5.13.08 - Kitsch in Chiang Mai

Word on the street was that there was some underground scene of painters and drawers in Chiang Mai. Well, we found them - and they really were under ground. Last Saturday, while searching around night markets, we found about 30 very talented creators that worked out of a basement of a market. Nearly everything that they were selling were drawings (almost no prints). Everyone of them uses their gallery as a studio -or maybe vise versa- but essentially there was no difference. They seemed to be in groups of 3 to 6 people. They weren't creating work as nameless massproducers, yet they seemed to share in each other's success. One of the guys seemed quite happy to sell me a drawing made by his friend, and after I bought it, 4 of them abandoned their easels to help take it out of it's display frame to pack it up. It looked like such a beautiful way to work.

As many of you know, the Master Painter I am apprenticing is a leader in a movement to define a stream of painting under the Superstructure of the term Kitsch. He has done a lot to reorient people's thinking of that term to not only include pink lawn flamingos, precious moments dolls, and a picture of a moose by a lake, but also "high kitsch" - including painters like Rembrandt, Waterhouse, and, well, himself. With this philosophy, Kitsch is concerned with pathos, the eternal, and the intimate, while Art is concerned with irony and originality.

I could go on with these ideas, but instead, I'll direct anyone interested to some writings by Jan-Ove Tuv and Odd Nerdrum.

http://janovetuv.com/bruker/articles/Manifest_E%207.pdf
http://janovetuv.com/bruker/articles/confused_about_kitsch.pdf
http://janovetuv.com/bruker/articles/kitsch_and_irony.pdf
http://www.kitschforum.com/
"On Kitsch" by Odd Nerdrum et. al. Published by Kagge Forlag

I was quite happy to find these Thai "Kitschists".