Responding to Mike Mallory;
Your elegant defense of kitsch confirms my fears.
When the essence of a person is conflated to "American
Culture"and that to mass produced commercial or
entertainment icons, something is very wrong.
I suppose the knee jerk reaction is to blame the
people for their addiction to kitsch. But delight in
the symbols of mass consumer culture does not outline
the whole terrain of American Culture.
I do agree that those symbols can reveal a deep sense
of who Americans are, if one assumes an elitist
overview, as in "poor dopes, they are as they use".
That's the disagreeable academic undertone of the
Cultural Theory explainers. They can explain the
mystery of human psychology by means of simple signs
and received opinion, as if each individual is not
immersed in abstract and strange currents running
deep.
Oh, a pop up memory from Joyce:
"I hear the noise of many waters making moan,
Sad as the seabird is when flying forth alone."
I am reminded of Robert Frank's book, the Americans,
as one of the first instances where the everyday also
revealed an amazingly complex and rich, difficult,
demanding sense of Americans. That was the fifties,
my coming of age era, and where is that depth and
gravitas now? It is gone from everyday culture,
replaced, as you say. by the icons of Americanism, but
these are uniformly the cheery, bright, playful,
entertaining, fully democratic images we see
everywhere. They were invented by advertisers who
rightly sought to extend the blessings of a great
technological free enterprise market to all. It has a
moral foundation in that aim to further justice and
access through commodities and the better life they
provide.
This is where I have trouble with your view. It seems
to ignore what I regard as the most fundamental trait
of American Culture. Justice and fair play.
From the Mayflower Compact, to the Declaration of
Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights,
(and even back to the Magna Carta as a model)
Americans have been preoccupied with the quest for
justice and fair play. It is the constant national
debate, a contentious debate to be sure, often tipped
toward self-interest, violence and just plain
wrongheadedness and yet it is a moral and worthy
endeavor and most Americans, whatever their
limitations or abundances, believe that to the depths
of their being.
Americans have the consciousness for wanting to do
the right thing. It is a profound quest. It has made
America the greatest nation ever in the world, many
times greater than any of the past. Not a hundred
Romes can match it. Not a thousand Renaissances or any
other civilization has ever devoted so much struggle
for human rights and none has excelled as America has.
Yes, it is a flawed endeavor, tragic beyond compare in
many ways. What postmodern art can symbolize this
euphoric and tragic paradox?
Jeff Koons' work is now being exhibited on the roof of
MOMA in NYC. MOMA is to contemporary art as our
Capitol in D.C. is to America. To think of that great
museum, the standard of modernist quality, being
capped by Koons' Platinum Balloons is like seeing the
U.S. President wearing a balloon party hat when
delivering a State of The Union address.
It's very difficult for me to criticize Jeff Koons. I
have spent time with him. We shared a podium and a
dinner. He is a fine person, decent, smart, not at
all cynical and he truly seeks beauty in his art. He
takes from life, yes, but he also digs into
autobiographical "icons". Yes, I do think he makes
important celebratory art and, yes, it's certainly
true that American Culture is celebratory, even
reverently celebratory as evidenced by mainstream
American religions. But it takes more to symbolize
the joy-angst of our time than brilliant, loving,
innocent celebration.
Because it's Veterans Day and I'm a vet, I can be
excused for proclaiming my deep patriotism and faith
in the American sensibility -- preoccupied by justice
and fair play; that is, I mean human rights.
Americans care about justice and doing the right thing
and they are deeply and consistently engaged in a 300
year conversation about human rights. It's tough
talk, troubling, dangerous, complicated and much more.
It's not pop art. It's not kitsch. It's not
cynical, ironic, goofy, cheap or demeaning. It's full
of torment and hope, trying, trying again. It exposes
the real culture. There's been more progress in
that in America, by common-sense folk figuring it out
the hard way, than anywhere else, ever. Ever!
My family has been in America for 13 generations, from
150 yrs. before the Revolution and I know much about
my ancestors. Some of them died in our wars. For
some of them I have a scattering of their objects,
their papers, their ephemera. Their individual
histories tell the story of America perhaps as well as
any. Some were good, some bad, some successful, some
failed.
Mostly they were ordinary people and they did their
best. A few were in government. One way or another
they represented the ongoing crisis of the pursuit for
justice in the way Tocqueville summarized: The
protection of minority rights assuming that the
majority in a democracy can always attain its self
interest. Can you tell me that's not the inner voice
of every American, and the deep, profound
consciousness that permeates every page of American
history? Is that kitsch? Is that a flower doggie?
No, Americans are not the One Dimensional Man. Who
has shown the truth of our society in postmodern art?
I'm old enough to have touched the hands of pioneers.
Perhaps I belong to the last generation who did.
These were people who bumped their way to the Dakotas
in wagons. These were funny people. They had their
kitsch. They were full of optimism. But they worked
in dirt, out in nowhere, and lived among sickness and
death. Tragedy was up close and personal. I have
enormous respect for these people. They had a long
view of life and for most of them it was a short time
living it. I feel responsibility to them. I can't
forget how hard they tried and how deeply they cared
for justice and fair play. All thirteen generations
did the same. And what of later immigrants? Were
they defined by kitsch imagery? Were their deepest
feelings sucked up and bounced back to them by a
roadside sign, a glittery window display?
I've been to the European cities you mention. I've
been all over America. I've traced my ancestors'
paths, their land, their endeavors and those of
others. I can't make fun of them by trivializing my
own life as an artist through silly art puns and
sloppy work.
I think a real modernism in art is interested in the
fullest symbols of the human spirit. It is melacholy
in the true sense of the term, meaning a sympathy for
the tragic that underlies formation of moral
aspiration. Good art springs from the tragic. It
recognizes the sorrow of injustice and the violence of
evil and It defies them. Kitsch art pretends that
sorrow and evil are absent (as in mass consumer
imagery) and thus falsifies life, people, and subverts
the quest for justice and fair play.
I firmly believe that American culture, its true
culture -- complex, discursive, abstract, searching,
