Norman Rockwell vs. Richard Serra: Cultural Populism and Its Vicissitudes at the End of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In 1939, Clement Greenberg resoundingly criticised Norman Rockwell (that painter of charming small-town Americana) and kitsch in order to praise the values of a leftist avant-garde. For Greenberg, kitsch represented a rear-guard of cultural production, a symptom of industrialisation and urbanisation. Presenting itself as a substitute for both high and folk culture, it pandered to the nostalgia of the working classes for an organic sense of cultural diversion. By 1999, kitsch had few critics and many admirers,1 with Greenberg's critical legacy repudiated by the most cutting-edge art theorists (indeed, the journal October framed itself as a negation of Greenbergian aesthetics). Greenberg's critique of kitsch was based on his understanding of the avant-garde's political significance; it had to protect the values of aesthetic autonomy and critical negativity. Greenberg identified kitsch with totalitarianism, especially with the personal and political philistinism of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Because kitsch produced deceptive and misleading sensational effects, avant-garde art became a line of defence against propaganda.