KITSCH AND ITS NEW ROLE IN CONTEMPOARY CULTURE
BAGD CONTEXT UNIT 9 2011
KIRSTEN WILSON 09/488
INTRODUCTION
Whether found in galleries through the work of William Bouguereau (Fig.1.) and Jeff Koons (Fig. 2.), on the high street within Cath Kidston shops (Fig. 3), or being sold souvenirs, kitsch it is all around us. ‘If works of art were judged democratically…that is according to how many people like them…kitsch would easily defeat all its competitors’[1], observed writer Thomas Kulka. Yet despite its status as a source of pleasure for the masses, kitsch is usually considered a negative product. The contemporary definition of kitsch denotes work that is executed to pander to popular demand; created for commercial purpose rather than self-expression. Thereby it is thought that ‘to establish that kitsch is bad…is to establish a truism’[2]. It is ‘to render worthless, to affect with sentimentality and vulgarity’[3]. No matter how we classify it, kitsch always seems to imply the notion of aesthetic inadequacy. By investigating ideas and views about kitsch; drawing on notions of nostalgia and sentimentality; along with comments on society today; this paper will reflect on kitsch in art, print and design. Proving that kitsch has developed over time, providing itself with a new and accepted place in contemporary culture.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Though its etymology is ambiguous, scholars generally agree that the word kitsch entered the German language in the mid-nineteenth century. According to literary critic Matei Calinescu, it was ‘in the 1860s and 1870s in the jargon of painters and art dealers in Munich, and was employed to designate cheap artistic stuff’[4]. Often synonymous with “trash” as a descriptive term, kitsch may derive from the German word kitschen, meaning to collect rubbish from the street[5], or the German verb verkitschen (to make cheap). In Das Buch vom Kitsch (The Book of Kitsch), Hans Reimann defines it as a professional expression born in a painter’s studio, leading to the idea that it derives from a mispronunciation of the English word sketch. Other potential sources include an inversion of the French word chic, a derivation of the Russian keetcheetsya (to be haughty and puffed up), or ver/kitt (putting, pasting etc, something together wrong).
By the early twentieth-century, the term had caught on internationally. Gaining momentum when utilized to describe both objects and a way of life brought about by urbanization and mass-production. As art critic Clement Greenberg stated, its emergence was seen as parallel with that of modernism, claiming that ‘kitsch is a product of the industrial revolution’[6]. People from all social classes could now participate in mass consumption, as objects d’art were widely produced. Many high-minded members of the intelligentsia were distraught; and so the term evolved to disparage this. Factors such as the newly established nouveau riche, decline of aristocracy, and technological progresses were also preconditions. Thus, kitsch possessed aesthetic as well as political implications; informing debates about mass culture and the growing commercialization of society.
Some would argue that we all know what kitsch is (since we use the concept and communicate quite successfully with it). But is this really true? When you press people on this point you catch them either with an unsatisfactory answer, or without one at all. The Oxford English Dictionary defines kitsch in a very general way – ‘ Art or objects d’art characterized by worthless pretentiousness’[7]. Even this may still leave some confused. When art theorists Theodor Adorno, Hermann Broch, and Clement Greenberg popularized the word in the 1930s, kitsch was still seen as a threat to culture by the art world. The arguments of all three relied on the implicit definition of kitsch as a type of false consciousness; a Marxist term meaning a failure to recognize the instruments of one's oppression or exploitation as one's own creation (e.g. members of an oppressed class unwittingly adopting views of the oppressor). Marxists believe there to be a separation between the real state of affairs and the way that they phenomenally appear. In 1939 the Parisian Review. V1.40 commented that ‘kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas…it is vicarious experience and faked sensations…changes according to style, but remains always the same’[8]. Making it ‘the epitome of all that is spurious in life and our times’[9]. Literary critic Matei Calinescu, described it as suggesting ‘repetition, banality, triteness’[10], and by writer Milan Kundera, as ‘the absolute denial of shit’[11]. However, with the emergence of postmodernism in the 1980s, borders between kitsch and high art became blurred, and the term became harder to pin down.
WHAT IS KITSCH?
For the purposes of this investigation it will serve better to create a visual idea of kitsch from the off set. As Thomas Kulka writes, ‘the term kitsch was originally applied exclusively to paintings’ and their replicas. For example the work of artist Ilya Repin (Fig. 4.), and The Widow (Fig. 5.) - a kitsch example of late nineteenth-century lithograph copies of the humorous painting by Frederick Dielman. Since then, the primary meaning has been gradually extended, and the term is more or less freely used throughout the arts, as well as outside of it. We now see it attached to literature, music and architecture. There was much agreement about ‘Dostoyevsky’s Sonya in Crime and Punishment as a kitsch figure’[12]. Hermann Broch refers to composer Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as ‘kitsch of genius’[13]. In particular his ‘1812 Overture, and the use of canons in it…you can’t say that’s a failure. The cannons are an integral part to the conception of the work, and yet I think we’d want to call it kitsch in some sense’[14]. Then there are the Beverly Hills nouveau riche villas that imitate the style of classical Greece, and the way in which ‘many nineteenth-century neoclassicist buildings, including those in the Empire style…border on kitsch’[15].
Kitsch can be particular to a time and place, or universally applicable. Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post magazine covers (Fig. 6.) epitomize American World War II-era kitsch, whereas global kitsch can be found in souvenir replicas of famous tourist landmarks the world over. Indisputable examples of high art can be transformed into kitsch by following Callinescu’s directive that ‘determining whether an object is kitsch always involves considerations of purpose and context’[16]. Thus, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande (1884) is not kitsch, but scarves sold at the Art Institute of Chicago decorated with the painting’s reproduction are (Fig. 7.).
Then consider the different types of kitsch. American superkitsch: where in the 1930s the symbolic figure of Uncle Sam is made three-dimensional and encases a clock (Fig. 8.). Florida kitsch: with flamingos being replicated into lawn ornaments, candlesticks and compact mirrors, dating back to the 1940s. German kitsch: in particular the cuckoo clock (1740), which was then adapted by the Swiss to create the “Chalet” style (along with the common projecting bird they also display other types of animated figures: woodcutters, moving beer drinkers and turning water wheels). English kitsch: which plays highly on quintessential British ideals and can be seen today in the merchandise at Cath Kidston. Religious kitsch: where religious iconography is collected by those who are not religious themselves, but still desire a miniature statue of The Virgin Mary, covered in glitter and doubling as a money box. Household kitsch: for example Lefton’s porcelain cat bookends (Fig. 9.) from the 1950s.
AESTHETIC AND ARTISTIC APPEAL
It was the apparent lack of aesthetic/artistic appeal within certain genres of art that caused Munich art dealers to first conceive the term. Kitsch is often viewed as works that ‘make claim to an artistic status to which they are not entitled’[17]. It appealed to the tastes of the newly moneyed Munich bourgeoisie, who thought they could achieve the status they envied in the traditional class of cultural elites, by adopting features of their cultural habits. The Industrial Revolution made this possible by allowing art to be mass-produced affordably and with ease. The elitist kept out the rising classes by following the rules set out by Kulka. These stated that ‘almost all contemporary aestheticians seem to identify the appreciation and evaluation of works of art with the evaluation of their aesthetic merit’[18]; they should be analysed in terms of ‘unity, complexity, and intensity’[19]. Kitsch became defined as an aesthetically impoverished object of shoddy production; made to identify the consumer with a newly acquired class status, rather than invoke a genuine aesthetic response.
Philosopher of art, Monroe C. Beardsley, lists reasons that bear upon the degree of unity as: ‘is well organised (or disorganised)…is formally perfect (or imperfect)…has (or lacks) an inner logic of structure and style’[20]. However, such deficiencies are not typical of kitsch. Look again at William Bouguereau’s A Childhood Idyll (1900) (Fig. 1.), it does not display stylistic inconsistencies, glaring compositional faults, or unpleasant colour configurations. As for complexity, admittedly many kitsch pictures strike us as one-dimensional. Still, low-complexity in this sense is not a distinguishing feature of kitsch. For any degree we find here, we could easily find in well-respected works of. Think, for example of the paintings of, Warhol (Fig. 10.), Mondrian (Fig. 11.), or those of the minimalist school. We are then left with the third rule – intensity. Even though ‘kitsch may fall short of the intensity displayed by Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907), it certainly does not lack intensity all together’[21] (Fig. 12). Most kitsch pictures are vivid and forceful. It can be argued that as kitsch is extensively used in advertising, and surely intensity (the strength of the impact of the image) is what advertising is about, these images must be impactful. Meaning that lack of intensity and aesthetic value, by itself, does not suffice to disqualify kitsch.
Then there is its artistic worth. ‘The artistic value of a work of art can be conceived of as reflecting the public, or more specifically, the artworld significance of the innovation exemplified by the work, and the inherent potential of this innovation for subsequent artistic/aesthetic exploitation’[22]. For example, look again at Demoiselles - although aesthetically not very refined, it already exemplified the main principles of the emerging style of cubism. Thus giving it the potential for further development and aesthetic exploration. As stated by art historian John Golding: ‘it is incontestable that the painting marks a turning point in the career of Picasso and, moreover, the beginning of a new phase in the history of art’[23]. Although it can be argued that there are no notable kitsch paintings that have managed to achieve this status, it needs to be pointed out that, a) kitsch is now attached to other forms of art, and b) how art has developed up until the present. Jeff Koons was described as both the ‘contemporary king of kitsch’[24], and ‘one of the most sought-after and expensive of contemporary artists’[25], within the same review of his show at the Palace of Versailles in 2008 (Fig. 13). If we evaluate the artistic merit of works by their significance within the artworld, Koons’ kitsch sculptures are destined to be integral to art history, thereby validating their artistic value. Therefore, the prevailing conception of aesthetic value judgements and art evaluation cannot account for the supposed worthlessness of kitsch.
THE RELATIVE NATURE OF KITSCH
Let us look at the subjectivist version of relativism, which interprets aesthetic judgements as expressions of personal preferences. According to this view, ‘kitsch (like beauty, or ugliness) is in the eyes of the beholder and cannot be defined’[26]. What is or is not kitsch is determined by individual likes and dislikes, and the aesthetic worth of kitsch is ‘semantically built into the very meaning of the concept’[27]. However, I do not fully agree with such an extreme stance; the very existence of the concept argues against it. Kitsch can be described as a normative concept, with Kulka explaining the term by ‘analogy to phenomena that do not conform to the currently accepted social norm’[28]. It is also a classificatory term, and therefore presupposes a certain constancy of use. For example: if ‘x is kitsch’ means merely ‘I dislike x’, then statements like ‘I like kitsch’, which can perfectly be understood, would have to be regarded as self-contradictory. Another reason for not solely relying on this view is that people who use the term kitsch usually agree about its model examples. Kitsch thus cannot be in the eyes of the beholder; it can only be in the eyes of the beholders. As writer Milan Kundera explains it, ‘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’[29].
Also bear in mind how different social groups have different preferences. In varying historical contexts, different objects were valued or disvalued. In this sense kitsch is a relative concept, being better explained in relation or proportion to something else. It can be better defined by sociohistorical or anthropological contexts, rather than “intrinsic” structural properties. To understand kitsch requires a contextual analysis of psychological, sociological, historical, and anthropological factors as well as an aesthetic one. The extreme relativist claims that, ‘since kitsch (like art) is a culture and context dependent concept, it cannot be defined by any inherent structural properties, and that its alleged aesthetic worthlessness reduces to (ethnocentric, historical, or elitist) prejudice’[30]. Further maintaining that ‘values (especially aesthetic values) are relative, unjustifiable, and ultimately reducible to sociohistorical preferences’[31]. Although this is not the definitive diagnosis of kitsch, it is valuable as it widens our sensibilities and questions some of our narrow-minded sensibilities.
SOCIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL ASPECTS
Authors who focus on the sociological and sociocultural aspects of the kitsch phenomenon emphasize that ‘the proper conditions for both consumption and production of kitsch did not exist prior to the modern era’[32]. Writer Alesksa Celebonovic reinforces this theory: ‘from the moment when man invented machines for the industrial reproduction of various types of objects, a gap was formed between man’s sensitivity to material and his actual moulding of it’[33]. This made way for kitsch. Reproduction of art was available, regardless of knowledge of “good art” or not. Kitsch could ‘impose itself on the uneducated and ingenuous who have not yet chosen their cultural requirements’[34]. It is ‘as inevitable as plastic flowers or fast-food restaurants; this is what you get in mass culture’[35]. An advantage of this view is that as we cannot precisely specify its connotation; allowing kitsch to be an open concept.
When put in relative terms with contemporary culture today, ‘it is not difficult to realise that kitsch, technologically as well as aesthetically, is one of the most typical products of modernity’[36]. Kitsch is a symbol of progress. In a note for his unfinished play Kitsch (1917), German dramatist and poet Frank Wedekind remarked that ‘kitsch is the contemporary form of the Gothic, Rococo, Baroque.’[37] When considering that its birth was in response to the Industrial Revolution, kitsch is the embodiment of the modern zeitgeist. It is because of these changes that kitsch could be produced. According to Celebonovic, ‘the enjoyment of kitsch objects is a secondary reflection of this phenomenon’[38].
In this way it need not mean the fall of Western civilization through cultural self-abasement. In the fifties in America, people wanted change. The bleakness of the war years created a hunger for variety and experimentation. Many people could now afford non-essential items, and art began to evolve from elements of mass popular culture, so a new industry of kitschdom arose. Similarly, in 1922 Herman Staudinger, a chemistry professor in Zurich, Switzerland, made an impactful discovery related to the makeup of plastic polymers. In 1953, scientists acknowledged his groundbreaking research by awarding him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Ironically, it was this work that had laid the foundations for all the pink flamingos and garden gnomes of the world. In this way the ‘presence of kitsch in countries of the “Second” or “Third” world can be interpreted as an unmistakeable sign of “modernization”[39] - making kitsch a symbol of economic and cultural progress within contemporary culture.
EMOTIONAL CHARGE OF KITSCH
There is one aspect that is agreed upon throughout my research – its emotional worth. Art critic Gillo Dorfles, commented that the ‘artistic operation makes up for lack of creative force by stimulating the imagination through particular ingredients – erotic, political, religious, sentimental’.[40] Building on this notion, Kulka expresses his idea that kitsch is ‘totally parasitic on the emotional charge of its subject matter’[41]; and Calinescu suggests that the appeal of kitsch is then the ‘open-ended indeterminacy, its vague hallucinatory power, its spurious dreaminess, its promise of the easy “catharsis”.’[42] In other words, people are attracted to kitsch because of its subject matter. It elicits a ready, positive, unreflective, emotional response. Consider again Milan Kundera’s quote about the two tears; there is something not only comforting in the feeling itself, but in the knowledge that you are not alone in having this reaction. It is an example of the collective consciousness of the human condition; giving kitsch a sense of community.
This may be one appeal of kitsch (or one of the reasons why it is used in such derogatory terms), but there is more behind these ‘stock’ emotions than purely the fleeting feeling they induce. At the same time kitsch can be ‘the product of a larger sensibility of loss’[43]; enabling the momentary recreation of feelings and experiences that now only exist within the memories and fantasies of the individual. With its ‘half dream and half reality, all memory and desire’[44] formula, which draws upon both sentimentality and nostalgia, kitsch has the elements to provide a break from reality. Allowing us a split second where ‘the world is as we would like it to be, not as it is’.[45] Kitsch is the modern day flight from the present, with one foot in the past and one foot in the future.
Even if one does not consider kitsch to be high art or an accepted term, chances are that you are still sometimes touched by it. To the onlooker we may appear repulsed by kitsch, whilst secretly being guilty of revelling in its appeal. ‘None of us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely,’ says Milan Kundera. ‘No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition’[46]. His words are echoed by Eugene Goodheart who says: ‘There must be something in all of us that wants kitsch, that needs kitsch…it is an appetite which everybody shares.’[47].
SENTIMENTALITY OF KITSCH
Sentiments have become a term of harsh abuse in both aesthetics and philosophy, ‘by the end of the century, “sentimentalist” was clearly a term of ridicule and abuse, connoting superficiality, saccharine sweetness, and the manipulation of mawkish emotion’[48]. Moral sentiment theory was all but dead: the “woman’s novels” were disregarded by the male literary establishment as “sentimental trash”; the French academics were dismissed as “kitsch”; and the ‘status of “sentimentality” went into a steep decline as sentiment lost its status in moral philosophy.’[49] This fate occurred during the exact period of history where kitsch became such an object of loathing. Kitsch (in dealing with feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia) became its artistic equivalent. Artists in Paris who had been praised only a century before as the “geniuses” of Official Art, ‘became figures of loathing and ridicule in retrospect’[50].
With realism being the current art movement in the mid nineteenth-century, romanticism and the sentiments became frowned upon. The realistic portrayal of a society was strived for. ‘Sentimentality and kitsch reveal not only woefully inadequate aesthetic sense but a deep moral flaw in character.’[51] However, arguments against sentimentality are not just that it is “bad taste”; in the same way the arguments against kitsch are not just that it is “bad art”. What underlies the aforementioned objections instead, is a deep yet undeserved suspicion of emotions. There seems to be a guilt that comes with these sentiments, never spoken of but continuously there. You might not be able to stop yourself from experiencing them, but you can certainly not let on when you have. In his essay entitled, What is wrong with Sentimentality? Mark Jefferson begins his discussion, ‘it is generally agreed that there is something unwholesome about sentimentality’[52], and later concludes that sentimentality is ‘an emotional malaise, a form of self-indulgence properly associated with brutality’[53]. Sentiments regarding nostalgia can be seen in this way. They reflect on the past and what once was, thus going against what realism stood for.
Jefferson argues that ‘sentimentality involves attachment to a distorted series of beliefs,’ in particular ‘the fiction of innocence.’[54] But one should not condemn such representations, especially those that are so closely linked to childhood innocence and the comfort of nostalgia. Although such sentiments can distract the audience from reality (and therefore “acceptable” rational thought), all emotions are “distorting” in the sense intended. In anger one looks only at the offense and fails to take account of the good humor of the antagonist; in love one celebrates the virtues and not the vices of the beloved. Innocence and cuteness cannot be condemned, when all forms of enthusiasm or emotions have the potential to “distort” some particular focus and concern. One of the reasons why kitsch and sentimentality are rejected is not for reasons concerning art or ethics, but instead the rejection of emotions themselves.
NOSTALGIA AND KITSCH
Kitsch has adopted (and plays with) the complex phenomenon concerning the myth of the ideal childhood innocence, and the heritage industry. In the same way as kitsch, nostalgia and the heritage industry are described as: ‘an invention of the upper and middle classes, produced in the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of a series of factors: the rise of the bourgeois nuclear family…anxieties about the decline of Britain as an economic and imperial power, and the dislocations of the post-war urbanization, redevelopment and social change’[55]. With increasing constraints placed on children, and the changing work cultures in advanced capitalist societies, nostalgia is a way of deflecting or eluding difficult social and political issues by the use of reassuring narratives. ‘Nostalgic pathos individualizes and sentimentalizes the complexities of social, political and cultural struggle’[56]. The innocent child in nostalgic imagery and kitsch is invoked to ‘provide us with the answers we need to guarantee a certain knowledge of ourselves’[57]. If we do not know what a child is, how can we utilize the clarity of childhood to soothe any anxieties we have about our psychic and social being in the world?
When heritage interconnects with affective meaning and memory, the coherence of narrative gives way to disjointed feelings of mourning, imagination and desire. Raphael Samuel refers to it as: ‘memory’s shadows – those sleeping images which spring to life unbidden and serve as ghostly sentinels of our thought’[58]. Modern notions of childhood are bound up with unsettling feelings of loss and nostalgia; the figure of the child is used to express the state of private being within the adult self. Nostalgia plays on the feelings of lack and absence, allowing the combination to inflict the most banal objects of everyday life with affective meaning. Progressing the function of the object from purely decorative to comforting for the individual; similar to the way in which a child becomes attached to one particular toy or comfort blanket. Svetlana Boym reiterates this idea by making a distinction between two different types of nostalgia. Firstly, ‘restorative nostalgia, which emphasizes nostos (home) and recreates the past as a ‘value for the present’[59], attempting a type of erasure of history through a return to pre-lapsarian tradition or “truth”. And secondly, reflective nostalgia, which stresses algia (longing) and does not attempt to search for a perfect completeness in the past, but ‘lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, the dreams of another place and another time’[60].
It is easy to critique such phenomena as evidence that childhood has become increasingly harnessed to political debates about the future of the country’s economy; especially in an era of intense global competition. In a lecture on 16th November 2010 Matthew Taylor brought up the point that: ‘Unless we become more conscious of ourselves and start changing our ways, we are in danger of becoming the first generation whose future has the potential to be worse than our parents.' Our futures are more uncertain than ever. In an attempt to combat this, childhood is being ended too soon. Elkind argues that ‘childhood as a stage of life free of adult cares, responsibilities and knowledge was being destroyed by over-zealous education policies and power parenting’[61]. From a different perspective, Stephen Kline’s Out of the Garden (1993), and Shirley Steinberg and Joe Kincheloe’s edited collection Kinderculture (1997), both examine the sophisticated marketing strategies through which children today are becoming socialized into multinational capitalism. However, arguments about the end of childhood often ignore the ways in which new technologies, government policies and economic changes, compete and interact with other social forces, contexts and residual meanings. As pointed out by Fred Pfeil, the main characteristic of the professional managerial class is an ‘internal set of norms, values and attitudes towards work’[62]. Work culture has become not only a focus for career advancement, but also for interpersonal relationships and gaining a sense of oneself. Considering that we are in an era of geographical mobility, job flexibility, multi-tasking and just-in-time deadlines, it is not surprising that childhood is idealized - ‘with the rationalization and bureaucratization of everyday life the past…becomes a theatre in which adventures of personal action can still be played out.’[63] The nostalgia felt towards childhood feeds directly into real anxieties about the effects of the recent economic and social change. To be aware of the importance of nostalgia as a form of false consciousness, we need to recognize it as a sentiment that resonates with out own deepest longings. Like kitsch, nostalgia is used as a modern day flight from the present.
KITSCH IN CONTEMPORARY ART
Within contemporary art there is one particular artist who embodies kitsch, sentimentality and nostalgia – Jeff Koons. Take his Banality collection as an example; at a glance you could dismiss the sculptures Winter Bears (1988) (Fig. 14.), Stacked (1988) (Fig. 15.) and String of Puppies (1988) (Fig. 16.) as extremely gaudy and hopelessly sentimental. Yet Koons took the idea of banality and used it to confront the art world with its own elitism. Using notions of kitsch and sentimentality, he attempted to remove the guilt and shame people feel towards such imagery. Commenting that ‘this kind of dislocated imagery is what motivates people, they’re amused by it, but they have a lot of guilt and shame that they respond to it’[64]. He felt that ‘there was something if not dignified, at least too easily disregarded, about this kind of imagery and sentiment’[65]. Banality was about connecting things that really help keep us alive; as well as society in relation to what art is. As Kundera showed previously, we are all human, we are all motivated by similar things, and we all have similar desires and fears; yet ‘honesty is what people find shocking in life’[66]. Koons’ work may be too much of a paradigm for life for some; it causes them to confront the attraction they have towards such imagery and objects (whether outwardly embracing it or not). However, by accepting this we relieve the anxiety of having the initial attraction, allowing us to use it for distraction and inducing “stock emotions”. Kundera writes: ‘as soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie that it is, it becomes as touching as any other human weakness’[67]. Considering the current state of society, surely we should be encouraged to embrace this. Now, more than ever, this comfort from the present is necessary.
Koons uses appropriation to make something familiar and ordinary into something magical. One could argue that Warhol was using the same technique within his work (Fig. 17). However, modernism (Warhol) is about boldly making a statement that no one has made before; post-modernism (Koons) is about creating a pastiche out of what already exists. Koons rejects all originality, a factor that is key to his work. ‘It’s really all about placing that sort of image in some form of context and to see how that image, or that object, is really connected to our social and cultural history’[68]. However, by doing so Koons has been sued several times for copyright infringement over his use of pre-existing images. In Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a judgement against him for his use of a photograph of puppies as the basis for the sculpture, String of Puppies. This could serve to discredit Koons as an artist. Causing Mark Stevens, of The New Republic, to dismiss him as a ‘decadent artist who lacks the imaginative will to do more than trivialise and italicise his themes and the tradition in which he works…he is another of those who serve the tacky rich’[69]. Consider the rules stated previously for artistic value; by being sued it has proved his lack of originality, thus taking away the works artistic worth. However, as post-modernism is about creating a pastiche, lawsuits are therefore inevitable if this is to be done. Plus, it can also be argued that Koons has done something new in doing this, and in turn has influenced artists such as Damien Hurst (Fig. 18.), thus validating the artistic value of his work by the same set of rules that can be used to discredit him.
KITSCH IN CONTEMPOARY ILLUSTRATION
It is not only Koons that has embraced kitsch, sentimentality and nostalgia in contemporary art. Illustrators such as Magda Archer and Rob Ryan have also adopted styles and subjects that resonate with it.
Inspired by her vast collection of paraphernalia from the 1950s onwards, Magda Archer’s playful yet dark paintings straddle a surreal-pop kitsch sensibility. Archer’s work clearly echoes the myth of the ideal childhood and the nostalgia for it. Her paintings Champ (2009) (Fig. 19), Good Times (2009) (Fig. 20), and I Wanna Live Forever (2008) (Fig. 21), all share the innocent child as their focus; while still maintaining an element of loss, predominantly for the brief period in which her characters had these idyllic moments. In I Wanna Live Forever (2008), the use of text heightens this emphasis. Not only is it a comment all children will most likely say at some point, it also works as a phrase for childhood itself. The child wants to remain a child forever, dodging the troubles it knows it will have to face. As an adult viewing it, you are reminded of the childhood you once had and have since lost.
Crazy Mad (2011), Archer’s exhibition at the Cornerhouse gallery in Manchester echoed ‘a kleptomaniac searching for escapism from the mundane landscape of domesticity through the act of painting and collecting’[70]. At the same time it also demonstrated that ‘adults, though discard their childhoods, remain able to escape to their carefree youth via the medium of seemingly insignificant items’[71]. This reaffirms the aforementioned ideas of a kitsch/nostalgia wave that is becoming an accepted method of escapism.
Rob Ryan’s papercuts such as I Miss Being A Small Girl (2011) (Fig. 22), and screenprints like I Can’t Forget (blue) (2009) (Fig. 23), heavily play on nostalgia and sentimentality. For Ryan, it is his romanticism and use of the sentiments that have been key to his success. With a wife and two children, it might be presumed that his work is autobiographical. However, ‘every piece isn't all about her or me; they're just stories. The words I come up with are just words, not poetry. Some of it's happy, some of it's sad, some of it's mysterious’[72]. There is something about his work which has captured the public imagination. As well as commissions, the commercial work – book jackets, illustrations for Vogue, textile designs – is flooding in. ‘I think my work has become easier to digest’ he says in an interview for The Guardian, ‘I could do a painting that could be heart-wrenching, throwing my guts on the gallery wall, and it would just hang there. And then I could do a papercut, a little flowery thing, saying the same thing, with the same imagery, and people can swallow it’[73]. Proving that if done it the right way, work pertaining to the kitsch/sentimental/nostalgic sensibility, is now consumed and accepted for these reasons.
KITSCH IN CONTEMPORARY DESIGN
Historians describe how ‘the close relationship between graphic design, the conditions that surround it and the need to communicate leave it best placed to express the zeitgeist of an era’[74]. This leaves Graphic Design as an ideal platform for these themes. In the same way that kitsch can be described as a response to the Industrial Revolution, the revival of past styles within Design can be understood as both an ‘affirmation of the new technologies that could produce them’[75] and a ‘reaction to the rapidity of change which such technologies brought about’[76].
As previously mentioned, the context most frequently used in discussions of appropriation is Postmodernism. While modernism was a result of a production-oriented worldview, postmodernism focuses on the consumer, calling on the individual to play an active role in the deconstruction of the message. The emergence of this phase in design generated much debate; mirroring the response to the rise of the heritage industry and use of nostalgia. One of the principal arguments against revivalism has been that ‘much work is at worst a stultifying and parasitic plagiarism, and at best a pastiche, both suggesting a death of real creativity and firmly identifying our own era as the ‘age of plunder’ (SAVAGE, 1999)’[77]. Critics also argue that ‘ultimately designers are seen to participate in the creation of an apparently hollow or depthless image that often simply appeals to an escapist search for nostalgia as a pancreas for modern-day ills.’[78] This desire then, to capture a “look” of nostalgia, must be fuelled by a sense of dissatisfaction for the present.
Take the Rocombe ice-cream packaging as an example (Fig. 24). Reach was approached to create ‘an identity that reflected both the luxurious nature of the product as well as that of the target market’[79]. The design focus was Rocombe’s ‘quintessential Britishness as purveyors of fine organic ice cream’[80]. The concept was to dress up each ice cream flavour in an appropriate corresponding outfit to reflect its personality. With classic British designs being the focal point, we see the familiar Scotch Guard’s red jacket adorning ‘Strawberries & Cream’, and ‘Hazelnut & Praline’ being dressed in a traditional tweed jacket. Another example is the Absolut Vodka campaign, ‘Absolut Kitsch’ (Fig. 25.). Classic “kitsch” imagery, similar to that used by Koons, has allowed the bottle to not only become a clever advertising campaign, but a nostalgic kitsch artefact in its own right. Interestingly, one of the main areas in which historicist styles are used is in fact in the promotion of food and drink. Where strategies that appeal to childhood memory, the pursuit of comfort and domestic ideal abound. Our consumption of an old-style packaging allows us to feel that we are living an alternative everyday life, if only momentarily.
KITSCH IN PRINT
Print has been playing on the kitsch/nostalgia hybrid for years as well. One of the most well-known and commercially successful examples of this is Cath Kidston (Fig. 26.). Having started off with a single shop in 1993 selling vintage fabrics, wallpapers and brightly-painted junk furniture, Cath Kidston’s signature prints have now become a cult success. ‘Inspired by fond memories from her childhood’[81], the witty re-working of the traditional English country house style has led the brand to become one of the most influential design companies to emerge from the UK in recent years. This success then led to Cath Kidston being awarded an MBE for her services to business in February 2010 as part of the Queen’s New Year Honours List. Proving that there is a thriving market for commodities with this nostalgic feel.
We can see similar inspirations within fashion. The crochet print used by Paul Smith AW10 (Fig. 27.) and House of Holland AW11 (Fig. 28.) are reminiscent of the throws typically found at a grandparent’s house. Whereas Christopher Kane AW11 (Fig. 29.) induces flashbacks of the gel filled purses that were the “it” accessory of 90s childhood. Holly Folton SS12 (Fig. 30.) with her kitsch style mini dresses took inspiration from ‘the idea of a woman who blows her vacation budget on clothes, and so instead of heading to Saint-Tropez, goes to the tacky English resort town of Margate’[82]. Folton’s outlook is surprisingly similar to that of Koons, by taking what is normally taken as cringe-worthy and making it chic. As style.com put it, items from this collection ‘could put the right finishing touch of bad taste on an otherwise impeccable outfit’[83]; a surprisingly perfect way of describing kitsch itself.
KITSCH ON A PERSONAL LEVEL
My flat in London can quite embarrassingly verge on a shrine to all things kitsch; ranging from World War Two flag bunting to glittery pink figures of fawns. Ironically, I am writing this paragraph in Cath Kidston pyjamas, drinking coffee from a Union Jack mug, while directly opposite an almost museum like display of kitsch and nostalgic paraphernalia. Self-deprecating information aside, there are actual reasons behind this; l want my home to be as comfortable as possible. The amalgamation of kitsch/nostalgic items encapsulates the childhood I spent growing up on a farm; where it appeared that nothing bad could touch you. It has become similar to a child’s safety blanket, providing me with a comforting and reassuring bubble to enter into.
But the particular way in which I do this has a deeper subconscious meaning, rather than purely recreating my family home. Unlike my parents I have no certainty about what will happen once I leave University. There is no guarantee of a job or financial security. These developments can be connected to the previously discussed debates about the disappearance of childhood. I fully admit to the fact that I am deliberately surrounding myself with objects, and imagery, that instantly induce the stock emotions and pastoral recollections previously talked about - and I am not ashamed to state that. Why would I want to represent the state of society today in my home? If I did, I would not want to spend anytime there. It is also as if I am protecting the childhood ideal. Realistically, I know that it is becoming ever more impossible to have such an innocent upbringing and I do not want it to be ruined. By preserving it through nostalgic and sentimental imagery and objects, I am guaranteeing its existence in my life, without the risk of tainting it with reality.
CONCLUSION
Having previously disputed negative comments towards kitsch, it is worth pointing that out one should not disregard all its bad connotations in the past. Without such objection it would not have become the force that it is today, and would have remained in the Victorian era that it was conceived in. Although the discussed definitions of kitsch can still apply today (due to its relative nature), bear in mind how it is also an analogy to phenomena that do not conform to the currently accepted social norm (similar to how kissing in public was once regarded as improper, as was smoking for women and divorce). Society has grown to embrace it, allowing kitsch to become a sui generis phenomenon; meaning that is has formed its own category antithetical to art that is the only example of its kind. This can no longer be easily defined as “bad art”. ‘It forms its own closed system, which is lodged like a foreign body in the overall systems of art, or which, if you prefer, appears alongside it’[84]. Considering the dramatic changes we have seen within the visual arts over the last 60 years, it is now riskier than ever to try and claim that kitsch can be characterized by a definitive set of structural boundaries. Starting with Dadaism, through to the current work of contemporary artist Jeff Koons, much of contemporary art has been questioning its own boundaries. In 1958 the Observer Magazine picked up on this: ‘What is so extraordinary about some of these kitsch masterpieces is the way they can be enjoyed on two planes, both as themselves and as their own parodies’[85]. According to director John Waters, ‘in order to acquire bad taste one must first have very good taste’. Here we see attitudes towards kitsch changing, no longer is it purely dismissed as “bad art”, its relative nature is becoming known and its potential unlocked.
It appears that the use of kitsch within art is now accepted. If, like Koons, art is questioning boundaries, then the previous comments describing kitsch as ‘something with the external characteristics of art, but which is in fact a falsification of art’[86] can be disregarded. So if kitsch is posited as a style and a taste, with sociological analysis telling us that taste is socially determined, then it has to be acknowledged that there is something very elusive about kitsch that defies definition. People do not want to constantly be aware of reality. By combining with sentimentality and nostalgia, kitsch has been able to create a force that can be used deliberately. It now has a new role in contemporary culture as a comfort for the state of society.
Today kitsch has been reinstated as amusing, curious and ridiculous. In fact, the very awfulness of kitsch is what is appealing. Think of it as an object, work of art, movie, television show, etc. that holds a particular sentimentality. In this way kitsch can vary between people; it is that lunch box you had when you were a child. Yes, it can be described as a love of all things tacky, witty, artistic, brash or tasteless, but there is another side to it. It is also a victory, however inadvertent or however well or dubiously earned, of form over function. Which leaves the question: what does the future hold for kitsch? With its acceptance rising and malleable nature, we need to seriously consider the possibility of kitsch not only being contemporary culture’s comfort and sui generis, but also its new art movement. After all, if kitsch is not a pleasure, why bother?
[1] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 17.
[3] Ibid.
[4] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 234.
[5] GIESZ, L. in CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 234.
[6] GREENBERG, C. (1971) Art and Culture: Critical Essays. United Kingdom: Beacon Press.
[7] www.oed.com
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 226.
[12] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 94.
[14] STEINER, D. Quoted in DORFLES, G. (1969) Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste. London: Studio Vista Limited.
[15] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 105.
[16] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 257.
[18] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 51.
[20] BEARDSLEY, M. (1958) Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Brace and World. p.p. 462.
[21] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 50.
[22] Ibid, p.p.55.
[23] GOLDING, J. (1959) Cubism. London: Faber and Faber, p.p. 48.
[24] Ibid.
[25] LICHFIELD, J. (2008) Koons exhibition: Let them see kitsch. The Independent, 10th September.
[26] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 2.
[28] Ibid, p.p.5.
[30] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 4.
[31] Ibid.
[33] CELEBONOVIC, A. (1969) Notes on Tradition Kitsch. In: DORFLES, G. Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste. London: Studio Vista Limited. p.p. 280.
[34] Ibid.
[35] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 5.
[36] Ibid.
[37] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 225.
[38] CELEBONOVIC, A. (1969) Notes on Tradition Kitsch. In: DORFLES, G. Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste. London: Studio Vista Limited. p.p. 281.
[39] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 226.
[41] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 41.
[42] CALINESCU, M. (1977) Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. 2nd ed. United States of America: Duke University Press, p.p. 228.
[43] OLALQUIAGA, C. (1999) The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
[44] Ibid.
[47] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 22.
[48] SOLOMON, R.C. (1991) On Kitsch and Sentimentality. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 49:1, pp. 2.
[49] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 22.
[50] Ibid.
[51] Ibid, pp. 3.
[53] Quoted in SOLOMON, R.C. (1991) On Kitsch and Sentimentality. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 49:1, pp. 3.
[55] MORAN, J. (2002) Childhood and Nostalgia in Contemporary Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 5, pp. 157.
[56] JAMESON, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso, pp. 156.
[57] ROSE, J. (1994) The Case of Peter Pan: Or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction. Basingstoke: Macmillan, pp. 17.
[58] SAMUEL, R. (1994) Theatres of Memory, Vol. 1, Past and Present in Contemporary Culture. London: Verso, pp. 27.
[59] SVETLANA, B. (2001) The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, pp. 49.
[60] SVETLANA, B. (2001) The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, pp. 41.
[61] ELKIND, D (2001) The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon. 3rd ed. United States of America: Da Capo Press.
[62] Quote in MORAN, J. (2002) Childhood and Nostalgia in Contemporary Culture. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 5, pp. 169.
[63] WRIGHT, P. (1985) On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain. London: Verso, pp. 22.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Ibid.
[67] Quoted in KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 107.
[68] The Jeff Koons Show (2004), Film. Directed by Alison Chernick. USA: Microcinema.
[70] www.cornerhouse.org
[71] http://snore-fest.blogspot.com/2011/08/art-review-magda-archer.html
[72] QURESHI, J. (2010) Rob Ryan: the artist spreading a little love around our homes. The Guardian. 19 October.
[73] HOGG, C. D. (2011) Designer Rob Ryan: Cut it out! The Independent. 12 November.
[76] Ibid.
[77] As Quoted DERMODY, B. (2010) New Retro: Classic Graphics, Today's Design. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 12.
[78] SPARKE, P. (1991) Design in Context. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
[79] DERMODY, B. (2010) New Retro: Classic Graphics, Today's Design. London: Thames & Hudson. pp. 121.
[80] Ibid.
[81] www.cathkidston.co.uk
[82] www.style.com
[83] Ibid.
[84] KULKA, T. (1996) Kitsch and Art. United States of America: The Pennsylvania State University, p.p. 43.
[85] www.oed.com
