Le Miserabilist
Bernard Buffet's art career was a portent of the artistically vacuous Pop Art of the 60s, and after. The cheap, off-set printing imagery of American Pop Art was a commentary on American bad taste. For Buffet, bad taste was a calling. The prototype of the Pop artist-as-celebrity was a predictable extension of post-World War Modernism, and not any mere celebrity, but Superstar celebrity.
With Modernism, the artist's personality is inseparable from his art. With Bernard Buffet, fame went beyond art. Picasso, by contrast, was famous because of his art. Somehow, Buffet became famous despite his art. Some cynic said you can't underestimate the public's bad taste. Buffet is proof.
Bernard Buffet was an art box office sensation. As criteria, that's neither an artistic matter, nor is it a personal matter. It is a matter of publicity, a matter of the vicissitude of public approval. Numbers have nothing, essentially, to do with art. The public made Buffet the phenomenon he was by acclaim. He was one of them, a demagogue.
I find his personal circumstances quite interesting, such as are a matter of public record. It's a hard choice to omit mention of the scandalous particulars, much less defer analysis of its imprint on his aesthetic, but they are ultimately irrelevant. Buffet was little affected by scathing criticism, artistic or personal, and persisted at his distinct style long after the critics gave up.
Not all of his work is to my liking, of course, but does anyone find nothing to like by Buffet? I refuse to believe that, which is why I feel obliged to defend my liking for Bernard Buffet. Be honest. Buffet gives certain viewers a frisson, which is hard to put one's finger on, perhaps because it is an aspect of his personal life, after all. The objective problem is he does not fit comfortably into any artistic style, genre, or movement, because he defined a novel style, that of Kitsch.
I hope to define Kitsch art in greater detail, generally speaking, separately. For now, I find Buffet an obstacle to my own artistic progress, one which must be confronted. To call it Kitsch and summarily drop the whole matter is not the answer. In addition to his prodigious popularity, he had an extensive influence over a generation of painters who were not as confident, critically, as we are more than half of a century later. Why is Buffet's style still an issue?
I grew up in an artistic environment steeped in an opulent material culture which included progressive painting as a matter of course. I was introduced to the Beatnik movement as a child, accompanying father and mother to the annual Chicago Old Town Art Fair. I looked forward to it. The smell of wet oil paint is my youngest impression of art. That, and the substantive observation of a similar style in many, different artists, all of which led back to Buffet.
When I look at a Buffet, I try to see past his obnoxious subjects, to enjoy, instead, his self-assured technique. Buffet's style spawned countless imitators, "knock-offs," as their production is known to the trade. Imitation is the highest compliment. A bit less strident subject, and his style makes an excellent choice for decorating hotel rooms, pleasant to look at, if not so precious as to become an insurance liability.
And so the popular momentum of the Buffet trend propagated itself. I notice a tendency to paint like Buffet, and his imitators, myself. The main difference is my subject. My subject is true to the social consciousness of post-World War II art and culture--as Buffet's art is not. The critical intelligentsia during his best years was not impressed by his politics. They read anguish but couldn't place just who was the victim.
The public was impressed by his razor-sharp line, acerbic colors, and jagged signature, which the public took as testament to the anguished uncertainty of post-war Western civilization. His meaning was accessible, unlike the tortuous abstraction of contemporary artists, expressive, that is, of their own, personal, existential despair. Had Buffet dispensed with the figure, as did the many, more progressive artists at the time, he might well have achieved critical success -but at the cost of broad popularity.
Today, the many progressive abstract artists of that bygone era have been forgotten, or are still cherished secretly in private collections. The public responded, the art world reacted, and now only a few, dedicated curmudgeons of outsider art still look at Bernard Buffet in wonder. Buffet had his day. He still speaks to the few, those who have not, themselves, given-up in despair.
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403