Dissensus within dissensus: Odd Nerdrum's Kitsch movement and the aesthetic regime of Jacques Rancière

Abstract

This study aims to contribute towards the ongoing discourse of the politics of art by identifying the Kitsch movement as an instance of dissensus, critically considering the alignment of Nerdrum’s work with Rancière’s aesthetic regime, and demonstrating the need for further dissensual action against the creation of new aesthetic hierarchies within both the Kitsch movement and Rancière’s regimes of art. This thesis investigates Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum’s “Kitsch movement” as an example of what French philosopher Jacques Rancière defines as dissensus. Nerdrum is a representational artist who follows the painterly traditions of classical figuration in an artworld that putatively prefers conceptualism over technique. For Nerdrum, his experience of being placed on the outskirts of the artworld reflects, to his mind, the modern-day European artworld’s continuous quest for avant-garde ideals: innovation, originality, and what he describes as an open antagonism towards historical art education, specifically classical figurative painting. I argue that Nerdrum’s (2001; 2011) creation of the Kitsch movement suggests an instance of what Rancière (1999; 2004) calls dissensus—where an individual or group identifies themselves as not being included in the structuring of the community as a whole. Rancière calls this an act of “self-identification” and the resulting resistance to an imposed hierarchy, a political action working towards equality (Rancière, 1999:36). In such a situation, the figurative painter/Kitsch movement fulfils the role of Rancière’s political subject. The political subject questions the structure of the formal artworld, a community which functions according to certain norms and shared ideas. Such a community reflects Rancière’s concept of the distribution of the sensible. The authority or hierarchy embedded within the norms and consensus of a community is upheld and perpetuated by those who ascribe to it. Rancière terms this upholding and ascribing the police. In this case, the police could be art critics, teachers, curators of art, as well as art enthusiasts whom they influence. By introducing a re-imagined view of the community, the political subject brings about Rancière’s notion of the redistribution of the sensible. In suggesting that the similarities between the Kitsch movement and Rancière’s ideas identify Nerdrum’s position as a form of dissensus, I compare Nerdrum’s oeuvre (as creator and ambassador of the Kitsch movement) with Rancière’s regimes of art.