"oblatenart bohnenkopfteller" by the
Austrian art group "kunst/gruppe olga": winning picture of the 2007
"International Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting Contest"
Disumbrationism was a
hoax masquerading as an art movement that was launched in 1924 by
Paul Jordan-Smith, a novelist, Latin scholar, and
authority on Robert Burton
from Los Angeles,
California
.
Annoyed at the cold reception his wife's
realistic still
lifes had received from an art exhibition jury, Jordan-Smith
sought revenge by styling himself as "
Pavel
Jerdanowitch", a variation on his own name, and entering a
blurry, badly painted picture of a
Pacific islander woman brandishing a banana
skin, under the title "Exaltation". He made a suitably dark and
brooding photograph of himself as Jerdanowitch, and submitted the
work to the same group of critics as representative of the new
school, "Disumbrationism." He explained "Exaltation" as a symbol of
"breaking the shackles of womanhood."
[41309] To his dismay, if not to his surprise,
the Disumbrationist daub won praise from the critics who had
belittled his wife's realistic painting.
More Disumbrationist paintings followed: a composition of zig-zag
lines and eyeballs he called "Illumination"; a garish picture of an
African-American doing laundry
which he called "Aspiration", and which a critic praised as "a
delightful jumble of
Gauguin, Pop Hart and
Negro minstrelsy, with
a lot of Jerdanowitch individuality." "Gination" was an ugly,
lopsided
portrait; and a painting named
"Adoration", of a woman worshipping an immense phallic idol, was
exhibited in 1927.
The same year, Jordan-Smith confessed to the
Los Angeles Times that the
Disumbrationist paintings were meant as a
spoof.
Since 2006 there has been held a yearly a painting contest in
memory of Paul Jordan-Smith and the disumbrationist school of arts:
the "International Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting contest". The
winners were Kurt Hinterbichler in 2006, kunst/gruppe olga in 2007
and Olga Krolik in 2008.
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