A kitsch too far: the return of the Green Lady

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Q. The return of that Green Lady Surely not

A. Yes, she's back. Vladimir Tretchikoff's Green Lady, J.H. Lynch's Tina (hugging a tree trunk she stares provocatively from the picture, lips slightly parted, bare-shouldered - remember that one ), Sir David Shepherd's elephants (the one from Del-Boy's living-room in Only Fools and Horses), wanna-be erotic, pseudo-surrealist nonsense such as Stephen Pearson's Wings of Love and endless cute, improbably wide-eyed children (usually in rags and accompanied by a small, hairy dog) are all officially to be culturally rehabilitated by inclusion in an exhibition at a well-regarded municipal art gallery.

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Q. Where's the exhibition and what's it about

A. Entitled 'Pert Pets-Sultry Sirens', the exhibition is on at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford. The exhibition features fifty popular prints from the 1950s-1970s, assembled from private collections, car-boot sales and junk shops. After the Second World War shops such as Woolworths sold millions of these colourful and sentimental or 'exotic' prints. They were affordable and livened up the homes of a population fed up with austerity, becoming a common 'feature' in ordinary homes around the country. Remember Hilda Ogden's 'murial' in Coronation Street That was an extreme version of this kind of thing.

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Q. But, there is no way this could be worthy of an exhibition, is there

A. The Victorians were great admirers of sentimental subject matter. It might, perhaps controversially, be suggested that the likes of Sir Edwin Landseer's The Monarch of the Glen or Sir John Millais's Bubbles (another small, hairy dog) and My first Sermon and My Second Sermon (cute red-haired girl wide awake in the first and nodding off in the second) were the ancestors of these 'easy viewing' prints. These and other genre pieces of the time were reproduced in magazines, which people then cut out and framed. So, there is a long and honourable tradition of mass-produced sentimental images being used as decoration around the home.

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Q. Is the exhibition all part of a more general retro malaise

A. Maybe, though it could simply be a non-ironic exhibition of recent popular cultural history. While the technical proficiency of some of the artists is not in question, the subject matter was aimed unashamedly at a mass audience, who would not necessarily normally be art-aware, but liked a catchy image. It would be too easy to be snobbish about this, as they did give pleasure to an enormous number of people. However, they came to be seen as less than classy and an embarrassment by most so they ended up in the bin.

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Given the current trend, any enthusiasm expressed is likely to be done in a spirit of retro. Wayne Hemingway - fashion designer and pundit on all those top-ten-of-everything-70s shows - is a collector, and others of a mid-30s to mid-40s age group may well feel some kind of umbilical connection to such items. However, as this generation ceases to have quite so much influence over the scheduling of TV programmes and other cultural forums, popular art of whatever branch from that period may be subjected to a more detached assessment.

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Q. What about Jeff Koons's Michael Jackson and Bubbles

A. It's not quite the same thing, but the sculptor Jeff Koons's - creator of many kitsch pieces and husband of Italian porn star and MP La Cicciolina - has taken tacky art to new heights. Commentators are divided as to whether his work - which includes a sculpture of the Pink Panther that sold for �1 million - is a wry comment on the state of modern throw-away culture or just tat. His piece called Michael Jackson and Bubbles recently sold for �4 million. Featuring the much-remodelled pop star with his pet chimpanzee, painted in cream and gold, one of the first copies produced was bought by Charles Saatchi in the late 1980s for �175,000, but since then the price of Koons's work has rocketed.

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'Pert Pets-Sultry Sirens' runs at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery until 19 August 2001. Find the gallery at http://www.bradford.gov.uk/tourism/museums/cart.htm

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By Simon Smith