Bob ross painting island in the wilderness

Before defining kitsch, it is necessary to take a closer look at Bob Ross’ painting Island in the Wilderness (1993). Ross painted this painting in the first episode of the 29th season of the television show The Joy of Painting. In this show, Ross typically paints landscapes, often with clouds, trees and mountains. In the television show alone, he has painted about 1200 of these landscapes. He shows the viewer that, with some practice and the right techniques, everyone can  paint. He takes small steps and explains what he does so that the viewer could in theory paint along with Ross. One of the techniques he uses, is the ‘wet-on-wet’ technique. He starts off with a background on the canvass - typically a sky with some clouds -, so that the canvass does not have any time to dry before he starts painting over it again (Emmer 66). While painting Island in the Wilderniss, he also uses this technique. He begins by using oil paint and a large brush to make a pink and blue sky and the outset of what later will turn out to be lake later. After that, he adds some vague trees in the background with some mist. He then takes a fan brush to quickly add some pointy trees, making it look very easy. While painting a reflection of the trees in the water, he tells the viewer to try and create an illusion. He makes clear that all he does, is add paint on paint, but by doing it in a certain way with a certain technique, it creates the illusion of a reflection. After adding an island with three big trees, a foreground with three more trees and some bushes, a few small details, and his signature, the painting is done. The result after 25 minutes of painting is a pretty, misty landscape with some trees and a peaceful lake in the centre.

What is kitsch?

To be able to determine whether Ross’s landscape painting Island in the Wilderness is kitsch, we need to define kitsch. The definition that the Cambridge Dictionary delivers us, is the following: ‘art, decorative objects, or design considered by many people to be ugly, without style, or false but enjoyed by other people, often because they are funny (Cambridge Dictionary).’ This definition coincides with the idea of kitsch as something cliché, cheesy and tacky. Going back to the origin of the word kitsch, the Cambridge Dictionary definition does not completely correspond with the original meaning. Kitsch originates in the nineteenth century, during the industrial revolution. The production process became cheaper, offering cheaper products. Art could be reproduced for everyone, making it more accessible for everyone. As a result, the lower classes wanted to buy beautiful things, too. However, they did not have the money to pay the full price of art, so they started buying the cheaper remakes. Those cheap remakes were called kitsch (Tedman 56).

            Nowadays there are a lot of academics that research kitsch, which leads to a lot of different definitions of kitsch. There are art critics such as Clemet Greenberg and Gillo Dorfles that see kitsch as something that tries to imitate high culture in an unsuccessful way. They criticise the unoriginality of kitsch because of its constant repetition (Emmer 54). Art critics like Greenberg and Dorfles are very important thinkers of the Avant-Garde movement. Avant-Garde, being a movement that is all about innovation and experimenting, completely opposes kitsch’s repetitiveness. Emmer states that the basic difference between kitsch and Avant-Garde is that ‘“fine” art has, over and above its primary emotional functions, additional “intellectual” functions, or at the very least stylistic, formal or contextual markers which allow it to more easily perform another, possibly unrelated task as an object of “fine” art (69).’ Kitsch generally lacks the intellectual functions and the stylistic, formal or contextual markers. These oppositions explain the negative approach of Avant-Garde thinkers on kitsch.

            Sociologist Sam Binkley, on the contrary, is an academic who takes a more positive approach towards Kitsch. In his article ‘Kitsch as a Repetitive System: A Problem for the Theory of Taste Hierarchy’, he focusses on the meaning of kitsch as a repetitive system. He does agree with art critics that kitsch repeats itself, but he argues that this is not the only thing that kitsch is. Kitsch is more than that. In his article, Binkley defines kitsch by its main characteristics.

            One of the first characteristics that Binkley touches upon, is the ability of kitsch to re-embed its consumers. He states that nowadays, we live in a society with disembedding institutions: institutions that take individuals out of their ‘protective cocoons’. This society promises creative freedom with which people can develop their own taste expressions. This freedom brings along responsibility and results into shattered world views. Kitsch is able to bring these world views together, because kitsch re-embeds us in our deepest selves. Kitsch focusses on the things that we all universally find beautiful, such as flowers and puppies. Those things do not need an intellectual function or stylistic, formal or contextual markers, they are beautiful as they are. This way, kitsch connects us (Binkley 135).

            Another characteristic of kitsch that Binkley names, is its taste for sentiment. Kitsch is nostalgic and melancholic: ‘Kitsch reduces all the complexity, desperation and paradox of human experience to simple sentiment, replacing the novelty of a revealed deeper meaning with a teary eye and a lump in the throat (145).’ It brings you back to the simple memories and feelings you have. It does not call on deeper intellectual meanings, but on universal things that make all of us happy.

            This connects very well to the last characteristic I want to shed light on: kitsch as anti-elitist. Because of the fact that kitsch does not require intellectualism, it is much more accessible for a broader audience (Binkley 141). In addition to this, kitsch is, as I stated earlier, cheap, and therefore anyone can acquire it.

Kitsch in Island in the Wilderness

Now that we have defined kitsch and analysed its main characteristics, it is possible to apply those to Bob Ross’s Island in the Wilderness.

            It can be stated that Island in the Wilderness does not require any intellect from the spectator. Ross does not want to put any meaning in his paintings, he just wants to show the audience that they can do exactly what he can do. He paints happy clouds and friendly trees, just to create a pretty landscape. A lot of people find his work very pleasant and beautiful (Congdon et al. 41). It shows that his paintings do create a universal beauty effect, it connects people. It is re-embedding: it calls on the feelings that make us feel human. It is the feeling of enjoying a landscape, simply because it is a beautiful landscape. We do not have to worry about complicated deeper meanings, but we can just sit back and enjoy Ross paint a calm island in the wilderness.

            In addition to this, Ross’s paintings are very repetitive. There is not a single episode in The Joy of Painting in which Ross does not paint a landscape painting. All his paintings from the show are more or less the same. He never innovated and he never grew as a painter (Congdon 144).

            The fact that Ross’s paintings do not require any intellect to enjoy them, makes the paintings more accessible to the lower classes, and therefore less elitist. Though, one cannot simply state that his paintings are anti-elitist. His intentions were to make his art accessible for everyone by showing the audience how to make it themselves, but without him meaning to, his paintings have gotten relatively expensive for something that has been labelled kitsch by many. Of course the paintings do not reach the value of a typical artwork, but they do sell for prices that not everyone could afford (Jaworski). If Ross’s paintings are so kitschy, why would they still be relatively expensive? As economist Arjo Klamer states in his book The Value of Culture: ‘people pay nothing for art they do not value (14).’ He argues that the economic value of a painting has a lot to do with the aesthetic value of it. Keeping this in mind, one can say that Ross’s paintings do at least have some aesthetic value, otherwise they would not sell for the prices for which they are sold.

Conclusion

To conclude, ask yourself the following question: would you buy Island in the Wilderness if it were to be put on sale? Would you have faith in the painting to gain value over time? Would you take the risk and buy it for a couple of thousand dollars on eBay to resell it on an auction in about a few decades? Kitsch is contemporary. Some things that used to be extremely kitsch, are vintage nowadays. Perhaps, Ross’s paintings will become true vintage artworks in a few decades. His paintings would remind people of the nostalgic 80s television show, and this way they would gain a new layer of aesthetic value.

            Let me return to my research question: How can Bob Ross’s Island in the Wilderness (1993) be seen as kitsch? Ross’s painting Island in the Wilderness can be seen as kitsch. Although the economic value of the painting is higher than the economic value of ‘usual kitsch’, the painting does correspond to all other characteristics of kitsch. Ross’s Island in the Wilderness is a beautiful painting with happy little clouds and friendly trees, but I would not call it any form of high art. Let it be kitsch in all its glory. Even though the Art World always looks down upon kitsch, I think it is fair to say that kitsch is beautiful on its own, and should not be seen as ‘bad art’, but as a different aesthetic that we can enjoy universally.

Bibliography

Binkley, Sam. ‘Kitsch as a Repetitive System: A Problem for the Theory of Taste Hierarchy.’ Journal of

Material Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, 2000, pp. 131-152.

Cambridge Dictionary. ‘Kitsch’. Cambridge Dictionary, 

dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/kitsch. accessed 27 October 2018.

Congdon, Kristin, and Doug Blandy, and Danny Coeyman. Happy Clouds, Happy Trees: The Bob Ross

Phenomenon. Mississippi UP, 2014.

Emmer, C.E. ‘Kitsch Against Modernity.’ Art Criticism, vol. 13, no. 1, 1998, pp. 53-80.

Jaworski, Michelle. ‘A Happy Little Bob Ross Painting Goes Up on eBay.’ The Daily Dot, October 7 2013,

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