Throughout the modern period, critical discourse concerning art that blurred the boundaries between high and low culture, art and life, was fraught with eschatology. For modernists, it signalled the end of good art (taste, morality), while for the avant-garde it promised the end of art altogether (sublation3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - The word \u201csublation\u201d is the English translation of \u201cAufheben,\u201d a contradictory German term used by Hegel that means to both keep and abolish. It thus corresponds to the avant-garde project of ending art by ending its autonomy from everyday life, an elimination whose paradoxical goal is to make life more like art.<\/span>, revolution). The insinuation or outright \u00adinclusion of excess decoration, pop culture or kitsch within the framework of high modernism was, and in some ways continues to be, a tried and true strategy for bringing lofty aesthetic categories abruptly down to earth, often revealing deep-seated biases towards race, class, and gender in the process. In this context, kitsch and the decorative function as a kind shadow\u2009\u2014\u2009a nebulous place containing everything modernism refuses to admit. For Austrian architect Adolf Loos, this shadow was fascist, an aspect he unwittingly revealed by linking ornamentation with moral degeneracy and tattooed murderers.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Adolf Loos, \u201cOrnament and Crime,\u201d in Bernie Miller and Melony Ward, eds., Crime and Ornament<\/em> (Toronto: YYZ Books, 2002), 29.<\/span> For Clement Greenberg, it was an impostor, a plague of \u201cvicarious experience and faked sensations\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009the embodiment of \u201call that is spurious in the life of our times.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Clement Greenberg, \u201cAvant-Garde and Kitsch,\u201d Art and Culture: Critical Essays<\/em> (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 10.<\/span> And for Harold Rosenberg, it was \u201cweak mysticism\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009the \u201ceasy painting\u201d of artists who squeezed out predictable abstract \u201cmasterpieces,\u201d creating what he called \u201capocalyptic wallpaper.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Harold Rosenberg, \u201cThe American Action Painters,\u201d The Tradition of the New<\/em> (New York: Horizon Press, 1959), 34.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kitsch and its related concepts thus represent what post-\u00adstructural theorists like to call a double bind. On the one hand, they concern something banal and impure, a kind of cultural excrescence or refuse; and on the other, they are, in the words of Milan Kundera, a glittering \u201cdenial of shit,\u201d a fantasy that \u201cexcludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable to human existence.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Twentieth Anniversary Edition<\/em>, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), 248.<\/span> This tension of opposites\u2009\u2014\u2009a potent mixture of excess and deprivation, desire and anxiety\u2009\u2014\u2009endows kitsch with an at-times almost inexplicable power of fascination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although postmodernism embraced mass culture, commercial art, and the aesthetics of the \u201cLas Vegas Strip,\u201d its theory and criticism eschewed dialectical concepts like kitsch, privileging instead concepts of relatedness, such as pastiche, pluralism, and polysemy. The \u201cend of postmodernism\u201d is perhaps attributable to this denial of opposites, a neurotic splintering that has inspired numerous contemporary artists, art critics, and theorists to revisit dialectical theory, as witnesses the emergence of terms such as altermodern (Nicolas Bourriaud), \u00adhypermodern (Gilles Lipovetsky and S\u00e9bastien Charles), and supermodern (Marc Aug\u00e9). Where such theoretical containers are absent or inappropriate, contemporary art is increasingly associated with a set of unsettled adjectives that include the Gothic, baroque, grotesque, and ugly. Although these terms are historically among the hallmarks of kitsch, a substantive \u00adconsideration of the relevance of the latter in a contemporary context has yet to be undertaken. Such an endeavour would be worthwhile, as it promises to reveal nuances that have been overlooked in the rush to define a new epoch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be foolish to attempt, within the confines of this short essay, to redress the apparent lack of rigorous theoretical attention currently being given to our understanding of kitsch and its role in a dynamic and evolving visual arts context. It is difficult to resist, however, the temptation to throw down some sort of gauntlet. Fortunately, the subject of bling-bling provides just such an opportunity. While on the surface the connection between kitsch and bling-bling seems obvious, upon closer inspection it is more complex. Although the definition of both words links them irrevocably to the double bind mentioned at the beginning of this essay\u2009\u2014\u2009that of excess and deprivation\u2009\u2014\u2009there are important differences in their relationship with authenticity, as well as aesthetic and institutional legitimation, to say nothing of their creative modes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout modernism, discourse concerning kitsch was unquestionably tied to concepts of purity and truth, as well as the crisis of legitimation brought on by the inversion of aesthetic and institutional hierarchies known as avant-gardism. In many ways, this polemic reached its apogee with American pop art, which raised comic books and advertising to the level of fine art, and, by inference, reduced pure painting to wallpaper. Kitsch in this sense represents a deeply paradoxical category, a species of contradiction not unlike grotesquery, in which concepts of high and low, true and false, are reversed and undermined through the creation of hybrid forms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As with much urban slang, the exact meaning and etymology of the word bling-bling is difficult to pin down. Most definitions link it to various forms of conspicuous consumption, but more specifically \u00adostentatious jewellery, gold teeth, and diamonds. A thoroughly postmodern \u00adphenomenon, bling-bling is usually employed in the creation of spectacle for spectacle\u2019s sake\u2009\u2014\u2009a concretization of gossip or personal myth\u2009\u2014\u2009and often entails the invention of a grandiose mise-en-sc\u00e8ne<\/em>. It largely \u00addisregards questions of authenticity or aesthetic value and \u00adconcentrates on modes of diversion and self-aggrandizement. Stories with bling-bling themes usually involve the invocation of power through large quantities of diamonds, people getting \u201cdissed\u201d or having fits, and other irregular and excessive behaviour that ultimately boils down to hot air. Polysemous rather than paradoxical, bling-bling is, to put it quite simply, a particular form of bullshit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The topic of bullshit is a tricky one, particularly because writing about it is almost always accompanied by the sinking feeling that one is, in fact, creating it. Despite whatever difficulties may lie ahead, investigating both personal and cultural resistances is often worthwhile. Unless one includes Baudrillard\u2019s theory of the simulacrum, serious literature concerning \u00adbullshit is scant. In 2005, American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt \u00adpublished a slim, exceptionally popular book of philosophy dealing specifically with this prevalent, yet under-studied aspect of contemporary Western culture. Originally published as an essay in 1986, On Bullshit<\/em> spent approximately twenty-seven weeks on the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 2005 Best-Seller List. Although it naturally spawned an uninspiring sub-genre of non-fiction dealing with bullshit, to my knowledge nothing serious has been written about this topic since, and certainly not with regards to contemporary art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite its flaws, Frankfurt\u2019s On Bullshit<\/em> boldly proposes, in the absence of any substantial work on the subject, \u201cto begin the \u00addevelopment of a theoretical understanding of bullshit.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit<\/em> (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1-2. <\/span> According to Frankfurt, bullshit constitutes a particularly contemporary kind of deception. While a liar must respect the truth, inasmuch as he or she seeks to undermine it, \u201ca person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom,\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Ibid., 52. <\/span> since he or she has no concern for what is true or false, and is willing to invent everything, even the context. Bullshit, as such, has a panoramic rather than particular focus.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Ibid.<\/span> This having been said, the \u00adapparent freedom of bullshitting does not mean it is easy to do, but rather that it involves a \u201cmode of creativity\u201d that is \u201cmore expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, colour, and \u00adimaginative play.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Ibid., 52-53.<\/span> Frankfurt even goes so far as to make a rather na\u00efve aesthetic distinction between lying and bullshitting, linking the former to \u201ccraft\u201d and latter to \u201cart.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Ibid., 53.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tropes of dishonesty are often associated with avant-garde artists, such as Duchamp and Warhol. The ruse that Duchamp concocted around his notorious urinal is perhaps the most famous. Although Fountain<\/em> (1917) was calculated to cause a stir, its deception was ultimately in the service of \u201cgreater truths\u201d and not excesses. Duchamp placed great emphasis on the difficult, disinterested act of choosing<\/em> it, as he considered the mass \u00adproduction of readymades something \u201c\u00e0 craindre<\/em>\u201d\u2009\u2014\u2009a sort of \u201c\u00adcontamination\u201d that could only be excused via the \u201cintervention\u201d of humour.13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Marcel Duchamp, interviewed by Alain Jouffroy, Marcel<\/em> Duchamp: Rencontres<\/em> (Paris: \u00c9ditions du Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997), 46-49. <\/span> While Warhol was notoriously less concerned about issues of mass production, he was often just as restrained. He wanted, after all, to eliminate aesthetic choice by becoming a machine, and was aided in this enterprise by methods of deception, such as hiring stand-ins. Unlike the sly, word-playing Duchamp, however, Warhol was a master at hiding in plain sight. \u201cIf you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There\u2019s nothing behind it.\u201d14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - Andy Warhol, \u201cWarhol in His Own Words: Unedited Statements (1964-87),\u201d in Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds., Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists\u2019 Writings<\/em> (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 340. <\/span> In a Warholian framework, pop art may be understood as a kitsch take on the readymade, another version of a lie that tells the truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a manifestation of bullshit, bling-bling is less about paradox, however, and more about mutability. Instead of expressing a conflict it \u00adperforms a diversion. For a bling-bling take on the readymade, one need only consider the work of artists such as Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Vanessa Beecroft. Hirst gets the prize for the bling-blingiest of twenty-first-century artworks: For the Love of God<\/em> (2007), a life-size, diamond-encrusted platinum skull that he reportedly sold for \u00a350 million.15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 15 <\/a> - Glen Owen and Polly Dunbar, The<\/em> Daily Mail<\/em> (London, UK), 9 September 2007.<\/span> This project brilliantly demonstrates a bling-bling lack of concern for truth or lies, since it focuses exclusively on affect and the invention of a beguiling situation. This modus operandi<\/em> is also evident in Hirst\u2019s philosophy of the readymade. In his words, \u201cI\u2019m operating at the top end of the art world … so I can come in and you\u2019re not going to think, \u2018It\u2019s a fucking birthday card.\u2019 So I can take a birthday card and re-represent it to you and you\u2019re gonna go, \u2018Fucking hell, that\u2019s gotta be important if it\u2019s been put here.\u2019\u201d16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 16 <\/a> - Damien Hirst, quoted by Andrew Osborn, \u201cEntire Hirst exhibition is snapped up by \u2018minigarch,\u2019\u201d The Independent<\/em> (London, UK), 6 December 2006.<\/span> In his painting Ganek Acquires Powhida<\/em> (2008), Powhida pushes this insane tautology even further, producing a hilarious satire in which a mega-artist (Powhida\u2019s alter-ego) shocks the art world by turning himself\u2009\u2014\u2009or rather his persona as bling-bling\u2009\u2014\u2009into a readymade. According to the painting\u2019s narrative, Powhida wreaks havoc after auctioning himself off to \u201cart-world power couple\u201d David and Danielle Ganek for $1,000,000, becoming \u00adthereafter a performative, whiskey-swilling, womanizing, party animal living in their private collection. In the bottom corner of this trompe-l\u2019\u0153il newspaper spread, Powhida cleverly inserts a banal Christie\u2019s ad announcing the \u00adauction of For the Love of God<\/em> at \u00a360 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From this cursory, if rather brief analysis, we may perhaps draw the following conclusion: bling-bling, and other categories of bullshit, such as the cynical and vapid, are to the postmodern what kitsch is to the modern\u2009\u2014\u2009a nebulous space, somewhere to the side of consciousness, containing a twisted version of everything it would rather not admit. As certain branches of psychology know, the existence of such a \u201cshadow\u201d is not an entirely negative phenomenon, because such \u201csites\u201d \u00adnecessarily contain a lot of unrealized potential. Indeed, many contemporary \u00adartists are attempting to harness this untapped reservoir, what might be called the unique potential of bullshit, through satire and spoof. William Powhida is an excellent example of this. Taking Duchamp\u2019s advice about the \u00adinsertion of humour rather seriously, he suggests that the solution to the end of post-modernism is not a new take on the modern, but rather the assimilation of one of the latter twentieth century\u2019s most important lessons in art theory: the only way out may be in. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/69_DO02_Falvey_WPowhida_07_Momenta_Ganek-scaled.jpg\")
photo : permission de l’artiste | courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n