Commotion. A widely recognised and self-proclaimed always attacked opinion leader with a slight preference for strong men in Russia and America has discovered that art is leftist and elitist. Wierd Duk, Russia expert since he spent a few years running around Moscow for various media outlets, writes in the Telegraph namely that art is often left-wing kitsch[ref]N[ref][/ref]Wierd Duk has since let it be known that that is not his opinion, but that he gave a summary quote of Kirac's views. Whether he did so with approval, in the sense that he agrees glowingly with the pair, I could not verify, as the conversation was taken over by several dozen followers of Mr Duk, who were not interested in further clarification. But it was a potentially interesting debate about quotes with or without source citations, single or double quotes and whatnot.[/ref]
Now something like this is usually cause for much anger and rage and 'you see' shouts on social media. Possibly an item on a late-night talk show yearning for new content might follow. I even thought: let me once again kick into the framing and shout that art is not left-wing at all. But it doesn't have to be. Turns out. Because Wierd actually thinks that's nonsense himself.
Rietveld
The cause is a riot at the Rietveld Academy, which is already a few months old. Two disruptive vloggers, who started out as amusing, had gone too far with a film about an exhibition in the Stedelijk, according to people at the Netherlands' most famous art academy. This in turn led to a rather embarrassing 'debate' at the same Rietveld. In it, the two self-appointed critics eventually lost on points. Because they are better at playing the camera, they did win the prize of their own audience. Including Wierd Duk, although he needed more than two months to write a piece about it.
Of course, it's also because it's a retarded film. Like most of KIRAC's films, by the way, but that in itself is not a bad thing. Fifteen minutes of contrarian or otherwise whining about the incomprehensible language regularly found around art is fun as an idea, but nothing more. For fans, who probably don't see all the videos to the end, the attack on the usually rather incomprehensible and deliberately veiled language surrounding art is enough.
Subsidy comes from the right
I also regularly walk through museums, hesitating between a roar of laughter at the texts, or weeping with sadness at so much fatuousness. But there is nothing ideological about that.
It is not about left or right. Art, especially museum art, has bitterly little to do with it. Museums are subsidised, and that has been approved since the war by governments in which only an occasional left-wing minority party participated. For the rest, it was all VVD and CDA. Still. Nothing leftist about it.
The world in which the people of KIRAC engage is that of big money. The world in which a worthless rag can be turned into gold by a smart buying policy of a big art dealer. Language is quite important there, exclusivity too, and so then the people who have a million to spare for a nice canvas over the couch are screwed. Or not, because they will resell the same work with just as many empty words for even more millions.
None of this has anything to do with the left.
'Often'
But so Wierd Duk knows that too. That is why he does not say, as we have come to expect from him, that art is 'always' left-wing kitsch (as Mark Rutte and Halbe Zijlstra still did in 2010) but: 'often'.
How should we enter galleries and museums now? Knowing that what we see there is 'often' left-wing kitsch? But what if your right-wing ego makes you angry about something that you think is left-wing kitsch, when it isn't left-wing kitsch at all, but right-of-centre kitsch? Look, Wierd: with that word 'often' you are actually playing right into the confusion that those people from KIRAC are fighting against.
When is something left-wing kitsch? And when right-wing kitsch? And when is it left-wing top art, and when right-wing? With that simple word 'often', Wierd Duk takes another stab at the work of those French intellectuals who, according to him, have been preaching culinary Marxism since 1968. Although that also turned out to be mostly something with creepy arthropods to have had to deal with.
What now, Wierd?
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
