I think the solution is quite simple, actually, and it came to me when I was listening to a fascinating podcast episode on art in North Korea. Contrary to popular Western perception (including mine before listening to the podcast) North Korean art isn't all crude propaganda (though I actually quite like their propaganda posters, and on a purely artistic level they're infinitely better than any 'real art' being made in the West, and on an ideological level their propaganda is actually more honest, more coherent and less noxious. And they have the decency to call it what it is)--in fact they don't consider propaganda posters art at all; it's their equivalent of advertising.
Actually North Korea has a deep and thriving artistic culture. Rather than adopting foreign styles (including all modern and postmodernist atrocities of anti-art) they have instead (because they have no choice) turned inwards, deepening and refining their own indigenous artistic traditions. An example is the traditional 'Chosonhwa' ink-and-brush on rice paper painting, which North Korea has innovated by adding colour and boldness (traditional Chinese, Japanese and South Korean inkwash paintings are black and white and extremely subtle).
There are innumerable highly talented artists in North Korea (which houses the largest art studio in the world --Mansudae, basically a self-contained miniature city-cum-college campus for artists) and they work in a wide variety of styles, but all traditional and representative in form and patriotic and traditional in theme.
And they don't resent this, either. They're not being forced to do it. They genuinely want to produce patriotic and traditional art. They don't yearn to indulge in abstract subversive abominations. When North Koreans have been shown modern Western art, they simply laugh at it. Not out of knowing contempt, but sheer innocent amusement. They simply can't understand it, or why anyone would want to paint that way.
And one's selection to treat subjects of national significance -- anything related to the nation, the state, national history and so on--depends directly on your skill. Only the most skilled artists in the country are allowed to paint the Leaders, for instance. Thrift store artists, though I'm sure their equivalents exist in the North Korea, or would if they could afford paint, brushes and canvas, have no access to artistic materials or training or a public platform and are simply not allowed to depict anything with political or ideological significance. And there simply aren't any North Koreans sick enough in the head and soul to want to produce anything like the 'art' that stinks up all our Western art galleries.
Localism and subsidiarity is something I too support in principle, but in practice we are dealing with a a population and a culture so totally depraved (in the proper Calvinist sense of being corrupt in every part, not as corrupt as it conceivably could be), mass and elite, high and low, that a long period of strongly centralised control will be necessary to purge the rank infection that has overtaken us. Our collective moral and aesthetic compasses are so irreparably broken and inverted they will have to be completely smashed before they can be reoriented to point to true north again. Think of it as a period of intense weeding before the garden will be able to bloom naturally once more. It will take a great deal of discipline before we can once more learn how to be free--and can be trusted with the freedom we have earned--trusted not to destroy ourselves again. Just like a driver who's nearly driven himself and his whole family off a cliff will need a great deal of retraining and tests before he can be allowed behind the wheel again.
Thanks you for that thoughtful contribution. I can't do it justice here but I do appreciate it. I shall have to learn more about the art of North Korea. It sounds like a very fertile subject.
Yes, I thought of her too. There was a great film ‘Big Eyes’, directed by Tim Burton, about Keane and her husband, starring Amy Adams and Christopher Waltz.
I prefer “Bad Paintings” and outsider art in general. When it is authentic, It is a true and moving expression of the human spirit. Overly conceptual art or art that apes the state approved art of the past does not move me in the slightest.
Sometimes music, literature, a play or film or a piece of art can be so bad it’s good. My auntie had a print of ‘Chinese Girl’ by Vladimir Tretchikoff which took pride of place on her living-room wall (we had ‘living-rooms’ and not ‘lounges’ back then). When the 70’s became the 80’s, the print was being ridiculed as ‘naff’ (a very 80’s term of disdain). By the 90’s, ‘Chinese Girl’ had been exiled to the loft. I inherited it, it hangs in total incongruity on the wall here. It always sparks interest and comment from visitors. I love the print. Is it good or bad art? I could not say. I just know that I was thrilled to recently pick up another Tretchikoff gem ‘Balinese Girl’ in an ‘op shop’
I have a soft spot for certain "bad paintings" and not just to scoff or marvel at them. Sometimes art that violates taste can reveal surprising things about the artist and subject - and also the viewer. It makes you reconsider your assumptions. I remember my art tutor asked me (when I was in a rut as a student) "What is the opposite of what you consider good taste or what you would do now?" (I'm not sure which it was.) I replied, "I would be painting the same thing as now but in pink, with flowers." Then I did that. I later destroyed the painting but I remember how liberating it was to make something I considered monstrous, knowing it wouldn't define my future.
With all things art you will have good and bad no matter the style, medium or artistic level, personally I find the paintings listed are not to my taste I say this even though I have a collection of folk art. Folk art is very hard to define and in my option we are seeing a vast recurrence of it online through shared meme's ( Apu, Wojak, Boomers, Chud, etc ) with their crude naïve style mass scale and popular appeal, It is possibly why I like them so much. Just food for thought I don't think good Folk art Is dead just yet.
In Italy, each city manages to have its own Pinacoteca - a gallery exhibiting local works which often spread the last couple of centuries. There are usually some gems even in out of the way places and unheralded galleries.
Localism can produce quality, it just requires the filter of time. To be honest, pretty much all creative endeavours do as they look better when the mediocre has passed from memory.
Agreed. That is an important that museums do not buy too hastily or accept donations of recent art. However, the downside of that is that very successful art - pieces that might be appropriate for a museum - become too expensive for a museum to purchase. A way around that is accepting art in lieu of taxes/death duties.
It seems to me that if you find 'local art' and the art of non-professionals so appalling, the obvious solution is to cease to consume and create the art you'd want to experience.
Absolutely. I am an artist myself. You can see some posts on that in this channel and also by searching "Alexander Adams art" online. I don't suggest that anyone reject or deride art on my say so. Everyone has their own taste. I actually like some Folk and trad art. Personally, I would love local, Folk and amateur art to become diverse, dynamic and (in some cases) really good and distinctive. One of the questions posed by this article is, "How do we set the conditions that would allow localist art to be really local and really good?" I want to write more on this subject.
There was a museum in Savannah, Georgia, USA that I once had the opportunity to visit. It has a small exhibit of ‘American Impressionist’ painters. These were lovely works. Gentle, serene, thoughtful. In a word ‘Cozy’. If ‘we’ invested in local talent development with the same intent that the upper class cultivates global talent, we’d see material that was ‘globally inspired’ but locally inflected.
I’ve been in the presence of great art. It’s a little like being stunned by a hammer. I couldn’t live with that kind of art 24/7. So, in fact, something more ‘homely’ or ‘cozy’ is more in order for everyday consumption. And if we want people to love art, the art has to be something that people can love and own, not just admire from a distance. ‘Little’ art gives us that.
I don't think I could live with a Michelangelo drawing or a Grunewald painting or a Bacon canvas, but I could live with something more "cozy". There are some pictures that are just not domestic... Maybe you are right that something more modest is more companionable. I agree we should be financing new art great and small and loving those pictures for what they are.
Reminds me a bit of the "alternative" music scene in the US/UK in the 80s. The deep underground stuff. In hindsight we look back on this as a golden age for daring music that was pushing the boundaries and had a lot of heart. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. What don't we remember? For every Sonic Youth, there were a thousand Hawaiian Pups.
We could look at any classical art movement. The Italian Renaissance was brilliant obviously, but what did the ordinary Venetian merchant have hanging in his drawing room?
Yes, you'll find a few dud paintings in museums listed as "Siena, c. 1250". They are in a museum simply because they are old, they survived and they are typical of their time. The majority of art of any period and any style is mediocre. I guess the difference is that in the past artists were better craftsman so they reached the level of competence more regularly.
I must add that my own parents had this classic of 70s’ art on our living room wall https://www.artstrailgallery.co.uk/x/dxa002/ My siblings and I were very ambivalent about it when we were growing up…of course, we ended up fighting over ‘A Night in Granada’ by Derek Ashley, when my father passed away. You can grow to love these pieces of art, good or bad.
If the naive artists were ironic rather than earnest they would be okay (according to the modernist canon). So, by taking the images out of context and throwing them all together haphazardly Shaw rights the ship, so to speak, and supplies the needed irony.
On the other hand, as you say, there can be rare exceptions where the naive modern human produces a stunning clarity. Mostly though, they are technically ignorant and also likely not able to comprehend perspective. You'd think they'd try to understand, say, Rubens, but they don't seem to see the difference to their own productions.
My guess is their brains aren't wired to perceive vanishing points and horizon lines or atmospheric perspective. They manage to drive a car and not kill themselves because they can navigate the world similar to a gothic image where the closest things are at the bottom of their field of vision. Also, since they understand the relative size of objects they know that a small car is far away and a big one is close.
Yes, you do wonder why such fundamental flaws slip through in amateur art. It is probably due to lack of training, lack of awareness and perceptual problems. I know that in a lot of the Thrift Store Paintings, there might also be mental health issues. At times you know that there is a faux naif quality, which makes it...semi-ironic rather than incompetent? Yes, weird that if you can gloss a picture as ironic then you can gain status and income, while otherwise it would be mocked. Strange world.
Lordy yes, Thomas Kinkade. A friend of my parents had a Kinkade print. As a youngster, I loathed it, I found it a bit sinister and overpoweringly twee. I’d forgotten about him.
Your art tutor was very wise! It can be hugely liberating to go against what is held as ‘good taste’. Some years’ ago I read Viv Albertine’s autobiography (she was guitarist with groundbreaking girl punk band The Slits). She describes how, in the punk years, Vivienne Westwood had a maniacal hatred of the colour brown - as that was, at the time, the colour of tasteful interiors, Laura Ashley etc. The punk mantra was to go against everything and not be defined by anything. It was obviously hugely liberating, especially for the women involved in punk.
I too have a huge soft spot for ‘bad paintings’ and ‘kitsch’. I even own some crocheted lady toilet roll covers (inherited from a deceased relative). Freud would have much to say on the psychology behind those!
I think the solution is quite simple, actually, and it came to me when I was listening to a fascinating podcast episode on art in North Korea. Contrary to popular Western perception (including mine before listening to the podcast) North Korean art isn't all crude propaganda (though I actually quite like their propaganda posters, and on a purely artistic level they're infinitely better than any 'real art' being made in the West, and on an ideological level their propaganda is actually more honest, more coherent and less noxious. And they have the decency to call it what it is)--in fact they don't consider propaganda posters art at all; it's their equivalent of advertising.
Actually North Korea has a deep and thriving artistic culture. Rather than adopting foreign styles (including all modern and postmodernist atrocities of anti-art) they have instead (because they have no choice) turned inwards, deepening and refining their own indigenous artistic traditions. An example is the traditional 'Chosonhwa' ink-and-brush on rice paper painting, which North Korea has innovated by adding colour and boldness (traditional Chinese, Japanese and South Korean inkwash paintings are black and white and extremely subtle).
There are innumerable highly talented artists in North Korea (which houses the largest art studio in the world --Mansudae, basically a self-contained miniature city-cum-college campus for artists) and they work in a wide variety of styles, but all traditional and representative in form and patriotic and traditional in theme.
And they don't resent this, either. They're not being forced to do it. They genuinely want to produce patriotic and traditional art. They don't yearn to indulge in abstract subversive abominations. When North Koreans have been shown modern Western art, they simply laugh at it. Not out of knowing contempt, but sheer innocent amusement. They simply can't understand it, or why anyone would want to paint that way.
And one's selection to treat subjects of national significance -- anything related to the nation, the state, national history and so on--depends directly on your skill. Only the most skilled artists in the country are allowed to paint the Leaders, for instance. Thrift store artists, though I'm sure their equivalents exist in the North Korea, or would if they could afford paint, brushes and canvas, have no access to artistic materials or training or a public platform and are simply not allowed to depict anything with political or ideological significance. And there simply aren't any North Koreans sick enough in the head and soul to want to produce anything like the 'art' that stinks up all our Western art galleries.
Localism and subsidiarity is something I too support in principle, but in practice we are dealing with a a population and a culture so totally depraved (in the proper Calvinist sense of being corrupt in every part, not as corrupt as it conceivably could be), mass and elite, high and low, that a long period of strongly centralised control will be necessary to purge the rank infection that has overtaken us. Our collective moral and aesthetic compasses are so irreparably broken and inverted they will have to be completely smashed before they can be reoriented to point to true north again. Think of it as a period of intense weeding before the garden will be able to bloom naturally once more. It will take a great deal of discipline before we can once more learn how to be free--and can be trusted with the freedom we have earned--trusted not to destroy ourselves again. Just like a driver who's nearly driven himself and his whole family off a cliff will need a great deal of retraining and tests before he can be allowed behind the wheel again.
Thanks you for that thoughtful contribution. I can't do it justice here but I do appreciate it. I shall have to learn more about the art of North Korea. It sounds like a very fertile subject.
Wonderful article. Thank you for sharing it.
I thought of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Keane
Yes, I thought of her too. There was a great film ‘Big Eyes’, directed by Tim Burton, about Keane and her husband, starring Amy Adams and Christopher Waltz.
I prefer “Bad Paintings” and outsider art in general. When it is authentic, It is a true and moving expression of the human spirit. Overly conceptual art or art that apes the state approved art of the past does not move me in the slightest.
Sometimes music, literature, a play or film or a piece of art can be so bad it’s good. My auntie had a print of ‘Chinese Girl’ by Vladimir Tretchikoff which took pride of place on her living-room wall (we had ‘living-rooms’ and not ‘lounges’ back then). When the 70’s became the 80’s, the print was being ridiculed as ‘naff’ (a very 80’s term of disdain). By the 90’s, ‘Chinese Girl’ had been exiled to the loft. I inherited it, it hangs in total incongruity on the wall here. It always sparks interest and comment from visitors. I love the print. Is it good or bad art? I could not say. I just know that I was thrilled to recently pick up another Tretchikoff gem ‘Balinese Girl’ in an ‘op shop’
in country Victoria, for a few dollars.
I have a soft spot for certain "bad paintings" and not just to scoff or marvel at them. Sometimes art that violates taste can reveal surprising things about the artist and subject - and also the viewer. It makes you reconsider your assumptions. I remember my art tutor asked me (when I was in a rut as a student) "What is the opposite of what you consider good taste or what you would do now?" (I'm not sure which it was.) I replied, "I would be painting the same thing as now but in pink, with flowers." Then I did that. I later destroyed the painting but I remember how liberating it was to make something I considered monstrous, knowing it wouldn't define my future.
With all things art you will have good and bad no matter the style, medium or artistic level, personally I find the paintings listed are not to my taste I say this even though I have a collection of folk art. Folk art is very hard to define and in my option we are seeing a vast recurrence of it online through shared meme's ( Apu, Wojak, Boomers, Chud, etc ) with their crude naïve style mass scale and popular appeal, It is possibly why I like them so much. Just food for thought I don't think good Folk art Is dead just yet.
I do wish trad and folk artists all the best and hope that they produce great, memorable and lasting work. We need it!
In Italy, each city manages to have its own Pinacoteca - a gallery exhibiting local works which often spread the last couple of centuries. There are usually some gems even in out of the way places and unheralded galleries.
Localism can produce quality, it just requires the filter of time. To be honest, pretty much all creative endeavours do as they look better when the mediocre has passed from memory.
Agreed. That is an important that museums do not buy too hastily or accept donations of recent art. However, the downside of that is that very successful art - pieces that might be appropriate for a museum - become too expensive for a museum to purchase. A way around that is accepting art in lieu of taxes/death duties.
It seems to me that if you find 'local art' and the art of non-professionals so appalling, the obvious solution is to cease to consume and create the art you'd want to experience.
Absolutely. I am an artist myself. You can see some posts on that in this channel and also by searching "Alexander Adams art" online. I don't suggest that anyone reject or deride art on my say so. Everyone has their own taste. I actually like some Folk and trad art. Personally, I would love local, Folk and amateur art to become diverse, dynamic and (in some cases) really good and distinctive. One of the questions posed by this article is, "How do we set the conditions that would allow localist art to be really local and really good?" I want to write more on this subject.
There was a museum in Savannah, Georgia, USA that I once had the opportunity to visit. It has a small exhibit of ‘American Impressionist’ painters. These were lovely works. Gentle, serene, thoughtful. In a word ‘Cozy’. If ‘we’ invested in local talent development with the same intent that the upper class cultivates global talent, we’d see material that was ‘globally inspired’ but locally inflected.
I’ve been in the presence of great art. It’s a little like being stunned by a hammer. I couldn’t live with that kind of art 24/7. So, in fact, something more ‘homely’ or ‘cozy’ is more in order for everyday consumption. And if we want people to love art, the art has to be something that people can love and own, not just admire from a distance. ‘Little’ art gives us that.
I don't think I could live with a Michelangelo drawing or a Grunewald painting or a Bacon canvas, but I could live with something more "cozy". There are some pictures that are just not domestic... Maybe you are right that something more modest is more companionable. I agree we should be financing new art great and small and loving those pictures for what they are.
Reminds me a bit of the "alternative" music scene in the US/UK in the 80s. The deep underground stuff. In hindsight we look back on this as a golden age for daring music that was pushing the boundaries and had a lot of heart. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. What don't we remember? For every Sonic Youth, there were a thousand Hawaiian Pups.
We could look at any classical art movement. The Italian Renaissance was brilliant obviously, but what did the ordinary Venetian merchant have hanging in his drawing room?
Yes, you'll find a few dud paintings in museums listed as "Siena, c. 1250". They are in a museum simply because they are old, they survived and they are typical of their time. The majority of art of any period and any style is mediocre. I guess the difference is that in the past artists were better craftsman so they reached the level of competence more regularly.
I must add that my own parents had this classic of 70s’ art on our living room wall https://www.artstrailgallery.co.uk/x/dxa002/ My siblings and I were very ambivalent about it when we were growing up…of course, we ended up fighting over ‘A Night in Granada’ by Derek Ashley, when my father passed away. You can grow to love these pieces of art, good or bad.
If the naive artists were ironic rather than earnest they would be okay (according to the modernist canon). So, by taking the images out of context and throwing them all together haphazardly Shaw rights the ship, so to speak, and supplies the needed irony.
On the other hand, as you say, there can be rare exceptions where the naive modern human produces a stunning clarity. Mostly though, they are technically ignorant and also likely not able to comprehend perspective. You'd think they'd try to understand, say, Rubens, but they don't seem to see the difference to their own productions.
My guess is their brains aren't wired to perceive vanishing points and horizon lines or atmospheric perspective. They manage to drive a car and not kill themselves because they can navigate the world similar to a gothic image where the closest things are at the bottom of their field of vision. Also, since they understand the relative size of objects they know that a small car is far away and a big one is close.
Thomas Kinkade and his followers come to mind.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/may/09/thomas-kinkade-dark-death-painter
Kinkade could draw. I mean the horrible, mendacious taste they all have. It's violently anti-aristocratic.
Yes, you do wonder why such fundamental flaws slip through in amateur art. It is probably due to lack of training, lack of awareness and perceptual problems. I know that in a lot of the Thrift Store Paintings, there might also be mental health issues. At times you know that there is a faux naif quality, which makes it...semi-ironic rather than incompetent? Yes, weird that if you can gloss a picture as ironic then you can gain status and income, while otherwise it would be mocked. Strange world.
Lordy yes, Thomas Kinkade. A friend of my parents had a Kinkade print. As a youngster, I loathed it, I found it a bit sinister and overpoweringly twee. I’d forgotten about him.
Your art tutor was very wise! It can be hugely liberating to go against what is held as ‘good taste’. Some years’ ago I read Viv Albertine’s autobiography (she was guitarist with groundbreaking girl punk band The Slits). She describes how, in the punk years, Vivienne Westwood had a maniacal hatred of the colour brown - as that was, at the time, the colour of tasteful interiors, Laura Ashley etc. The punk mantra was to go against everything and not be defined by anything. It was obviously hugely liberating, especially for the women involved in punk.
I too have a huge soft spot for ‘bad paintings’ and ‘kitsch’. I even own some crocheted lady toilet roll covers (inherited from a deceased relative). Freud would have much to say on the psychology behind those!