Kitsch movement

The Kitsch movement grew out of a 24 September 1998 speech by the Norwegian figurative painter Odd Nerdrum, later elaborated in his book On Kitsch with Jan-Ove Tuv and others. Its painters revive the techniques of the Old Masters and put them at the service of narrative, romanticism, and emotionally charged imagery. In their deliberately provocative definition, kitsch is what the arts of ancient Rome and the techne of ancient Greece always were: art's true home, not a failure of taste. The movement began among Nerdrum's circle of students and spread internationally, mounting exhibitions from Tønsberg and Stavern to Munich, Gothenburg, and the 2010 Kitsch Biennale at Palazzo Cini in Venice. Adherents insist kitsch is a philosophical movement apart from art; either way, it functions as an indirect critique of the contemporary art world.

Defining characteristics

• Old Master craftsmanship: careful drawing, glazed layers, and modeled form
• Narrative first: figures caught in emotionally charged, universal situations
• Romantic, often melancholy or tender mood, with sentiment embraced rather than avoided
• Warm earth palette with Rembrandt-like light emerging from shadowed grounds
• Archetypal figures in timeless settings rather than contemporary subject matter

Key figures

• Odd Nerdrum (b. 1944) — Norwegian figurative painter whose 1998 speech and book On Kitsch founded the movement
• Jan-Ove Tuv (fl. 1990s-present) — Co-author of On Kitsch and the movement's principal theorist
• Helene Knoop (fl. 2000s-present) — Norwegian painter of the founding circle of Nerdrum's students

Example works

• Twilight — Odd Nerdrum (1981)
• The Cloud — Odd Nerdrum (1985)

Sources

• Kitsch movement - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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