Velvet Elvises

"But the tacky, flashy, and downright ugly paintings have stayed with the popular imagination—because, according to folklore scholar Eric A. Eliason, we need them to. In his 2011 book “Black Velvet Art,” Eliason suggests that velvet paintings play an important role in Western culture as the anti-art, a fixed concept that people distance themselves from to prove they have good taste. Even though velvet painting references the same sort of pop-culture icons—such as Marilyn Monroe, the Pink Panther, comic panels—as work by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, and Roy Lichtenstein, it lacks the detached self-awareness that allows Pop Art to be deemed gallery worthy.
"'Why is black velvet different than any other medium?' Eliason says. "'Canvas art has some crappy and tacky stuff, too. But the assumption is the minute you put an artwork on velvet, you’ve ghettoized it into this denigrated category that, I think, exists for a purpose. If black velvet didn’t play the role that it has in the late 20th century, something else would’ve emerged to take its place. This snobbery shows the ugly side of the fine-art world and upper middle-class aspirational sensibilities.'"


In light of a new museum just opened in Los Angeles, Lisa Hix at CollectorsWeekly.com depicts the history of painting on black velvet.