If curiosity killed the cat, Charles Krafft resurrected it, made a slip cast, created a porcelain model and painted it in the blue and white style of Delft earthenware of the Netherlands. You see, while his work is (as he so eloquently describes it) ‘completely non-functional and absurdly decorative’; it is also a tango of curiosity – as dazzling as it is provocative. Krafft takes a very rare and sophisticated strain of humour, cultivates it and then exposes us to it, leaving us amused and dizzy with questions.
At 50-something Krafft says he found his calling young, ‘art interested me early on as a lifestyle’. He continues, ‘I met artists and was impressed with them. So I embarked on the profession of art as one would join a leaderless tribe.’ For almost two decades Krafft lived as a painter in Seattle. While in staggering contrast to his current style, Krafft’s early work revealed insights into what would one day become his legacy.
In the late 80s Krafft became intrigued with the Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovene Art), or NSK. In Mike McGee’s homage to Krafft titled Villa Delirium, McGee describes the NSK as ‘a fourteen-person multi-disciplinary collective’. The epicentre of the group was rock band, Laibach. In 1994 Krafft, who had been on the board of Seattle’s Centre of Contemporary Art (COCA) for almost a decade, brought the NSK to Seattle. Irwin (the painters’ collective of the NSK) exhibited at COCA and Laibach performed to coincide with the show.
In 1995 Krafft arrived in Slovenia on invitation from Laibach. It was here that the idea of the Porcelain War Museum was born. Krafft had previously begun his love affair with ceramics, launching Disasterware in 1992. It featured a range of Delft plates decorated with horrific scenes. The commemorative china propelled Krafft into the spotlight. The works provoked thought – they were infectious, viral even. As Krafft puts it, ‘this diversion into craft changed the course of my career.’
In 1997 Krafft was borrowing weapons from arms traders in Slovenia in order to create his fine china replicas for what would become the Porcelain War Museum. ‘I slip cast everything,’ says Krafft. ‘Which means I work with plaster moulds. A good mould is one of the most important steps in the process from idea to object …’ Once made, Krafft decorated each piece with traditional Delft styling. The result? A humorous yet haunting tribute to the daftness of humanity.
‘The time we live in produces curious and splendid souvenirs of the events we live through.’
‘The time we live in produces curious and splendid souvenirs of the events we live through,’ explains Krafft. It seems logical then that someone should catalogue the often self-inflicted disasters of our time. We should consider ourselves lucky that such a task has fallen with Krafft – it’s thanks to him that we can look back, look inward and look forward without missing the irony.
Without Krafft’s bittersweet satire, his pieces would fall dangerously close to earnest. It seems a shame then that so many stiff lipped aristarchs fail to appreciate jest as an ingenious tool. Krafft agrees, ‘Art with a sense of humour is dismissed by critics and curators’. Instead, Krafft says, ‘they go for superficiality and ambiguity as a kind of canvass to project their “let me save your soul with art” seriousness onto’. Let’s hope a wind of change blows up their skirts.
Given enough thought, it seems natural that Krafft’s fascination with disasters should go hand in hand with a fascination with humanity and our beliefs. ‘Belief systems are the safety nets of societies,’ says Krafft. A 100-proof statement bound to make anyone drunk with questions if given enough thought. Why do we subscribe to a mass ideology? How does a single mindset suddenly become a nation’s? In an interview for Salon.com Krafft declares, ‘I don't have anything to believe in myself, really… And I’m wondering how another person comes into a belief system and becomes utterly convinced – it becomes theirs, it defines their personality, it defines their history as a human being’. Some may feel Krafft’s enquiry into this crevice of human nature Sisyphean – a search that will come to no single discovery. Others will appreciate such a fearless attempt to explain what we cannot.
Krafft’s Forgiveness series is a flawless example of his ability to create works that provoke at every level. The range of beauty products features a swastika logo – the centrepiece, a perfume inspired by a quote from Laibach member Peter Mlakar: ‘Ah, the smell of blood and snow. If I could bottle that scent I’d create a new fragrance for the twenty-first century and call it Forgiveness.’
‘Ah, the smell of blood and snow. If I could bottle that scent I’d create a new fragrance for the twenty-first century and call it Forgiveness.’
Krafft is currently working on a Nazi flea circus, on which he elaborated no further. We can only imagine it to be as ridiculous and imperative as his previous projects.
In his first email to me Krafft signed of with the statement: ‘Peace is a joke, Charlie Krafft.’ I toiled over this sentiment for days – trying desperately to find the hidden autobiography in those unsettling six words. After more emails, hours of research and an interview I’m still at a loss to explain who Charles Krafft is. Perhaps the best way to describe him is with the insightful words of Mike McGee (in his introduction to Villa Delirium): ‘I don’t know anyone more driven by curiosity. And I know of few people with a sense of curiosity as eccentrically cultivated and charmingly twisted as Krafft’s.’
Villa Delirium and a selection of Krafft's work is available from Outre Gallery, visit
www.outregallery.com for Sydney and Melbourne details.