One of my favorite paintings is Thomas Gainsborough's
Blue Boy, painted around 1770. The painting is generally thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy merchant. Gainsborough was a member of the British Royal Academy. This painting is a great example of academic kitsch. Buttall, a teenager when the portrait was painted, is dressed in 17th century costume - the kind of clothes you'd see someone in an Anthony Van Dyck painting wearing. Van Dyck, painting in the previous century, was known for his portraits of nobles. In fact, the Buttall's pose is similar to the pose of Charles II in a portrait by Van Dyck.
There has also been speculation that Gainsborough painted
Blue Boy as a retort to fellow Royal Academician Joshua Reynolds. The legend goes that they were in dispute as to whether blue was an appropriate color to use in the center of a painting.
A couple years ago, I scored one of my favorite things to hang on my wall at a thrift store in Orlando. It was a paint-by-number version of
Blue Boy that I bought for $2. I still remember that day fairly well. Brian was driving Matt, Charles and I around to what seemed like every thrift store in the city limits - no small feat in the sprawl of Orlando. It took all afternoon and into the evening. I recall being stuck in rush hour traffic and moaning and groaning.
It's currently languishing at my parent's house. I couldn't get it to Chicago on the cheap so it's staying there for now.
The picture always hung over my bed. I thought it gave my bedroom a funny sleazy bent.
Today I received an email from Thom with this picture from his cell phone attached:
It's a ceramic Blue Boy on sale at Thriftko in Orlando. It's not the same thrift store where I got my paint by number Blue Boy, but one of the thrifts I frequented most often when I lived there.
About three weeks before Thom emailed me the picture from his cell phone, Matt had sent me an email with a picture of the same statuette:
They had both seen the Blue Boy in my room enough times to know that I would love and want the ceramic figure. One of them should be buying it for me by proxy one of these days, so don't go out and snag it!
What all three Blue Boys have in common is that they are kitsch. Gainsborough's is middlebrow, academic kitsch and the ersatz thrift store versions are lowbrow, consumer kitsch.
Living in Orlando means being surrounded by kitsch. It's often so dense, that it can become hard to tell whether you are receiving things ironically - and thus camping them - or whether you're really immersed and indulging in a pure and direct way. Never have I seen a greater collection of people versed in the aesthetics of kitsch as in Orlando.
So far, I have met very few people in Chicago who are true lovers of kitsch. My own love for kitsch, and kitsch appreciation must be expressed in terms of love, sometimes seems more like an embarrassing liability - or at least something that needs explaining.
The emails were nice little transmissions from back home. Irreverent junk recharges my batteries!
That's the three of us with the gargantuan sculpture of Einstein. I think we went to something like 8 or 9 museums.
I think this picture was taken somewhere along the Ring of Kerry in Southwest Ireland. Although it was only 5 years ago, that trip feels eons away.
