A particular topic came up during my final crit in last semester at university that really interested me. While discussing my work on soft toys someone mentioned that sentimentality is sort of a bad thing when it comes to art. What do you think? Personally I like work that has sentimentality in it.
I did some research and quite a few artist who did have sentimental art have been heavily criticized by art critics in the past. For example,
Norman Rockwell, a 20th century American painter/illustrator. Rockwell's work was sort of idealistic and sentimental which weren't taken seriously by "serious" art critics who said it was "overly sweet". Even now many contemporary artist usually describes his work to be
bourgeois and
kitch and don't really see him as a "real" painter. Rockwell himself actually preferred to be referred to as an "illustrator" rather than a "painter". Russian-American novelist
Vladimir Nabokov (writer of the well known novel
Lolita) even jests that "Rockwell's brilliant technique was to put "banal" use". In his book
Prin he said "
that Dali is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnapped by Gypsies in babyhood".
In later years with his work on racism is when Rockwell started gaining attention, especially in this work:
"The Problem We All Live In"
This work which is about the racial integration in American schools back then.
In 1999,
The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl said of Rockwell in Art News "
Rockwell is terrific. It's become too tedious to pretend he isnt". He mentions in the article that Rockwell's sentimentality is what has been preventing him from being viewed as an artist but he goes on to say that "his ruling sentiments are far from trivial". Rockwell is a good example of how sentimentality is not well received (at least at first) by critics and other artist alike.
Another artist who has an element of sentimentality in his work is
Felix González-Torres, though unlike Rockwell, his work has been well received by almost everyone. Torres was a Cuban artist that grew up in Puerte Rico and moved to New York. He was a minimalist that like to work with lightbulbs, clocks, paper, candles and candy. He did a lot of reflective work on things that affected his life a lot like death and
AIDS. His works that had a sense of sentimentality in them include his work with candy. He places a "carpet" of candy in a gallery space where people are allowed to take from. As time goes on the candy would become less and less.
This work was a reflection on death and was made (if I remember correctly) after his mother died.
There are two more works of Torres that I quite like because of the sentimentality in them, the first one is
Perfect Lovers
which was simply two store bought clocks which were both set to the exact same time. This work, I think was about homosexual relationship (Torres was a homosexual). I really like this work because it is a very subtle and beautiful expression of love between the same sex.
Another of his work which I love is
Untitled 1991
This is a billboard of a monochrome photograph of the unoccupied bed. This was made after the death of his lover Ross' to AIDS. In one interview he said "when people ask me, 'who is your public?' I say honestly, without skipping a beat, 'Ross'. The public was Ross, the rest of the people just come to the work".
Looking at these works and these artist, I really can't see why sentimentality can be viewed as bad art by people. Though I did read an essay by Nada Gatalo, from the University of Southhampton. In this essay called
The Problem with Sentimental Art, Gatalo discusses and heavily critiques why sentimental art is bad. He mentions that "sentimentality has no aesthetic aspects and is just an ambiguous concept which is just an emotional deposition". He goes on to say that "sentimentality idealizes object for the sake of emotional gratification which is inherently corrupt because it is grounded in epistemic and moral error".
I can understand what he basically means, saying that sentimentality is not an aesthetic aspect in art work but art is not just about aesthetics, it is also about concepts (unless you think like
Deleuze who basically thinks that concept in art is just a figure created by composition of percepts and affects). If we look at Torres' work, half of the strength in his work is in the sentimental ideas behind it, which I guess does make Gatalo right about how sentimentality idealizes objects and makes it give a sort of emotional gratification. But what is wrong with that? Nothing in my opinion. So to Gatalo, just because sentimentality can not be just by aesthetics, it can be judged by the concept which if we are discussing art, aesthetics and concepts are very important.
So what I am saying is that I personally think that sentimental art is a good thing, not saying that all art should be but the ones that are have nothing wrong with them. What's your opinion? Feel free to leave a comment.
Menos de tres <3
¡Hasta luego!
Leon
