Monday Bitch #9. The Holiday the Art World Pretends Not to See
Christmas art is not the issue. People are. Christmas music and movies get canonised as âclassics,â while visual art gets shoved into the scented-candle aisle like a seasonal clearance item.
Christmas art didnât become kitsch by accident. We abandoned it long enough for retail to claim it.
Say âChristmas songâ and everyone nods. Say âChristmas movieâ and you get rankings. Say âChristmas artâ and suddenly the room smells like cinnamon and a 20 percent discount. The downgrade didnât happen to the holiday, it happened to our standards.
The irony is almost painful. For a thousand years Christmas was serious intellectual labour. Altarpieces, icons, fresco cycles, entire visual languages built around one impossible birth. Then capitalism tied a bow on it and sold it back as wrapping paper.
Dominique Catherina Foertig
The Nativity used to carry empire, poverty, and political tension in a single collapsing building. Now itâs âcosy family moment with optional shepherd cosplay.â Same story, minus the stakes, plus a marketing brief.
And the first Christmas installation wasnât sponsored by Swarovski. It was Saint Francis with real animals and hay, serving early immersive theatre. Fast forward to inflatable yard Santas collapsing like drunk uncles and you see what cheap electricity does to a tradition.
The real twist is how film and music still get range, from sacred works to glitter trash, while visual art gets frozen at âdecor.â Christmas imagery becomes visual Muzak, the background noise of Q4, something you scroll past instead of think about.
DiFranco
Yet beneath the kitsch is a brutal brief: migration, shelter, labour, political dread, hope in scarcity. Basically every press release of contemporary art, except with more donkeys. But call it âChristmasâ and galleries panic theyâll look like concept stores.
So retail handles the visuals, the museum keeps the profound stuff upstairs, and the art world pretends the holiday is beneath it. Cute. Meanwhile the culture that shaped half our canon gets curated by marketing interns.
Maybe the question is not âIs Christmas art kitsch?â but âWhy did we let the gift shop win?â
What Can You Do (Besides Buy The Candle)?
If you are an artist, stop parking Christmas in the âtoo kitschâ bin and use it for what it actually is: a ready-made narrative about labour, exile, power, care, pressure, tenderness, survival. Take the Nativity back from marketing departments and LED reindeer and treat it like a real story, not a seasonal filter.
If you are a gallery, stop being terrified of looking âfestiveâ and start being terrified of looking irrelevant. Put up the show that talks about burnout instead of baubles, about shelter instead of snowflakes. Sincerity ages better than cinnamon.
Dominique Catherina Foertig
If you are a viewer, look twice. Not every star and stable is decor. Some of them are trying to tell you the world is still on fire and someone is being born into the middle of it.
Christmas art is not kitsch by default. It is just unclaimed territory.
If nobody treats it like culture, it becomes decor.
If you reclaim it, it becomes language again.
Now go on, spill your own Monday Bitch.
đ If you believe Christmas imagery deserves more than scented-candle status, say it louder.
Heart lighter.
Monday Bitch. Every Monday.
And yes, spill your own Monday Bitch in the comments.
Author: Dominique Foertig is the founder and editor of Catapult, The New Munchies Art Club, a Vienna-based curatorial and editorial platform for contemporary art.
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