The Indispensable Import of the Cute and the Creepy

Accomplished artist and art professor Carrie Ann Baade has gone and done something quite extraordinary.  Through her work as Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Florida State University she has opened some peculiar doors, connecting worlds that never would have otherwise collided. Much to the delight of those artists whose works fit under the umbrella of the “Cute and Creepy,” Carrie has chosen to champion this under-represented genre and bring it to the Florida State Museum. The museum’s mission is to “enrich the community by exhibiting works of art which expand the understanding of art today.” This fits perfectly into Carrie’s plans to share what she considers to be the most delightful and unconventional art of our time with the Southeast.  This exhibition represents an exhaustive effort on her part to showcase a small selection of Pop Surreal artists, whose work is particularly known for its grotesque elements: a dissonance of simultaneous attraction and revulsion.

Carrie is acting as ambassador between this aesthetic, the contemporary grotesque, and the academic environment to garner a greater acknowledgment and understanding of what this genre has to offer our culture at large.  The grotesque elements contained within the artworks she has chosen make strong statements about our times, seeking to enlighten viewers to a higher self-awareness and cultural consciousness.

Dr. Nancy Hightower, Instructor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who has written for the exhibition catalog the essay, Revelatory Monsters, described to me how the grotesque works in any age:

SAMANTHA LEVIN:  What lured you into studying and teaching about the grotesque?

NANCY HIGHTOWER:  I actually discovered the theory by accident as I was reading scholarly articles about the short fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Franz Kafka. The term “grotesque” intrigued me, so I started researching more scholars who had written about it—Wolfgang Kayser, Philip Thomson, Geoffrey Galt Harpham—as well as authors such as O’Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. But it was reading Modern Art and the Grotesque that made me realize it wasn’t literary theory at first—but a theory derived from art. That fascinated me and opened up a whole new world of the fantastic and strange to me, starting with artists such as Goya, Dix, Bosch, Brueghel, etc. and expanding into contemporary art. What I admire very much about the theory is that it has to play by certain “rules”—i.e. just because something is strange and weird, it’s not necessarily grotesque, not in the sense that I teach it. The grotesque is an operation, a form of persuasion that artists and writers use to create a paradigm shift in the viewer. And to me, this shift must always move in the direction of redemption, i.e. in making us a kinder, more loving world. I never teach shocking stories or art merely to shock, for that, to me, would be cruel and insensitive. But I will introduce people to the shocking if it allows them to see what they have deemed “Other” in a new light. Most people think of grotesque as being something pejorative or strange or bizarre.  This is certainly the more pervasive definition of the grotesque, yet it is limiting.  The grotesque has always existed in the underside of culture; it is always taboo.  As culture changes, so the grotesque.

SL:  How is the art in Cute & Creepy most important to today’s society?

NH:  I first began researching for the catalogue essay by going to every artist’s website and looking over the artist statements. From the beginning, I was so impressed with how much passion and compassion they each have for a world that has so much oppression in it. The artists in this show care, very deeply, about our society—about the abuse against children, how the mentally ill are disappeared, about how industry and mechanization is overtaking nature, or how we keep trying to make death invisible. Their art questions these issues by keeping us in an emotionally and intellectually ambiguous state. The cute and the creepy do not override one another, nor do they fit, so there is a wonderful dissonance, an underlying terror to even the most humorous aspect of these pieces. That liminal state experienced by the viewer allows a unique rhetorical space where a paradigm shift might occur regarding these issues.

Carrie’s own artwork has largely been categorized as Pop Surreal and neo-grotesque, thus she has firsthand knowledge of the senseless barriers her peers are up against.  That said, she has perceived a shift-taking place where art previously erroneously relegated as overly kitsch and sentimental or shallowly nostalgic is slowly being acknowledged.  She looks forward to the day when artists such as Kris Kuksi or Ray Caesar will be shown at the Met.

SAMANTHA LEVIN:  What inspired you to curate this exhibit of art that juxtaposes elements of sticky sweet with gloomy grotesque?

CARRIE ANN BAADE:  My tastes and interests have always been the strange and unusual, but what drives one to spend four years of their life making an exhibit like this a reality is the desire to support the artists who have come to make up my community. Ten years ago I was in graduate school when I first saw Judith Schaechter’s stained glass at the Whitney Biennial. It was the first time I had seen such a graphically dark sense of humor paired with exquisite craftsmanship. Six years ago the Pop Surrealism genre developed and artists such as Kris Kuksi, Richard Kirk, and Travis Louie were showing with me in New York and Berlin. Becoming fast friends and fans of these fellow artists, I wanted to promote those who paired skill with unique vision.  While there is work that is far darker, it is the playfulness that makes these works endearing. For example, Jessica Joslin’s delightfully retrofitted, articulated animal sculptures, or Kate Clarks disarmingly beautiful diorama of animals with quixotic human faces makes one want to collect this seemingly endless supply of freakish pets. With the recent publicly celebrated exhibitions of Tim Burton at MOMA and Edward Gorey at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, now is the time to revel in the genre of the macabre.  It’s my desire to seduce new art lovers with this enchanting contemporary art that is so easy to adore.

SL:  Has the museum ever seen a show like this?  What have their reactions been?

CAB:  This work is unique to the region. While pop surrealism is ubiquitous in LA, this is something the Southeast is thirsting for. I am aware of people who will be traveling from cities up to five hours away to see this exhibit. Our museum has been wonderful to work with.  It would appear they are as excited as I am, and the catalog has already begun to sell which makes everyone happy. Magazines are contacting us from as far away as Europe who want to feature the exhibition, but more importantly, this exhibit will be residing in a university setting. It is my intention to elevate the work by showing it in a college environment so that the academics get a first-hand look at what art people are craving.  Largely this genre has been ignored by the greater art world and dismissed as part of popular culture. It’s exhilarating to watch people be thrilled by art that is accessible to them. No longer do people need to feel like they didn’t have the right classes in college to understand the work. This exhibit offers a freedom and permission to enjoy art that has been denied people for far too long.

Cute & Creepy will be on view at the October 13th through November 20st, 2011 at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts located at the Fine Arts Building, FSU Campus in Tallahassee, FL .

For more details, visit the exhibition website or the Museum of Fine Arts at Florida State University.

Images from top to bottom -

Top: Ventriloquist – Heidi Taillefer

Middle: Puppet Pathos – Greg Simkins

Bottom: Leviathan – Marion Peck