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| Mug, Detail from the Morris Kitsch Archive, 2009, Laminated Digital Print, 8.5" X 12", Photograph David Mabb |
I must confess that the first time I entered the Kitsch Archive I was decidedly underwhelmed. You see, the exhibitions section of the DCCA website features images (like the one at left) of actual objects. This lead me to suspect that the archive would, therefore, contain actual objects. So, the first time I saw the exhibit, I thought for a moment that someone had robbed the DCCA. There were no kitschy mugs, or shirts, or pens...or anything at all, for that matter. Clearly the authorities needed to be informed.
Fortunately, I was mistaken. It is only at first glance that the exhibit seems empty. Instead of bringing objects to the DCCA, Mabb has placed hundreds of photographs of objects on the walls and arranged them into several massive grids. The effect of this decision is to give the impression of emptiness and a vacant room, for the images are flat and lack even the minimal protrusion of a canvas on the wall. The impression of emptiness doesn't last long. It is soon replaced by an unexpected but powerful feeling of sensory overload. As I walked around the perimeter of the room, trying my best to look at every single solitary individual object pictured in every single solitary individual row and column, I soon felt my eyes glass over and my mind go on autopilot.
When I realized that I had no idea what I was seeing anymore, I berated myself severely. "Are you or are you not an Art History major," I asked myself, "and do you or do you not cringe when people walk by art without really looking at it? You mademoiselle, are a hypocrite!" I was suitably ashamed of myself and tried once more to take in every single image. The thing is, try as I might, I just couldn't do it and, gradually, I began to suspect that my inability to absorb, well, anything, might just be the point of the exhibition.
David Mabb say this about his installation: “The archive illustrates how Morris’ designs have been appropriated for a mass consumer society. The designs have become widely available at the expense of the qualities and values inherent to Morris’ original utopian project, which offered in its vision of the fecundity of nature the hope of alternative ways of living in the world.” Morris, it seems, was in favor of the early forms of communism and was deeply disdainful of the capitalist phenomenon of mass production. Indeed, he greatly valued the beauty of hand crafted, artistic objects. The title of the symposium even comes from a Morris quote on this subject, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
This quote is actually rather famous among Pre-Raphaelite enthusiasts and is included, many times, in the Kitsch Archive. It is this inclusion that underlines how much Morris original intent has been distorted by "a mass consumer society," for many of the objects that feature this slogan are, to be blunt, ugly. The quote appears on plain white tee shirts, not-particularly-ornate pillows, and other assorted, boring, mass produced items. Morris's love of beauty artistic substance, and originality has been eaten up by mass production and spit out in the form of...kitsch.
Mabb seems to be suggesting that, by transferring Moriss's designs onto endless, mass-produced objects, we are contradicting everything for which Morris stood.
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*Useful and Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites - Official Symposium Website
*The Morris Kitsch Archive will be exhibited at the DCCA until December 5, 2010.
"Panoramic View" is a series of posts dedicated to stepping back and looking at exhibits at the DCCA in their entirety.
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