text by J. J. Shih
Su Meng-hung, with his academic background, is a new generation artist. His work in recent years attempts to examine common culture from the perspective of elite culture and, with the critical and rebellious spirit of the intellectual, attack kitsch-oriented art and consumer culture. The solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, can be said to be a kitsch art-themed special exhibition.
Kitsch Art Attitude/Cynical Protesting Mentality
The popularity of kitsch culture has always been connected to supply and demand. For this reason, recent commentary has indicated that we mentally separate two types of phenomena: “kitsch” and “popular refinement.” Arnold Hauser said: “Kitsch is a kind of false aesthetics, a base spiritual release.” Milan Kundera believed “Kitsch is a no-holds-barred way of thinking, a method directed at pleasing the masses.” The work of artists who suppress their own status and surrender to common taste (or their idea of common taste) can be described as kitsch. They are adept at developing and creating art that is ostentatious, exaggerated and custom-oriented.
Dwight Macdonald said specifically that kitsch topics are varied, from swans to men and women and children to cute animals, flowers and fruit. The focus is also varied, primitive or academic, innocent or affectedly unconventional, sarcastic or preaching. The common point is the sale-ability; the common external appearance is an exaggerated, false, provocative, superficial and greedy character. If kitsch culture is examined further, its constituent elements can be found to be either too base or too tricky. Superficial harmony often hides discordant things within.
Kitsch art relies on perfect packaging, a kind posture and a sweet smile, which ensures it is easily embraced by the middle classes and allowed into their lives. Its main function is to satisfy the vanity of the middle classes in identifying with popular refinement. Popular refinement refers here to a special mentality which ensures that appreciators and consumers of art pursue a kind of high tone without asking themselves whether they can actually absorb its meaning. In daily life it is not difficult to see that the love of art by followers of popular refinement often ignores what is significant and may be distinguished from insincerity in the blind pursuit of fashion.
People who attack or who do not take the followers of popular refinement seriously say that art should be approached with hard work and piety; kitsch art encourages the passivity and laziness of such people. In support of kitsch, MacDonald says that one of the privileges of rich people since ancient times has been the enjoyment of beautiful things, and it is therefore not surprising that kitsch art became a symbol of the middle class life style and social psychology. Abraham Moles maintains that the middle classes can be expected eventually to arrive at the truth by initially taking the road of popular refinement. This is the same as saying that both ancient and modern kitsch culture possess a taste for improvement and an incremental art teaching function.
Milan Kundera once mockingly said: “Understand what the masses want and then put them in a collectively agreed upon mode or way of thinking, and decorate the stupidity of the mode with pretty words and feelings, until in the end they cry sincere tears at their dependent thinking and feelings.” Ancient kitsch artists were like this, and in modern popular culture it is common to first conduct “market research,” then develop the product and carry out energetic promotional work. Isn’t this exactly what Kundera said?
A Cynics' Trilogy
Although, Su Meng-hung’s solo exhibition has kitsch as its core, some of the topics discussed above are to be found beneath the surface. The two works that are displayed, Material Paradise and Kai Dao Tu Mi are related in spirit but different in content. The subject of the former is Western culture and social aesthetics, while the latter is based on an expression of Eastern civilization and official aesthetics.
One directly uses still life painting that has been popular in the West since the seventeenth century, whilst the other indirectly alters the Eastern flower and bird paintings that have held an important position in imperial palaces since the Tang dynasty.
From this exhibition we can see that Su’s use or transformation of ancient paintings is not just a case of “old wine in a new bottle” or “new wine in an old bottle.” If this were the case, the bottle would still be a bottle, and there would be no real interaction and mutual relationship between new and old.
What the artist attempts to achieve is a kind of art that freely transcends time, allowing the past and present situation to illuminate each other – an art that “talks of the past” and “talks of the present.”
It could be said that Material Paradise is a series of works developed from a primitive concept. In terms of the exhibition mechanism and form, the two series can be seen together as a general concept spatial installation work. However, a series of well-known and not so well-known Western still-life paintings are reproduced and utilized by the artist. These are deliberately added to and changed, and then exhibited in a specifically defined space. An atmosphere of superficiality permeates these reproductions of old paintings and the decorative additions.
Looking carefully, the Western still life paintings used by Su are different in terms of content, but most have potted flowers as the central motif and a kitsch style that makes them eye-catching. One clear example is the still life painting by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621).
In the almost totally symmetrical structure of this painting, the artist paints various flowers in full bloom. Even the light is uniform and does not illuminate one flower more than others. For some reason he chose not to follow the new light experiments of Baroque artists of the time, an attitude that is very clear. What is interesting, and occurs not just to botanists but also to art historians, is that the flowers belong to different seasons and places. Also, the flowers, butterflies and bees in this painting appeared in other works by the artist (even in works by his students). Clearly this kind of painting was produced not by looking directly at the actual objects, but by looking at individual study paintings of flowers.
The repeated use of the same drawing was perhaps just a technical convenience. Showing flowers from different seasons together is not an expression of ignorance, but a strong appeal to popular love for ostentatious beauty and the desire for betterment in social class, status and wealth.
Let us now look at another painting used by Su Meng-hung, Flower Still Life with Curtain, a work completed in 1658 by Adrian van der Spelt (c.1630-1673).
This painting is similarly rich in content and shows off the artist’s skill whilst attempting to sell themed humor and an interesting story. It uses a “picture in a picture” visual effect to guide the viewer’s interest. The realistic curtains are pulled to one side, but we are left asking if these are real flowers or from another still life painting?
The design of the picture refers to the story of two artists in ancient Greece who publicly competed. One artist lifted the curtain in front of the public and the lifelike fruit in the painting tricked a hungry bird, which tried to eat it. The other artist was even better. He refused the request of the first artist to lift the curtain on his work while at the same time, claiming victory. The curtain he revealed was not real; it was what he had painted.
In addition to providing a visual recognition game for viewers, this Adrian van der Spelt painting also connects with the historic story. It seems to be an example of the artist showing that he has the skills of both artists in the story. This “little trickster” still-life painting that was very popular with the middle classes at the time is further proof that art looks for tricks by which to achieve the objective of kitsch.
In seventeenth century Europe, the influence of the middle class was increasing. Outside the existing palace and aristocratic system a new group of art consumers emerged. While art had new patrons, kitsch had its new market.
In twenty-first century Taipei, Su Meng-hung uses popular still life paintings of seventeenth century artists like Bosschaert, Heda and Spelt, but applies a new interpretation to this traditional genre. His first intention is to show the historical story of “art subversion” by reproducing or copying its original and changing its primary meaning. The second is to defend what is called “serious” art. For example, putting the still-life paintings here alongside with those of Rembrandt help illustrate the idea that there is no necessary connection between the screening principle of art history and the law of supply and demand in the art market.
To place Rembrandt’s The Flayed Ox (剝開的牛) amongst the still life paintings of unusually beautiful and fragrant flowers can be read in at least two different ways: artists such as Rembrandt are unwilling to use kitsch can sacrifice the possible benefits for the sake of their art. Meanwhile, through the detailed realistic description of the “market scene” in The Flayed Ox, Su criticizes the ostentatious and pompous taste for still life paintings by the art market.
Su Meng-hung’s third intention is also the most significant aspect of his Material Paradise series. By processing materials provided by foreign clients and transforming the meaning of symbols, the artist can “enter” the aforementioned historical context, creating a kind of playing with predecessors and as a way to overturn convention.
For example, by fitting a transparent cover over the flower paintings by Bosschaert and others, and introducing bigger and richer man-made flowers, the individual flowers are made to compete with each other. It is not hard to imagine what the artist tries to articulate through his intentional display of mixing the mass-produced man-made flowers with the delicately hand-painted art. The man-made flowers are popular in their orientation while the old traditional paintings have a middle-class sensibility and their own underlying class-consciousness. Su Meng-hung is not looking for a grotesque effect in this juxtaposition, but seeking to demonstrate how similar things come together in such a combination. While showing the relationship between the flower painting and the reproduced flower objects, he also jokes about the pot calling the kettle black.
Old paintings and the contemporary man-made flower objects are both real and false. One indicates the source of kitsch art, one the present state of kitsch art. What the former stresses is that it is a genuine work of art. The latter advocates a good product at a low price. Both are connected to the pursuit of beauty and the expression of taste, but what is different is that the middle class pursue a dependent taste which is above that of the general public; the consuming masses are passively hypnotized without any self-consciousness, and in the end, they simply accept it.
The sight of flowers from the four seasons blooming together in an old kitsch painting seemingly transcends natural rules and restrictions of time. The plastic / silk ribbon flowers developed by modern businessmen will never wilt in terms of form, quality or quantity. The artist forces these two kinds of kitsch objects together, in a red, romantic exhibition space with a gold-leaf-edged beautiful frame, allowing them to be in perfect sympathy and to “fight in the nest.”
Su says of the method of expression: “ I'm trying to relieve material fetishism through material fetishism!” From the perspective of a critical strategy this is clearly Cynicism.
Modern art critics point out the dual personality of Cynics. On the one hand they disdain worldly affairs and are misanthropic, on the other they compromise for interest’s sake and accept reality. The biggest skill of Cynical artists is that they borrow the Hsu Pen view of Cynicism – transforming their dissatisfaction through tradition and reality to an attitude of “to understand but not to compromise, to accept but not to identify with.” It is fairly clear that Su mimics and merges early middle class art with modern popular culture to extend the rationality of elite thinking and the criticism of modern art. This creative strategy to some extent reflects a particular new phenomenon amongst young Taiwanese artists that “the more academically trained, the more cynical.”
When Roseleaf Raspberries are in Full Bloom
Compared to Material Paradise, which has been shown in numerous exhibitions and fully displays the artist’s creative ideas, Kai Dao Tu Mi is one of Su’s newest works.
The roseleaf raspberry is seen as one of the main spring flowers and “the roseleaf raspberry in full bloom” is a famous line from A Dream of Red Mansions. Su’s Kai Dao Tu Mi takes Chinese traditional bird and flower paintings as its inspiration, extending the Cynical spirit of Material Paradise and attempting to change the angle of cultural observation, playing games with the people in the past. As to what these games are, more observation is required for further explanation, but the very initial interpretation could be roughly made through the elements of the artistic content and the artist’s creative concept.
From the Tang to the Sung dynasties, China’s flower and bird paintings developed from painting nature to an art apogee where man was an integral part of nature, having both form and meaning. Then, after the Ching dynasty, the paintings became a tradition of learning through imitating the old masters; thus the flower and bird paintings come to be an art genre of an artist’s repeated reproductions. In traditional Chinese art, flower and bird paintings can be said to possess the greatest potential for socialization and space for creative development and application, but in modern Taiwan they have simply become wall decorations in restaurants. This cruel reality often causes people to ponder: does the visual culture of a people, after it develops to its peak, wither like the roseleaf raspberry. Is it the case that “three springs have passed and there will be no more flowers?”
Perhaps feeling this “art crisis,” in Kai Dao Tu Mi series Su attempts to change traditional Chinese bird and flowers paintings into a gaudy and ostentatious visual image, using a three-dimensional installation to change them into cultural symbols with more sensory appeal. It seems a kitsch strategy to remake aristocratic paintings oriented to scholars’ taste into objects for the modern masses. However, underneath it also seems to indicate the decline of Chinese art, which is more caused by the excessive control and intervention of Chinese scholars than by the trend towards kitsch. This intervention of scholars eliminates any mechanism for art to develop freely in its own way through general public appreciation. It is well known that in traditional thinking, ancient Chinese “serious” artists would not stoop to kitsch; however, we find a pursuit for kitsch style in folk art and culture. Perhaps beneath Su’s playful artistic behavior of making fun of the old masters is the intention to bring the two contradictory tastes together, to integrate the kitsch style into classical elegance. It might be the artist’s personal subversive thinking to save Chinese art from its feudal tradition by introducing kitsch into the traditional delicate works.
It is generally believed that avant-garde art and kitsch art are poles apart but Matei Calinescu has said that modernism, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch and post-modernism are the five different faces of modernity. In Su's exhibition, avant-garde and kitsch are only separated by a thin line, and his “cynical” cultural attitude and ready-made objects (拿來主義) can also be said to be a kind of a post-modern theory in practice.
If we look deeply into Su’s art and his elaboration on cultural issues, the artist’s critical strategy in his Material Paradise and Kai Dao Tu Mi series is to refer to a kind of art-style typology, an art consumer class, a special art industry, and the phenomena of art’s decline. Apparently, the artist seems to abandon the originality of art creation and reinforce the idea of the appropriation of ready-made objects and symbols, as Lu Hsun advocated in the 1930s: “Without ready-made-ism, people can't become new people on their own; without ready-made concepts, art and culture can't become new art and culture on their own.” Su Meng-hung diverts ready-made objects and adopts traditional symbols clearly to increase or change their original symbolic significance.
This kind of “taking from all directions” as art expression clearly indicates that abandoning handicrafts skills is intended to open up a new vision and highlight conceptual thinking; to say goodbye to the ivory tower or behind-closed-doors creativity; to rethink the dialogue between art and society. In Su’s work we see superficial images and objects that are sweetly kitsch, that are immediately apparent on viewing, and easily digested as soon we consume them. However, there is bitterness within the sweet taste; there are challenges and contestation. Su Meng-hung’s works are like the high-level still-life paintings that were called “Vanitas” in the early days in Holland. They force the viewer to think repeatedly about essential questions: Why are beauty and death so close to each other? Why is the feeling of perfection and emptiness so similar? If life is so transient, why do we need art so much? |
