Michael Pearce is a writer, painter, teacher and curator, as well as the founder of The Representational Art Conference (TRAC). His book "Kitsch, Propaganda and the American Avant-Garde" uncovers one thing Lenin, Hitler and Roosevelt had in common:

A keen eye for art as state propaganda.

Avoiding the old-fashioned vs modern dichotomy, Pearce shows the cultural historical roots of employing both figurative and abstract painting to further political correctness.

Pearce traces it back to 19th century socialist thinking, and goes in-depth on the ideas of philosophers like Proudhon and Saint-Simon, as well as the protests of Emile Zola.

First and foremost, however, he shows how the the American government and a few wealthy families made Avant-garde art into the preferred art form of the 20th century, casting it as the antidote to the sentimentality of kitsch.

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Chapter markers:

00:00 Intro

01:32 Understanding Kitsch and the Avant-Garde

05:01 Who is Michael Pearce?

08:06 The proto-Communist Avant-Garde

12:47 Proudhon's authoritarian state art

16:22 Proudhon on Courbet and aesthetic ideals

22:02 Courbet, Repin, and Russian realism

23:25 The Bohemian Avant-Garde

26:00 Emile Zola's individualism vs Proudhon

29:59 Capturing the Zeitgeist

33:50 The battle between Avant-Gardes in Soviet Russia

41:49 An individualist Avant-Garde?

42:43 Socialist Realism in the USSR and the USSA

45:36 Nazi art vs Roosevelt's path

47:46 Socialism and the art of the enemy

50:20 Hitler's qualities as a painter

52:19 Degenerate Art and House of German Art

57:25 The sentimental art of the enemy

59:45 The propagandist Nelson Rockefeller

1:02:24 The figurative/kitsch/Hitler connection

1:06:37 Greenberg's essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch

1:11:37 Nazi art: kitsch or bona fide modernism?

1:20:11 Primitive American art as the mother of modernism

1:26:33 Roosevelt & the marriage of USSA and MoMA

1:30:04 The current situation in the art world

1:35:56 The American illustration tradition and escapism

1:38:37 Fergus Ryan: What is "Imaginative realism"?

1:40:37 Fergus Ryan:: What is "emergence" in painting?

1:43:59 Question: Is there a refuge for the human spirit?

This episode featured Michael Pearce & Jan-Ove Tuv and was filmed and edited by Bork Nerdrum.

The centerpiece was a reproduction of Courbets painting of Proudhon and his children.

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Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör Jan-Ove Tuv & Bork S. Nerdrum. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Jan-Ove Tuv & Bork S. Nerdrum och inte av, eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.

The Cave of Apelles

Kitsch, Propaganda and the American Avant-Garde | An Interview with Michael Pearce

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