I am only beginning to understand what defines a Kitsch painter. When I first realized Odd Nerdrum defined himself as one, I was bewildered. When I think of kitsch, I think of the kitschy postcard I bought in the south of France in the 90’s. My friends and I would collect something kitschy because of it’s absurdity and charm. Meanwhile, I have held Odd Nerdrum’s work up on a pedestal because of it’s powerful blend of emotion and skill. Throughout most of history, kitschy art has been considered inferior and tasteless. I wondered why a growing number of artists were identifying themselves as kitsch, but I couldn’t find exactly how the definition had evolved from it’s historical sense as described below.

Popular politics frequently provides a fertile ground for kitsch: Nazi art exploited kitsch imagery, as did official art in the Soviet Union. Clement Greenberg, in his essay ‘Avant-garde and Kitsch’ (1939, see Dorfles, pp. 116–26), identified political kitsch as playing to the uneducated, sentimental tastes of the masses by providing them with objects to wonder at or to admire, for example in over-sized public monuments to the glories of a regime. Kitsch is more difficult to identify in purely abstract painting or non-programmatic music because its effects so depend on descriptive elements. In the domestic sphere, the contemporary décor of many homes included mass-produced furniture in crude imitation of modernist styles. In the late 20th century the advertising industry has perpetrated a type of kitsch that seeks to raise the status of products by the flagrant, often comical, use of the fine arts, the exoticism of foreign places, music, literature and even religion. Advertisements that graphically juxtapose products with elements taken from a higher cultural or a fantasy plane successfully exploit the general aspiration among consumers for something ‘better’. Like forgery, kitsch is an inevitable feature of a world in which money and desire are spread more widely than taste and knowledge.
Source: Denis Dutton, From Grove Art Online © 2009 Oxford University Press

Wikipedia stated that:

A different approach is taken by the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, who, in 1998, began to argue for kitsch as a positive term used as a superstructure for figurative, non-ironic, and narrative painting. In 2000, together with several other authors, he composed a book entitled On Kitsch, where he advocated the concept of “kitsch” as a more correct name than “art” for this type of painting. As a result of this redefinition proposed by Nerdrum, an increasing number of figurative painters are referring to themselves as “kitsch painters.” Source: Wikipedia

I still wondered why Nerdrum considers his paintings Kitsch. I finally found the website www.worldwidekitsch.com. To my disappointment, the website didn’t provide me with any definition. The artwork on the site was beautiful, but I marveled at the mystery behind it. Tonight, I decided to join the site, and there I found what I had been seeking — the Kitsch Dogmas.

KITSCH DOGMAS

In order to clarify what kitsch is, and that it is not an art .style., these dogmas have been created. Dogma, quite simply, means a system of principles or tenets.

Kitsch is never ironic.

In kitsch, all human beings are rendered with respect
– regardless of age and social status.

In a kitsch composition, human beings shall have contact.

If your foremost goal is originality, then you are no longer making kitsch.
Kitsch seeks intensity, not originality.
The goal is to approach the best of the old masters as closely as possible,
especially the Greek hellenism (300 b.C . 100 A.D.)
and the Baroque Renaissance (1500-1670).

A kitsch creator seeks to
develop his skill
rather than give priority to the new.

A kitsch creator does not dictate nature,
he studies it.

A kitsch creator is dissatisfied with
his lack of knowledge.
For a kitsch creator all masters are contemporary.

Making something .new.
is for a kitsch creator embarassing,
but as Aristotle says:
a story can be good even though it is new.

For a kitsch creator, the standard of .development.
is if he has reached the standard of previous masters.
And even if they are surpassed,
he will never loose respect.

The hellenistic idea of beauty
is
a dogma and not a religion.

Because kitsch is not built on religion
(how one shall believe and feel)
but skill,
it is consequently dependant upon dogmas.

Sentimentality is positive (Rembrandt) . sentimentalism is negative (Bougereau).
Sentimentalism is the enemy of sentimentality
because it harbors irony.
A work cannot become sentimental enough
. .too much. is really too little.
Ilja Repins .Ivan the Terrible.
is a sentimental painting.

Morality is positive,
because it is built on humanism.
Moralism is negative.

The skill of the hand
is the accompanying friend
of the head.

Skill,
not.honesty..

Comparison is the only way
to understand quality.
Compare Picasso and Rembrandt:
time is no excuse.

.Our time. and .originality.
are folklore,
and a hindrance.

The longing to elaborate his own melancholy
through handcraft
is the quality of the kitsch creator.

A kitsch person has lived many times,
he cannot betray his memory.

The intensity in the perception of nature
makes it a magical common property.
When you try to make it better than when you first saw it,
then you are approaching high kitsch.

There is a connection between you and the great works you admire.
You identify with those who did not follow
the metaphysics of the time.

Painterly miracles give the most joy.
A kitsch creator wishes to see substance illuminated,
pure colors are but opaque darkness.

If you hold back
out of concern for the demands of the time,
then you are no longer making kitsch.
Kitsch will always be in conflict with
the university, the state and the bureaucracy
. because it represents human vulnerability.

High kitsch exposes the clichèes of power.

The magician shall not conquer the world,
he shall only play with it.
So also with high kitsch.

A good drawing
without a natural rhythm
is not a good drawing.

Kitsch creator!
You are allowed to take pride in your work.

The kitsch creator sees in suffering
a local problem
which is given a universal content.

The kitsch creator
goes into the cave to search
for a little, dark flame.

In a kitsch work
the surface reveals everything,
it is the only way to the undertext.
A kitsch work always smells
of sweat.

A kitsch work shall be seen with the eyes,
not with the ears.

Time is incidental, quality is everything;
time is nothing.
The kitsch creator looks to the old masters
not because they are old,
but because they are masters.

The goal is
the immortal master work,
not the sketch.
The kitsch creator lives only for the master work.

The three stages of kitsch:
The egosentric
– look at me.
The geosentric
– look at what I can do.
The heliosentric (which can only be reached through the geosentric)
– look at what I have revealed.

Kitsch
is
humanity
sensuality
light
(Source: www.worldwidekitsch.com)