“Haixia Liu, 1962, (left) paints Van Gogh more skillfully than Van Gogh (right). Should expose how overrated Van Gogh is,” Margarita (@margaritaevna95) tweeted on the 7th of August, 2020. The image featured on the left is a highly realistic painting of Le Café La Nuit in Arles, France, by Haixia Liu. On the right is ‘Café Terrace at Night’ by Vincent Van Gogh (1888), which depicts the same café, and is lesser in the tweeter’s opinion. Over 20,000 retweets later, Margarita has been publicly shamed, seldom supported, and has inspired countless memes and parodies. Expressions of frustration like @madoras_funeral’s retweet: “Van Gogh broke a million boundaries as far as what was popular at the time…You’re entitled to your opinion but please educate yourself a bit more on Van Gogh” dominate the debate. Another states: “Haixia Liu did it as an homage to Van Gogh…It’s like listening to a cover of a song on a tribute album and going “See, I told you David Bowie was overrated!” (@keckmeister). Watching the retweets roll, I cherish this moment in popular discourse. Margarita, perhaps unknowingly, has stirred up an aspect of art criticism entangled with Marxism that rarely sees engagement outside of academia.
The concept of ‘kitsch’ was around before Van Gogh propped up an easel in Arles. Originating in 1860s German-speaking art criticism, ‘kitsch’ is primarily derogatory. It means ‘low art’, ‘gaudy’, ‘cheap’, or ‘tacky.’ Items deemed ‘kitsch’ appear in all artistic media, from porcelain miniatures of puppies, Christmas cards, and the Furby necklace in Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019), to Norman Rockwell’s paintings. Kitsch is not ‘high art,’ according to its critics, who associate it with consumerism, mass-production, sentimentality, and anti-intellectualism. Clement Greenberg noted in his landmark essay, ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (1939), that kitsch art doesn’t require an “educated” viewer for its meaning to be understood. Its meaning is self-evident, as it portrays events or places realistically, seamlessly, and familiarly. Greenberg compares realist painter, Ilya Repin, popular in Soviet Russia for his depiction of battle scenes, to Pablo Picasso: “Repin predigests art for the spectator and spares him effort, provides him with a short cut to the pleasure of art that detours what is necessarily difficult in genuine art.” Over 80 years later, tweeters are rephrasing Greenberg’s observations in response to Margarita’s tweet.
Digesting Liu’s painting, there are clear signs of kitsch. Importantly, it’s imitative and almost photographic in its glowing sunset hyper-realism. Its proportions are precise, and Liu was clearly skilled and well-trained. However, perfectionism is its downfall. As tweeters have commented, it belongs in a hotel foyer, an afterthought in interior décor. It is good because it is precise, not because it revolutionizes its medium. Van Gogh’s version, meanwhile, conveys shadowy depth and brushstroke movement, subverting realism and reacting to the very medium of painting. Over a century later, it is still modern, alive, perplexing. Though Liu’s may be more contemporary, it is not modernist. It is flat and outmoded. There is no competition here. Although both paintings happen to depict the same café, they would never be shown side-by-side in a gallery.
Kitsch criticism dances precariously between Marxist analysis of industrialism and blatant and harmful elitism. Liu’s painting was likely a heartfelt homage and wasn’t intended for display alongside Van Gogh’s. Margarita brought this problem upon herself by doing so. However, suggestions that Margarita and her defenders should be educated on art criticism reflect wider issues in the tension between ‘high art’ and ‘low art’ across media. Kitsch is at its best when it is earnest and naïve, and I am proud to say that I sometimes seek out kitsch for its retro qualities. Simultaneously, it is crucial that kitsch does not homogenise or invalidate the avant-garde.
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