Bürgerlicher Realismus. Die Meisterwerke der Salomalerei.

by Aleksa Čelebonović

Some Call It Kitsch revives the delightful and evocative art our parents and grandparents cherished. These Victorian and Edwardian masterworks were the pride of great museums around the world, and a lightly disguised source of erotic stimulation to their viewers. But after the victory of Impressionism over Academic painting and the rise of "modern" art, these eloquent narrative paintings depicting historical events, mythological scenes, religious tableaux, and exotic landscapes gradually sank into total disfavor and were relegated to dusty storage bins and dismissed as Kitsch -- the epitome of oversentimentality, pretentiousness, and bad taste.

Some Call It Kitsch is the first full-scale exploration of Bourgeois Realist painting in terms of present-day critical standards. Among the artists represented are Alma-Tadema (Greek and Roman scenes of splendor and debauchery), Bouguereau (plump, suggestive goddesses and nymphs), Tissot (upper middle class high life), Lord Leighton (icily Classical but thoroughly erotic nudes), and Boldini (portraits of Edwardian aesthetes and titled beauties).

Genres: Art

199 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

art historian

*

Aleksa Čelebonović (1917 — 1987) bio je srpski slikar, likovni kritičar, istoričar umetnosti i profesor Univerziteta u Beogradu.

Reviews

[Alessandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this book and see why the Impressionists were such a breath of fresh air. The academic paintings of the second half of the nineteenth century the Impressionists were reacting against are abundantly represented in this volume, and they are strange, polished, stilted, smooth, glossily realistic, moralizingly prurient, melodramatic, occasionally nationalistic, saccharine, mawkish, and self-important.

Mind you, the artists all have a level of technical skill and accomplishment at handling paint which is rare these days. But their unwillingness to explore, the sheer conventionality of their visions, is rather tiresome. So many shaved-smooth Victorian nude women lolling about in Roman baths, or flying through the air in wriggling masses, or just hanging about in photorealistic forests for no obvious reason; so many angels and saints rolling their eyes heavenwards; so many sturdy peasants working or praying or celebrating national holidays; so many rich people in magnificent clothes; so many Victorian people standing about uncomfortably in historic or mythological fancy-dress. And it's all so, so, polished.

The odd thing is I rather like some of this art. Most of it is not very good as art, but some of it is very helpful as historical costuming source material, or social history source material. And some I just find endearing even if it is in bad taste.