More on North Korean Communism Kitsch

Following yesterday's blog, I am posting a few more art works in all format from North Korea - the vulgarity apparently knows no bounds.


Street Posters


Baekdu revolutionary spirit (Kim Il Sung Square)


Let all the imperialist running dogs get out!


Kim Jong Il's Birthday 2.16


Arc de Triomphe for the 70th birthday of Kim Il Sung


Long live the great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung


Ubiquitous Kim Il Sung Badges

Kitsch

Recently, a rare "art" exhibit opened in Vienna's MAK Museum -- Flowers for Kim Il Sung; Art and Architecture from the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. The museum says it is the first time major paintings from the Korean Art Gallery in Pyongyang have been shown abroad.

There are more than 100 oils, water colors and traditional Korean ink paintings, dating from the 1960s to the present day. The life depicted there are pure "joy". Apparently, Northern Korean live in a land not dissimilar to the wonderland created by Thomas Kinkade.

These so called are are as naive as sinister. Being charitable, we can call it communism kitsch.


Noon time, by Yang Myong Ryong, 1963


Kim Jong Il, the supreme commander of the KPA, deeply concerned over the soldiers' diet, by Ri Chol, 2000

I happen to be reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I actually am reading precisely these few paragraphs now:

The feeling included by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not, therefore, depend on an unusual situation; it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running on the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love.

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.

The brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.

And no one knows this better than politicians. Whenever a camera is in the offing, they immediately run to the nearest child, lift it in the air, kiss it on the cheek. Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements.

Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.

When I say "totalitarian," what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree "Be fruitful and multiply."

In this light, we can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.

People should realized that kitsch is not the monopoly of certified totalitarian countries such as North Korea. Texas can proudly join the rank.

A New Batch of Life Drawings

Just finished another round or drawing at Cal's Saturday drawing session.

Two-minute poses:













Five-minute poses:







Ten-minute poses:











Twenty-minute poses:

Kroeber Hall, University of California, Berkeley

MVI_1970
Originally uploaded by Matthew Felix Sun

Every time I went to Kroeber Hall for life drawing session, I walked through this eerie stairwell. The echoing effect was haunting and startlingly beautiful.

I have posted a few still pictures of this particular spot before and now I'm sharing this brief video I shot last weekend:

A New Ravens Painting Finished

Last week, I finished another painting of ravens or crows. Last year, I made another crow painting, which is more picturesque and recognizable. This new version has more motion in it and almost vertigo inducing perhaps. It still took place in urban landscape but it is barely recognizable.


Ravens
Oil on Canvas
24" x 30"
Completed in 2010


Crow
Oil on Canvas
24" x 18"
Completed in 2009

Paintings at Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University

Finally, I'm coming to talk about the paintings at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. It has some very fascinating modern works and several beautiful 18th century or older European paintings. Adding to this exulted group, there are several paintings command my attention through various virtues even though they are quite sentimental and suspect of being kitsch.

My favorite one is Angel by Sean Scully


Angel, Sean Scully

Great Anselm Kiefer was represented by Jakobs Traum (Jacob's Dream):









There are three very beautiful Richard Diebenkorn pieces:


Window


Ocean Park #94


Ocean Park #94 (Details)


Ocean Park #94 (Details)


Disintegrating Pig

Other modern works include:


Mirror, Skull, and Chair, Paul Wonner


Interior with Cityscape, Elmer Nelson Bischoff


Fall 1964, Frank Lobdell


Untitled (Scene with ''X''), Elmer Nelson Bischoff

Modernism European works include:


Parklandschaft, Erich Heckel


Kurish Bride, I, Max Pechstein


Paul (Details), Henri Matisse

Not my favorite painters, I dido find the thinly painted background in Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins's portrait of Professor William D. Marks interesting:


Portrait of Professor William D. Marks, Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins

I'm in the period of reconnecting to drawing, thus this little drawing appeals me:


Saint Paul's from Saint Martin's-in-the-Fields, William Evans of Bristol

Sentimental? Yes. But I like the color scheme and particularly the color of the pants very beautiful:


The Magdalen, Jean-Jacques Henner

There were three beautiful Madonnas:


The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John, Jacopo del Sellaio


Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel, Domenico di Bartolomeo Ubaldini


Madonna in Glory (Details), Carlo Dolci

... and a Satan:


Satan Summoning his Legions, Thomas Stothard, R.A.

... plus a figure somewhere in between:


Napoleon Bonaparte, Andrea Appiani