"Kitsch Against Modernity" [article, 1998] (original) (raw)
Related papers
Kitsch and contemporary culture
This paper addresses the question of kitsch by interpreting it as 'bad' art of a particular kind. It draws mainly, but not exclusively, on Karsten Harries's phenomenological exploration of kitsch to provide a framework from which to approach kitsch in contemporary (postmodern) culture. It is shown that, by uncovering attributes of kitsch such as the self-enjoyment of the spectator and lack of reflective distance, Harries provides valuable pointers for assessing what is ultimately the anaesthetizing political function of kitsch in contemporary culture.
Through defining kitsch art, looking at Bourdieu’s Distinction theory, applying McCoy and Scarborough’s (2014) viewing styles, and linking it to Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis, the following essay will elaborate on the role of kitsch art in society and how it is an example of bad taste.
2018
The discourse on kitsch has changed tone. The concept, which in the early 20th century referred more to pretentious pseudo-art than to cute everyday objects, was attacked between the World Wars by theorists of modernity (e.g. Greenberg on Repin). The late 20th century scholars gazed at it with critical curiosity (Eco, Kulka, Calinescu). What we now have is a profound interest in and acceptance of cute mass-produced objects. It has become marginal to use the concept to criticize pseudo-art. Scholars who write about kitsch are no longer against it (Anderson, Olalquiaga). And since the 2000s, art students have been telling us that they “love kitsch”. The contemporary concept is strongly attached to certain colors (pink) and materials (porcelain). In this article I aspire to find some keys on how to view the history and contemporary state of the concept. My hypothesis is that the change in the use of the concept has at least partly to do with changes in the concept of art, which has lat...
There are objects which " break " the norms of the pseudo-products of the culture industry that could be said to be without any spirit. In this respect, the family of the kitsch objects (with a notion of play) and the kind of objects that Lukas (1997) defines as " inconspicuous consumption " become more and more attractive to the metropolitan city-dwellers who experience the " loveless disregard to things (Adorno 1997, 41). " The ways in which the kitsch object could be evaluated as an item of festivity and an arena of subjectivity for the modern individual is the basic discussion. In order to escape the boredom or the routine of everyday life, there should be a break. The kitsch object enables this break to happen through playfulness, resemblance and motion. They open up a space in the boredom of everyday; a space similar to the function of funfair: a mechanical replica of the living things. Everyday, the city dwellers while walking on the street pass through the small funfairs created by the objects of festivity. The atmosphere suggested by those objects, do create a break (paradoxically the break also helps to ensure the routine and enables the cycle to continue), a sense of stopping of time and reference to space, that are resulted by the fascination for the mechanical wisdom and loud theatricality demonstrated by those artifacts. This 'play' notion that kitsch objects offer can be analyzed as part of the emotion-driven design.
The Aesthetic Experiences of Kitsch and Bullshit
Literature and Aesthetics, 2016
In an earlier article (2015) I established parallels between kitsch and Bullshit. Both traffic in snaring the unsophisticated, be it in the form of ‘collectible’ enamelware or self-help books written by pseudo-experts. Both distort the truth through exaggeration, a willful lack of critical activity, or by simply not being serious. In the present article I want to drive the comparison further and examine whether it is possible to be fascinated or attracted by bullshit in the same way in which one can be fascinated by kitsch. Kitsch is boastful, exaggerated and ‘not quite true’; still it can be attractive when it is aesthetically pleasing. Is the same true for bullshit? In order to answer this question, I analyze the relationships that both kitsch and bullshit maintain with pretentiousness, self-deception, cheating, and seduction.
The Trouble with Perfection: Kitsch and its Vicissitudes (M.Phil Thesis)
In this essay, I examine the wrongness of kitsch through the various dimensions surrounding kitsch, namely sentimentality and realism. I argue that the wrongness of kitsch is ethical, rather than aesthetic as kitsch undermines one's ability to related to the wider world in an affirmative manner.