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Kitsch

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Kitsch is a German term that has been taken over into English that categorizes art that is considered to be of "bad taste"; whether overly mundane, folksy, commercial, or pretentious. Because the word was brought into use as a response to a large amount of art in the 19th century where the aesthetic of art work was confused with a sense of exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama, its most closely associated with art that is sentimental, mawkish, or maudlin; though it can be used to refer to any type of art which is defficient for similar reasons--whether it tries to appear "sentimental", "cool", "glamorous", "theatrical", or even "creative", kitsch is said to be an imitative gesture of the most superficial aspects of art that has already been established. It has often been argued that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of truth and beauty in true art.

History

Though its precise etymology is uncertain, the term 'kitsch' is widely held to have originated in the Munich art markets of the 1860s and 70s, used to describe cheap, hotly marketable pictures or 'sketches' (the English term mispronounced by Germans, or elided with the German verb verkitschen, to 'make cheap'). Another German word its conected to is the verb kitschen, meaning to "to scrape up mud from the street". Kitsch appealed to the crass tastes of the newly moneyed Munich bourgeoisie who, like most nouveau riche, thought they could achieve the status they envied in the traditional class of cultural elites by aping, however clumsily, the most apparent features of their cultural habits.

The word 'kitsch' eventually came to mean "to slap (a work of art) together". Kitsch became defined as an aesthetically impoverished object of shoddy production meant more to identify the consumer with a newly acquired class status than to invoke a genuine aesthetic response. Kitsch was considered aesthetically impoverished and morally dubious, and to have sacrificed aesthetic life to a pantomime of aesthetic life, usually, but not always, in the interest of signaling one's class status.

Avant-Garde and Kitsch

The world became popularized in the 1930s by the theorists Clement Greenberg, Hermann Broch, and Theodor Adorno, who sought to define the relation between the avant garde and kitsch in terms of being opposites. To the art world of the time, kitsch was percieved as a threat. The arguments of all three relied on an implicit definition of kitsch as a type of false consciousness--a Marxist term meaning a mindset present within the structures of Capitalism that is misguided as to its own desires and wants, where there is a disconnect between the real state of affairs and the way they phenomenally appear.

Adorno percieved this in terms of what he called the "culture industry", where the art is controlled and formulated by the needs of the market and given to a passive population which accepts it--what is marketed is art that is non-challenging and formally incoherent, but which serves its purpose of giving the audience leisure and something to watch. It helps serve the oppression of the population by capitalism by distracting them from their alienation. Contrarily, art for Adorno is supposed to be subjective, challenging, and counter the power structure. Adorno said that kitsch is parody of catharsis, a parody of aesthetic consciousness.

Broch called kitsch "the evil within the value-system of art"--that is, if true art is "good", kitsch is the "evil". While art was creative, Broch held that kitsch depended solely on plundering creative art by adopting formulas that seek to imitate it, limiting itself to conventions and demanding a totalitarianism of those recognizable conventions. To him, kitsch was not the same as bad art; it formed a system of its own. He argued that kitsch involved trying to achieve "beauty" instead of "truth" and any attempt to make something beautiful would lead to kitsch.

Clement Greenberg held similar views; believing that the avant garde rose to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society, and seeing them as opposites. He outlined this in his famous essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch. One of his more controversial claims was that kitsch was equivalent to Academic art: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch." He argued this based on the fact that the Academic art of the 19th century, heavily centered in rules and formulations taught in academies and in bourgeois taste, tried to make art into something learnable and easily expressible. He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as many people criticised it. While its true that some Academic art might have been kitsch, not all of it, and not all kitsch is academic.

Many theorists over time have also linked kitsch to totalitarianism. The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), viewed kitsch from a slightly different perspective when he defined it as "the absolute denial of shit." His argument was that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions."

In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast, "everything that infringes on kitsch," including individualism, doubt, and irony, "must be banished for life" in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, "Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch."

An explation of kitsch from this point of view by Kundera is: "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession.The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."

Academic Art

Still, the 19th century Academic art is still often seen in terms of being kitsch, though this view is coming under attack from modern critics. Perhaps its best to resort to the theory of Broch, who argued that the genesis of kitsch was in Romanticism, which wasn't kitsch itself but which opened the door for kitsch taste, by emphasizing the need for expressive and evocative art work. Academic art, which continued this tradition Romanticism, has a twofold reason for its association with kitsch.

It isn't that, even though Academic art sought to express things clearly, it was believed it was accessible--in fact, it was first under its reign there was first recognized to be a difference between "high art" and "low art". The intellectual and aesthetic qualities of the work remained--good examples of Academic art were even admired by the avant garde artists who later rebelled against it. There was some critique, however, that in being "too beautiful" it made art look easy.

Many Academic artists tried to use subjects from "low art" and ennoble them as "high art" by subjecting them to interest in the inherent qualities of form and beauty, it tried to "democratize" the art world. In England, certain academics even advocated that the artist should work for the marketplace. In some sense it suceeded, and the society was flooded with Academic art, the public lining up to see art exhibitions like they go to see movies today. Literacy in art became widespread, and there was a blurring between high and low culture, often leading to poorly made artworks being accepted as high art.

Secondly, the subjects and images presented in Academic art, though original in their first expression were disseminated to the public in the form of prints and postcards--sometimes actively encouraged by the artists--and these images were endlessly copied in kitschified form until they became cliches.

The avant garde reacted to these developments by separating itself from aspects such as pictoral representation and beauty that were appreciated by the public, in order to make a stand for the importance of the aesthetic. Kitsch was considered in many respects art which showed technical talent, such as in creating accurate representations, but lacked good taste in content or aesthetics. Many modern critics try not to pigeonhole Academic art into the 'kitsch' side of the dichotomy, recognizing its historical role in the genesis of both the avant-garde and kitsch equally. The issue is controversial to some.

Postmodernism

With the emergence of Postmodernism in the late 20th century, the borders between kitsch and high art became blurred again, as Postmodernism tried to adopt forms of popular culture through movements such as Pop art. One development was the appreciation for what was called "camp taste". Camp refers to an ironic appreciation of that which might otherwise be considered corny, such as Carmen Miranda with her tutti-frutti hats, or otherwise kitsch, such as popular culture events which are particularly dated or inappropriately serious, such as the low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s and 60s. "Camp" is derived from the French slang term camper, which means "to pose in an exaggerated fashion." Susan Sontag argued that camp was an attraction to the human qualities which expressed themselves in "failed attempts at seriousness", the quality of having a particular and unique style and sensibility present in a particular era, an aesthetic of artifice rather than nature.

Secondly, much of Pop art attempted to incorporate images from popular culture and kitsch; artists were able to maintain artistic legitimacy by saying they were "quoting" imagery to make conceptual points, usually with ironic, non-serious, appropriation of the original imagery. This also elided with the development of Conceptual art and Deconstructionism, which downplayed the formal structure of the art work in favor of more Dionysian elements which intruded in the artwork by relating it to other spheres of life.

There still remains some sense of the dichotomy, however, and this has come under attack by many theorists and artists who argue for a reappreciation of Academic art and traditional figurative painting, unbounded by the need to express something in terms of being "innovative". This is the project of the Norweigian artist Odd Nerdrum, who composed a manifesto entitled On Kitsch, where he makes a political point of declaring himself a Kitsch painter rather than an artist, even though very few critics would actually think of his artwork as kitsch.

Nerdrum has claimed that in his career and the career of many other artists, the art establishment, what he calls the "Curatoriat", imposes values and prevents honest personal expression--he turns around the formulations of Adorno and Kundera by declaring that the avant garde is a form of totalitarianism. He states that while art serves the public, kitsch serves personal expression; art serves politics, while kitsch looses itself in the eternal and is pure sensuality, "naked talent exposing itself". Nerdrum states: "Art exists for art itself and addresses the public. Kitsch serves life and addresses the human being."

He also attacks Postmodernism, because it believes in camp, which is contrary to kitsch in that it doesn't appreciate a sincere, earnest, innocent expression--it appreciates jokes and irony.

Examples

One of the first painters that served as an elucidating example of kitsch is the Hungarian Charles Roka. Despised by the art world and without ever having his name listed in the Encyclopaedia of Norwegian artists, he was never the less loved by the people. He became famous for his numerous variations of the "Gipsy Girl", where he painted exotic looking gypsies in a pin-up style, and also produced sentimental portraits of children with pet dogs. His numerous variations of this Gipsy Girl made his success as a painter, but misfortune as an artist.

A modern example of a painter considered by many to be producing kitsch is the commercially successful American Thomas Kinkade, who brands himself the "Painter of Light™" and says he is "the nation's most collected living artist." Kinkade paints scenes of stone cottages, lighthouses, cobble stone streets, rustic villages, and other "quaint" vistas, with emphasis on the glittery ornamentation in the play of light and natural folliage. His work is meant to be sentimental, patriotic, quaint, spiritual, and inspirational.

Of course, these are only strong, defining examples of what art purists refer to as kitsch--many would say that it saturates all popular culture, and some would equate popular culture and kitsch as being one and the same; as Clement Greenberg remarked, "all that is spurious in the life of our times."

Quotations

  • "Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times." -- Clement Greenberg, "Avant Garde and Kitsch", 1939.
  • "The more romantic a work of art, or a landscape, the quicker its repetitions are perceived as kitsch or "slush". -- Arthur Koestler, 1949
  • "[K]itsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." -- Milan Kundera, 1984
  • "Kitsch is the expression of passion at all levels, and not the servant of truth. It keeps relative to religion and truth... Truth, kitsch leaves for (modern) art. In kitsch skill is the important criteria.... Kitsch serves life and seeks the individual." Odd Nerdrum, "Kitsch - The Difficult Choice", 1998.

References

  • Culture Industry. (2001). Adorno, Theodor, Bernstein, J. M., Routledge. ISBN 0415253802
  • Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. (2003). Broch, Hermann, Counterpoint Press. ISBN 158243168X
  • Art and Culture. (1978). Greenberg, Clement, Beacon Press. ISBN 0807066818
  • Kitsch and Art. (1996). Kulka, Tomas, Pennsylvania State Univ Pr . ISBN 0271015942
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being : A Novel. (1999). Kundera, Milan, Perennial. ISBN 0060932139
  • On Kitsch. (2001). Nerdrum, Odd (Editor), Distributed Art Publishers. ISBN 8248901238
  • The Artificial Kingdom: On the Kitsch Experience. (2002). Olalquiaga, Celeste, Univ of Minnesota Pr. ISBN 081664117X
  • Kitsch in Sync: A Consumer's Guide to Bad Taste. (1994). Ward, Peter, Plexus Publishing. ISBN 0859651525

See also

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