The machine of Apollo, oil on canvas, 60x40 cm. 41
Fereidoun Ghaffari Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 45x67 cm. 43
Sampo Kaikkonen Sibyl, oil on canvas, 120x75 cm. 45
Thomas Klevjer Pond, oil on canvas, 40x40 cm. 47
Maria Kreyn Head from a Block, oil on canvas, 50,8x50,8 cm. 49
Jonathan D. Matthews Hooded Figure with Pendant, oil on canvas, 37x28 cm. 51
Mattias Sammekull The Self Defender, oil on canvas, 58x52 cm. 53
Richard T. Scott Self Portrait as Dorian Gray, oil on canvas, 86,4x61 cm. 55
Patricia Traub Savannah Hornbills, oil on canvas, 25,4x30,48 cm. 57
Conor Walton Allegory of Knowledge, oil on canvas, 92x137 cm. 59
Rembrandt van Rijn The Return of Prodigal Son, oil on canvas, 262x206 cm. 62
 Odd Nerdrum
www.nerdruminstitute.com

Helene Knoop
www.heleneknoop.com

David Dalla Venezia

www.daviddallavenezia.com

Jan-Ove Tuv
www.janovetuv.com

Jonny Andvik
www.andvik.com

Davide Battistin
www.davidebattistin.com

Roberto Ferri
www.robertoferri.net

Fereidoun Ghaffari
(non ha sito web)

Sampo Kaikkonen
www.sampokaikkonen.com

Thomas Klevjer
www.klevjer.no

Maria Kreyn
www.creativeportfolio.org/mariakreyn

Jonathan David Matthews

www.jonathanmatthews.net

Mattias Sammekull
www.sammekull.se

Richard T. Scott
www.richardtscottart.com

Patricia Traub
www.patriciatraub.com

Conor Walton
www.conorwalton.com
World Wide Kitsch
71

Odd Nerdrum
Running Bride
(detail)
Kitsch seeks intensity, not originality