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{{short description|Art or other objects that appeal to popular rather than high art tastes}}
{{Otheruses1|the art term}}
{{italic title}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}}
{{About|the art term}}
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]'' painting by ], is a common example of modern kitsch.]]
] (2010) is a self-aware display of kitsch, specifically as a combination of opulence and cuteness.]]


'''''Kitsch''''' ({{IPAc-en|k|ɪ|tʃ}} {{Respell|KICH}}; ] from German){{efn|Despite being a direct borrowing from modern German, kitsch is most often left uncapitalized and without ] (cf. ], '']''). Pronunciation may also be colloquially realized as {{IPAc-en|k|ɪ|ʃ}} {{Respell|KISH}}.}}<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kitsch|title=Definition of KITSCH|website=www.merriam-webster.com}}</ref> is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as ] imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal ].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|author-link=Theodor W. Adorno|author-link2=Max Horkheimer|date=2002|title=Dialectic of Enlightenment - Philosophical Fragments|url=http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~randall/Readings%20W2/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theodor_W_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_Philosophical_Fragments.pdf|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170614021407/http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~randall/Readings%20W2/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theodor_W_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_Philosophical_Fragments.pdf|archive-date=14 June 2017|access-date=22 October 2021|website=Wayback Machine Internet Archive}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|last=Dutton|first=Denis|title=Kitsch|date=2003|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t046768|work=Oxford Art Online|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t046768|access-date=2021-10-22}}</ref>
] and other ]s often are considered kitsch]]


The modern ] traditionally opposed kitsch for its ] tendencies, its superficial relationship with the ] and its naturalistic standards of ]. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, ] products that lacked the conceptual depth of ]. However, since the emergence of ] in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly ], humorous or ] manners.
'''Kitsch''' ({{IPA|/kɪtʃ/}}) is a ] word denoting ] that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The word was absorbed directly into ] with the same meaning. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as ]s <ref>http://www.artsconnected.org/artsnetmn/identity/idvocab.html</ref> while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal. ''Kitsch'' also refers to the types of art that like-wise, are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative), and making creative gestures that merely imitate the superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae. Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.


To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still ], though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and ] manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the '']'' paintings.
The term is considered derogatory, denoting works executed to pander to popular demand alone and purely for commercial purposes rather than works created as self-expression by an artist.<ref>http://netdwellers.com/1001/hosting/users/AT/IslandArts/paTerms%20and%20materials.html</ref> The term generally, is reserved for unsubstantial and gaudy works that are calculated to have popular appeal and are considered pretentious and shallow rather than genuine artistic efforts. <ref>http://www.cgsmusic.net/Classical%20Guitar%20Sheet%20Music%20Dictionary/Classical%20Guitar%20Dictionary%20K.htm</ref>


Along with visual art, the quality of kitsch can be used to describe works of ], ] or any other creative medium. Kitsch relates to ], as they both incorporate irony and extravagance.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Scruton|first1=Roger|author-link1=Roger Scruton|date=21 February 2014|title=A fine line between art and kitsch|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/02/21/a-fine-line-between-art-and-kitsch/#7fbd667e3679|website=Forbes|access-date=16 January 2017}}</ref>
''Kitsch'' was applied to artwork that was a response to the ] art, whose ] convey exaggerated ] and ], hence, ''kitsch art'' is closely associated with ''sentimental art''.

Contemporaneously, ''kitsch'' also (loosely) denotes art that is aesthetically pretentious to the degree of being in ], as well as, applying to industrially-produced art-items that are considered trite and crass.

==Etymology==
The ] is uncertain, but, as a descriptive term, ''kitsch'' originated in the art markets of ] in the 1860s and the 1870s, describing cheap, popular, and marketable pictures and sketches <ref>Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity. Kitsch, pg 234.</ref> In ''Das Buch vom Kitsch'' (''The Book of Kitsch''), Hans Reimann defines it as a professional expression “born in a painter's studio”. Analogously, the writer Edward Koelwel rejects that ''kitsch'' derives from the English word ''sketch'', noting how the sketch was not then in vogue, and argues that kitsch art pictures were well-executed, finished paintings rather than sketchy drawings.


==History== ==History==
{{Expand section|date=January 2019}}
===Early uses of the term===
] ] and milk jug set, themed after an old ]]]
Kitsch appealed to the crass tastes of the newly moneyed ] ], who allegedly 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.
]
] in Poland, as an example of kitsch in sacred architecture]]
As a descriptive term, ''kitsch'' originated in the art markets of ], Germany in the 1860s and the 1870s, describing cheap, popular, and marketable pictures and sketches.<ref>Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity. Kitsch, p.&nbsp;234.</ref> In ''Das Buch vom Kitsch'' (''The Book of Kitsch''), published in 1936, ] defined it as a professional expression "born in a painter's studio".


The study of kitsch was done almost exclusively in Germany until the 1970s, with ] being an important scholar in the field.<ref name="menninghaus">{{cite book |last=Menninghaus |first=Winfried |title=Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity |publisher=re.press |year=2009 |isbn=9780980544091 |editor=Andrew Benjamin and Charles Rice |pages=39–58 |chapter=On the Vital Significance of 'Kitsch': Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'Bad Taste' |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UFx1D_BC5tsC&pg=PA40}}</ref>
Kitsch became defined as an aesthetically impoverished object of shoddy production, meant more to identify the ] with a newly acquired class status than to invoke a genuine aesthetic response. In this sense, the word eventually came to mean "a slapping together" (of a work of art).


Kitsch is regarded as a modern phenomenon, coinciding with social changes in recent centuries such as the ], ], mass production, modern materials and media such as ]s, ] and ], the rise of the ] and ]{{emdash}}all of which have factored into a perception of oversaturation of art produced for the popular taste.
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.


==Analysis==
===Relationship to aesthetics debated===


===Kitsch in art theory and aesthetics===
There is a philosophical background to kitsch criticism, however, which is largely ignored. A notable exception to the lack of such debate is Gabrielle Thuller, who points to how kitsch criticism is based on ]'s philosophy of aesthetics.
] writer ] argues that the essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics—it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good.<ref>{{cite book|last=Broch|first=Hermann|title=Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. Six Essays by Hermann Broch| year=2002| publisher=Counterpoint| isbn=9781582431680|chapter=Evil in the Value System of Art|pages=13–40}}</ref> According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch, unlike art, is a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer. According to critic Winfried Menninghaus, Benjamin's stance was that kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation".<ref name="menninghaus"/> In a short essay from 1927, Benjamin observed that an artist who engages in kitschy reproductions of things and ideas from a bygone age deserved to be called a "furnished man"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walter Benjamin: Dream Kitsch (trans. Edward Viesel) - - |url=https://www.edwardviesel.eu/0056.html |access-date=2022-12-20 |website=www.edwardviesel.eu}}</ref> (in the way that someone rents a "]" where everything is already supplied).


Kitsch is less about the thing observed than about the observer.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Eaglestone|first1=Robert|title=The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature|date=25 May 2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0191084201|page=155}}</ref> According to ], "Kitsch is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious."<ref name=Scruton>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30439633|title=A Point of View: The strangely enduring power of kitsch|work=BBC News|date=12 December 2014}}</ref>
]
Kant describes the direct appeal to the senses as "barbaric". Thuller's point is supported by Mark A. Cheetham, who points out that kitsch "is his ]'s barbarism". A source book on texts critical of kitsch underlines this by including excerpts from the writings of Kant and Schiller.


Tomáš Kulka, in ''Kitsch and Art'', starts from two basic facts that kitsch "has an undeniable mass-appeal" and "considered (by the art-educated elite) bad", and then proposes three essential conditions:
One, thus, has to keep in mind two things:
# Kitsch depicts a beautiful or highly emotionally charged subject;
a) Kant's enormous influence on the concept of "]" (the focus of Cheetham's book), as it came into being in the mid to late ], and
# The depicted subject is instantly and effortlessly identifiable;
b) how "sentimentality" or "]", which are the defining traits of kitsch, do not find room within Kant's "aesthetical indifference".
# Kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations related to the depicted subject.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Kitsch and art|last=Tomas|first=Kulka|publisher=Pennsylvania State Univ. Press|year=1996|isbn=978-0271015941|oclc=837730812}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last=Higgins | first=Kathleen Marie | last2=Kulka | first2=Tomas | title=Kitsch and Art | journal=The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism | publisher=JSTOR | volume=56 | issue=4 | year=1998 | issn=0021-8529 | doi=10.2307/432137 | jstor=432137 | page=410}}</ref>


===Kitsch in Milan Kundera's ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being''===
Kant also identified genius with originality. One could say he implicitly was rejecting kitsch, the presence of sentimentality and the lack of originality being the main accusations against it.


The concept of kitsch is a central motif in ] 1984 novel '']''. Towards the end of the novel, the book's narrator posits that the act of defecation (and specifically, the shame that surrounds it) poses a metaphysical challenge to the theory of divine creation: "Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner".<ref>Kundera, Milan (1984). ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being''. Harper Perennial. p. 248</ref> Thus, in order for us to continue to believe in the essential propriety and rightness of the universe (what the narrator calls "the categorical agreement with being"), we live in a world "in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist". For Kundera's narrator, this is the definition of kitsch: an "aesthetic ideal" which "excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence".
When originality alone is used to determine artistic genius, using it as a single focus may become problematic when the art of some periods is examined. In the Baroque period, for example, when a painter was hailed for his ability to imitate other masters, one such imitator being ].


The novel goes on to relate this definition of kitsch to politics, and specifically—given the novel's setting in ] around the time of the ]—to ] and ]. He gives the example of the Communist ] ceremony, and of the sight of children running on the grass and the feeling this is supposed to provoke. This emphasis on feeling is fundamental to how kitsch operates:
Another influential philosopher writing on fine art was ], who emphasized the idea of the artist belonging to the spirit of his time, or ].


<blockquote>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.<ref name="auto1">Kundera, Milan (1984). ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being''. Harper Perennial. p. 251</ref></blockquote>
As an effect of these aesthetics, working with emotional and "unmodern" or "archetypical" motifs was referred to as kitsch from the second half of the ] on. Kitsch is thus seen as "false".


According to the narrator, kitsch is "the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements"; however, where a society is dominated by a single political movement, the result is "totalitarian kitsch":
As Thomas Kulka writes, "the term kitsch was originally applied exclusively to paintings", but it soon spread to other disciplines, such as ]. The term has been applied to painters, such as ],<ref>Clement Greenberg, "Avantgarde and Kitsch"</ref> and composers, such as ], whom ] refers to as "genialischer kitsch", or "kitsch of genius".<ref>Theodor Adorno, "Musikalische Warenanalysen"</ref> <ref>Carl Dahlhaus, "Über musikalischen Kitsch"</ref>


<blockquote>When I say "totalitarian," what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously).<ref name="auto1"/></blockquote>
===Art and kitsch defined as opposites===
The word, kitsch, was popularized in the 1930s by the art theorists ], ], and ], who each sought to define ] and kitsch as opposites. To the art world of the time, the immense popularity of kitsch was perceived as a threat to ]. The arguments of all three theorists relied on an implicit definition of kitsch as a type of ], a ] term meaning a mindset present within the structures of ] that is misguided as to its own desires and wants. Marxists believe there to be a disjunction between the real state of affairs and the way that they phenomenally appear.


Kundera's concept of "totalitarian kitsch" has since been invoked in the study of the art and culture of regimes such as ], ], ] and Iraq under ].<ref>Makiya, Kanan (2011). Review: What Is Totalitarian Art? Cultural Kitsch From Stalin to Saddam. ''Foreign Affairs''. '''90''' (3): 142–148</ref> Kundera's narrator ends up condemning kitsch for its "true function" as an ideological tool under such regimes, calling it "a folding screen set up to curtain off death".<ref>Kundera, Milan (1984). ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being''. Harper Perennial. p. 253</ref>
] displayed at ] has appeal described by Adorno and Broch.]]


===Melancholic kitsch vs. nostalgic kitsch===
Adorno perceived this in terms of what he called the "]," where the art is controlled and formulated by the needs of the market and given to a passive population which accepts it&mdash;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 or observe. It helps serve the oppression of the population by capitalism by distracting them from their ]. Contrarily for Adorno, art is supposed to be subjective, challenging, and oriented against the oppressiveness of the power structure. He claimed that kitsch is ] of ] and a parody of aesthetic experience.


]
Broch called kitsch "the evil within the value-system of art"&mdash;that is, if true art is "good", kitsch is "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 ] of those recognizable conventions. Broch accuses kitsch of not participating in the development of art, having its focus directed at the past, as Greenberg speaks of its concern with previous cultures. To Broch, 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 that any attempt to make something beautiful would lead to kitsch. Consequently, he opposed the ] to ].
In her 1999 book ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience'', cultural historian ] develops a theory of kitsch that situates its emergence as a specifically nineteenth-century phenomenon, relating it to the feelings of loss elicited by a world transformed by science and industry.<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury.</ref> Focusing on examples such as ], ], ] and ], Olalquiaga uses Benjamin's concept of the ] to argue for the utopian potential of "melancholic kitsch", which she differentiates from the more commonly discussed "nostalgic kitsch".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. pp. 26, 75</ref>


These two types of kitsch correspond to two different forms of memory. Nostalgic kitsch functions through "reminiscence", which "sacrifices the intensity of experience for a conscious or fabricated sense of continuity":
Greenberg held similar views to Broch concerning the beauty and truth dichotomy, believing that the avant-garde style arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society and that kitsch and art were opposites, which he outlined in his essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch".


<blockquote>Incapable of tolerating the intensity of the moment, reminiscence selects and consolidates an event's acceptable parts into a memory perceived as complete. This reconstructed experience is frozen as an emblem of itself, becoming a cultural fossil.<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 292</ref></blockquote>
===Relationship to totalitarianism===
Other theorists over time also have linked kitsch to ] and its propaganda. The ] writer ], in his book '']'' (1984), defined it as "the absolute denial of shit". He wrote that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult with which to come to terms, offering instead a sanitized view of the world, in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions".


In contrast, melancholic kitsch functions through "remembrance", a form of memory that Olalquiaga links to the "]", which attempts "to repossess the experience of intensity and immediacy through an object".<ref name="auto">Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 291</ref> While reminiscence translates a remembered event to the realm of the symbolic ("deprived of immediacy in favour of representational meaning"), remembrance is "the memory of the unconscious", which "sacrific the continuity of time for the intensity of the experience".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 294, 292</ref> Far from denying death, melancholic kitsch can only function through a recognition of its multiple "deaths" as a fragmentary remembrance that is subsequently commodified and reproduced. It "glorifies the perishable aspect of events, seeking in their partial and decaying memory the confirmation of its own temporal dislocation".<ref>Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). ''The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience''. Bloomsbury. p. 298</ref>
In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy ], diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable ]; by contrast, "everything that infringes on kitsch," including ], doubt, and ], "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''."


Thus, for Olalquiaga, melancholic kitsch is able to function as a Benjaminian dialectical image: "an object whose decayed state exposes and reflects its utopian possibilities, a remnant constantly reliving its own death, a ruin".<ref name="auto"/>
For Kundera, "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."


==Further usage==
===Relationship to academic art===
One of Greenberg's more controversial claims was that kitsch was equivalent to ]: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch." He argued this based on the fact that academic art, such as that in the 19th century, was heavily centered in rules and formulations that were taught and tried to make art into something that could be taught and easily expressible. He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as it became heavily criticized.


===Historical fiction===
Often nineteenth century academic art still is seen as kitsch, although this view is coming under attack from modern ]s. Broch argued that the genesis of kitsch was in ], 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 of Romanticism, has a twofold reason for its association with kitsch.
Jewish-American author ] coined the term "]" to describe mass-market, overly sentimental depictions of ] from the end of the ] onwards, including works inspired by his own graphic novel on the subject, '']''. The term is usually used to criticize works seen as relying on ] and mass recognition to commercialize the experiences of ], such as '']'' or '']'', but also includes more positively received works like Polanski's '']''.<ref>Audi, Anthony. ''Literary Hub'', 22 March 2017. Retrieved 7 July 2024.</ref><ref>Bourne, Michael. , ''The Millions'', 22 November 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2024.</ref><ref>Corliss, Richard. , ''Time'', 1 January, 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2024.</ref>


===Reclamation===
] kitsch writing set allows the user to rest writing utensils in the ]'s antlers]]
The ] is an international movement of classical painters, founded{{clarify|Sources indicate that this was more of an aestethic statement than the founding of a movement|date=September 2014}} in 1998 upon a philosophy proposed by ],<ref>E.J. Pettinger {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120407050738/http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/the-kitsch-campaign/Content?oid=926148|date=7 April 2012}} "The Kitsch Campaign" , 29 December 2004.</ref> which he clarified in his 2001 book ''On Kitsch'',<ref>Dag Solhjell and Odd Nerdrum. ''On Kitsch'', Kagge Publishing, August 2001, {{ISBN|8248901238}}.</ref> in cooperation with Jan-Ove Tuv and others incorporating the techniques of the ]s with narrative, ], and emotionally charged imagery.
It is not that academic art was found to be accessible. In fact, it was under its reign that the difference between ] and low art first was defined by intellectuals. Academic art strove toward remaining in a tradition rooted in the aesthetic and intellectual experience. Intellectual and aesthetic qualities of the work were certainly there&mdash;good examples of academic art even were admired by the avant-garde artists who would rebel against it. There was some critique, however, that in being "too beautiful" and democratic it made art look easy, non-involving, and superficial. According to Tomas Kulka, any academic painting made after the time of academism, is kitsch by nature.


==See also==
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, trying to ] the art world. In ], certain academics even advocated that the artist should work for the marketplace. In some sense the goals of democratization succeeded and the society was flooded with academic art, with the public lining up to see art exhibitions as they do to see movies today.
*{{annotated link|Cliché}}
*{{annotated link|Lowbrow (art movement)}}
*{{annotated link|Museum of Bad Art}}
*{{annotated link|Poshlost}}
*]—in ''],'' ] for entertaining Oceania's working class
;Notable examples
*{{annotated link|Velvet Elvis}}
*{{annotated link|Chinese Girl|''Chinese Girl''}}
*{{annotated link|Christmas cards}}
*{{annotated link|Chocolate box art}}
*{{annotated link|Thomas Kinkade}}


==References ==
]s of ] were circulated around 1900]]
'''Informational notes'''
] in art became widespread, as did the practice of art making, and there was a blurring of the division between ] and ]. This often led to poorly made or conceived artwork being accepted as high art. Often, art which was found to be kitsch showed technical talent, such as in creating accurate representations, but lacked good taste.
{{Notelist}}


'''Citations'''
Furthermore, although original in their first expression, the subjects and images presented in academic art were disseminated to the public in the form of prints and ]s, which often actively was encouraged by the artists. These images were copied endlessly in kitschified form until they became well-known ]s.
{{Reflist}}


'''Bibliography'''
The avant-garde reacted to these developments by separating itself from aspects of art that were appreciated by the public, such as pictorial representation and harmony, in order to make a stand for the importance of the aesthetic. Many modern critics try not to pigeonhole academic art into the kitsch side of the art-or-kitsch ], recognizing its historical role in the genesis of both the avant-garde and kitsch.
* {{cite book | last=Horkheimer | first=Max | last2=Adorno | first2=Theodor W. | editor-last1=Schmid Noerr | editor-first1=Gunzelin | title=Dialectic of enlightenment : philosophical fragments | publication-place=Stanford, California | date=2002 | isbn=978-0-8047-8809-0 | oclc=919087055 | author-link=Max Horkheimer | author-link2=Theodor W. Adorno | translator-last1=Jephcott |translator-first1=Edmund | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170614021407/http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~randall/Readings%20W2/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theodor_W_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_Philosophical_Fragments.pdf | url = http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~randall/Readings%20W2/Horkheimer_Max_Adorno_Theodor_W_Dialectic_of_Enlightenment_Philosophical_Fragments.pdf | archive-date = June 14, 2017}}


'''Further reading'''
===Postmodernist interpretations===
* Adorno, Theodor (2001). ''The Culture Industry''. Routledge. {{ISBN|0-415-25380-2}}
With the emergence of ] in the 1980s, the borders between kitsch and high art again became blurred. One development was the approval of what is called "] taste" - which may be related to, but is not the same as camp when used as a "gay sensibility".<ref>Cf. Fabio Cleto, ed. Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002.</ref> Camp, in some circles, refers to an ironic appreciation of that which might otherwise be considered corny, such as singer and dancer ] with her tutti-frutti hats, or otherwise kitsch, such as ] events that are particularly dated or inappropriately serious, such as the low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s.
* ] (2008). "Wabi and Kitsch: Two Japanese Paradigms" in ''Æ: Canadian Aesthetics Journal'' 15.

* ] (2019) ''The New Aesthetics of Deculturation: Neoliberalism, Fundamentalism and Kitsch'' (Bloomsbury). Foreword by Olivier Roy.
A hypothetical example from the world of painting would be a kitsch image of a deer by a lake. In order to make this camp, one could paint a sign beside it, saying "No Swimming". The majestic or romantic impression of a stately animal would be punctured by humor; the notion of an animal receiving a punishment for the breach of the rule is patently ludicrous. The original, serious sentimentality of the motif is neutralized, and thus, it becomes camp.
*Braungart, Wolfgang (2002). "Kitsch. Faszination und Herausforderung des Banalen und Trivialen". Max Niemeyer Verlag. {{ISBN|3-484-32112-1}}/0083-4564.

* ] (2001). "Kant, Art and Art History: moments of discipline". ]. {{ISBN|0-521-80018-8}}.
"Camp" is derived from the ] ] term ''camper'', which means "to pose in an exaggerated fashion". ] argued in her 1964 '']'' that camp was an attraction to the human qualities which expressed themselves in "failed attempts at seriousness", the qualities of having a particular and unique style, and of reflecting the sensibilities of the era. It involved an aesthetic of artifice rather than of nature. Indeed, hard-line supporters of camp culture have long insisted that "camp is a lie that dares to tell the truth".
* ] (1969, translated from the 1968 Italian version, ''Il Kitsch''). ''Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste'', Universe Books. LCCN 78-93950

* ] (1998). "The Kitsch Style and the Age of Kitsch," in J. Goudsblom and S. Mennell (eds) ''The Norbert Elias Reader''. Oxford: ].
] sculpture]]
* Gelfert, Hans-Dieter (2000). "Was ist Kitsch?". ] in Göttingen. {{ISBN|3-525-34024-9}}.
Much of ] attempted to incorporate images from popular culture and kitsch. These artists strove to maintain legitimacy by saying they were "quoting" imagery to make conceptual points, usually with the appropriation being ironic.
* Giesz, Ludwig (1971). ''Phänomenologie des Kitsches''. 2. vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. . Reprint (1994): Ungekürzte Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: ]. {{ISBN|3-596-12034-9}} / {{ISBN|978-3-596-12034-5}}.

* Gorelik, Boris (2013). ''Incredible Tretchikoff: Life of an artist and adventurer''. Art / Books, London. {{ISBN|978-1-908970-08-4}}
In ], a movement arose called the ] ("new new"), which took a different route: instead of "quoting" kitsch in an ironic stance, it founded itself in a ] which embraced ugliness and garishness, emulating kitsch as a sort of anti-aesthetic.
* Greenberg, Clement (1978). ''Art and Culture''. ]. {{ISBN|0-8070-6681-8}}

* Holliday, Ruth and Potts, Tracey (2012) Kitsch! Cultural Politics and Taste, Manchester University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-7190-6616-0}}
A different approach is taken by the ] painter ], who, in 1998, began to argue for kitsch as a positive term used as a superstructure for figurative, non-ironic, and narrative painting. In 2000, together with several other authors, he composed a book entitled '']'', where he advocated the concept of "kitsch" as a more correct name than "art" for this type of painting. As a result of this redefinition proposed by Nerdrum, an increasing number of figurative painters are referring to themselves as "kitsch painters".
* Karpfen, Fritz (1925). "Kitsch. Eine Studie über die Entartung der Kunst". Weltbund-Verlag, Hamburg.

* Kristeller, Paul Oskar (1990). "The Modern System of the Arts" (In "Renaissance Thought and the Arts"). ]. {{ISBN|978-0-691-02010-5}}
] and deconstruction posed as interesting challenges, because, as with kitsch, they downplayed the formal structure of the artwork in favor of elements that enter it by relating to other spheres of life.
* Kulka, Tomas (1996). ''Kitsch and Art''. ]. {{ISBN|0-271-01594-2}}

* Moles, Abraham (nouvelle édition 1977). ''Psychologie du Kitsch: L'art du Bonheur'', Denoël-Gonthier
Despite this, many in the art world continue to adhere to some sense of the dichotomy between art and kitsch, excluding all sentimental and ] art from being considered seriously. This has come under attack by critics, who argue for a renewed appreciation of academic art and traditional figurative painting, without the concern for it appearing innovative or new. As in the surreal and figurative paintings of ].
* Nerdrum, Odd (Editor) (2001). ''On Kitsch''. ]. {{ISBN|82-489-0123-8}}

* Olalquiaga, Celeste (2002). ''The Artificial Kingdom: On the Kitsch Experience''. ] {{ISBN|0-8166-4117-X}}
In any case, whatever difficulty there is in defining boundaries between kitsch and fine art since the beginning of postmodernism, the word "kitsch" still remains in common use to label anything seen as being in poor taste.
* Reimann, Hans (1936). "Das Buch vom Kitsch". ], München.

* Richter, Gerd, (1972). ''Kitsch-Lexicon'', ]. {{ISBN|3-570-03148-9}}
==See also==
* Ryynänen, Max (2018). "Contemporary Kitsch: The Death of Pseudo Art and the Birth of Everyday Cheesiness (A Postcolonial Inquiry)" in ''Terra Aestheticae'' 1, pp.&nbsp;70–86.
*]
* Scruton, Roger (2009). ''Beauty: A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press {{ISBN|0199229759}}
*]
* Scruton, Roger (1983). ''The Aesthetic Understanding: Essays in the Philosophy of Art and Culture'' {{ISBN|1890318027}}
*]
* Shiner, Larry (2001). "The Invention of Art". ]. {{ISBN|0-226-75342-5}}.
*]
* Thuller, Gabrielle (2006 and 2007). "Kunst und Kitsch. Wie erkenne ich?", {{ISBN|3-7630-2463-8}}. "Kitsch. Balsam für Herz und Seele", {{ISBN|978-3-7630-2493-3}}. (Both on ], Stuttgart.)
*]/]
* Ward, Peter (1994). ''Kitsch in Sync: A Consumer's Guide to Bad Taste'', ]. {{ISBN|0-85965-152-5}}
*]
*"Kitsch. Texte und Theorien", (2007). ]. {{ISBN|978-3-15-018476-9}}. (Includes classic texts of kitsch criticism from authors like Theodor Adorno, Ferdinand Avenarius, Edward Koelwel, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hermann Broch, Richard Egenter, etc.).
*]
*]
*]

==References==

===Notes===
{{reflist}}

===Further reading===
* Adorno, Theodor (2001). ''The Culture Industry''. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25380-2
*Braungart, Wolfgang (2002). ”Kitsch. Faszination und Herausforderung des Banalen und Trivialen”. Max Niemeyer Verlag. ISBN 3-484-32112-1/0083-4564.
* Broch, Hermann (2003). ''Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age''. Counterpoint Press. ISBN 1-58243-168-X
* Cheetham, Mark A (2001). ”Kant, Art and Art History: moments of discipline”. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80018-8.
* Dorfles, Gillo (1969, translated from the 1968 Italian version, ''Il Kitsch''). ''Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste'', Universe Books. LCCN 78-93950
* Elias, Norbert. (1998) “The Kitsch Style and the Age of Kitsch,” in J. Goudsblom and S. Mennell (eds) ''The Norbert Elias Reader''. Oxford: Blackwell .
* Gelfert, Hans-Dieter (2000). ”Was ist Kitsch?”. Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen. ISBN 3-525-34024-9.
* Giesz, Ludwig (1971). ''Phänomenologie des Kitsches''. 2. vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage München: Fink Verlag. . Reprint (1994): Ungekürzte Ausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 3596120349 / ISBN 9783596120345.
* Greenberg, Clement (1978). ''Art and Culture''. Beacon Press. ISBN 0-8070-6681-8
* Karpfen, Fritz (1925). ”Kitsch. Eine Studie über die Entartung der Kunst”. Weltbund Verlag.
* Kristeller, Paul Oskar (1990). ”The Modern System of the Arts” (In ”Renaissance Thought and the Arts”). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02010-1. (pbk.) / 0-691-07253-1.
* Kulka, Tomas (1996). ''Kitsch and Art''. Pennsylvania State Univ Pr. ISBN 0-271-01594-2
* Kundera, Milan (1999). ''The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel''. (Perennial. ISBN 0-06-093213-9
* Moles, Abraham (nouvelle édition 1977). ''Psychologie du Kitsch: L’art du Bonheur'', Denoël-Gonthier
* Nerdrum, Odd (Editor) (2001). ''On Kitsch''. Distributed Art Publishers. ISBN 82-489-0123-8
* Olalquiaga, Celeste (2002). ''The Artificial Kingdom: On the Kitsch Experience''. Univ. of Minnesota ISBN 0-8166-4117-X
* Reimann, Hans (1936). ”Das Buch vom Kitsch”. R.Piper&Co / Verlag, München.
* Richter, Gerd, (1972). ''Kitsch-Lexicon'', Bertelsmann Lexicon-Verlag. ISBN 3-570-03148-9
* Shiner, Larry (2001). ”The Invention of Art”. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-75342-5.
* Thuller, Gabrielle (2006 and 2007). "Kunst und Kitsch. Wie erkenne ich?", ISBN 3-7630-2463-8. "Kitsch. Balsam für Herz und Seele", ISBN 978-3-7630-2493-3. (Both on Belser Verlag.)
* Ward, Peter (1994). ''Kitsch in Sync: A Consumer’s Guide to Bad Taste'', Plexus Publishing. ISBN 0-85965-152-5
*"Kitsch. Texte und Theorien", (2007). Reclam Publishing Company. ISBN 978-3-15-018476-9. (Includes classic texts of kitsch criticism from authors like Theodor Adorno, Ferdinand Avenarius, Edward Koelwel, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Hermann Broch, Richard Egenter, etc.).


==External links== ==External links==
* {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121103001119/http://www.artdesigncafe.com/kitsch-1992 |date=3 November 2012 }}. In John Walker's ''Glossary of art, architecture & design since 1945''.
{{commonscat|Kitsch}}
* &mdash;essay by Clement Greenberg * – essay by Clement Greenberg
* &mdash;selections from Odd Nerdrum’s manifesto
* &mdash;essay by Roger Scruton
*
*
* &mdash;like ], but for kitsch.
* &mdash;kitsch painters and writers
* by Eric Gibson, '']'', August 10 2009
* {{Cite news | issn = 1486-8008 | last = Fulford | first = Robert | title = Finding kitsch's inner beauty | accessdate = 2009-05-04 | date = 2009-04-28 | url = http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=34b2e4cc-6760-49b1-8cb0-a6642d73a6d1 }}


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Latest revision as of 23:15, 8 January 2025

Art or other objects that appeal to popular rather than high art tastes

This article is about the art term. For other uses, see Kitsch (disambiguation). "Tacky" redirects here. For other uses, see Adhesive and Tacky (song).
A Friend in Need, a 1903 Dogs Playing Poker painting by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, is a common example of modern kitsch.
Puppy by Jeff Koons (2010) is a self-aware display of kitsch, specifically as a combination of opulence and cuteness.

Kitsch (/kɪtʃ/ KICH; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste.

The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch for its melodramatic tendencies, its superficial relationship with the human condition and its naturalistic standards of beauty. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, pop-cultural products that lacked the conceptual depth of fine art. However, since the emergence of Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly ironic, humorous or earnest manners.

To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative, though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincere manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the Dogs Playing Poker paintings.

Along with visual art, the quality of kitsch can be used to describe works of music, literature or any other creative medium. Kitsch relates to camp, as they both incorporate irony and extravagance.

History

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (January 2019)
A mass-produced teapot and milk jug set, themed after an old cottage
Examples of kitsch in architecture
Basilica of Licheń in Poland, as an example of kitsch in sacred architecture

As a descriptive term, kitsch originated in the art markets of Munich, Germany in the 1860s and the 1870s, describing cheap, popular, and marketable pictures and sketches. In Das Buch vom Kitsch (The Book of Kitsch), published in 1936, Hans Reimann defined it as a professional expression "born in a painter's studio".

The study of kitsch was done almost exclusively in Germany until the 1970s, with Walter Benjamin being an important scholar in the field.

Kitsch is regarded as a modern phenomenon, coinciding with social changes in recent centuries such as the Industrial Revolution, urbanization, mass production, modern materials and media such as plastics, radio and television, the rise of the middle class and public education—all of which have factored into a perception of oversaturation of art produced for the popular taste.

Analysis

Kitsch in art theory and aesthetics

Modernist writer Hermann Broch argues that the essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics—it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good. According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch, unlike art, is a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer. According to critic Winfried Menninghaus, Benjamin's stance was that kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation". In a short essay from 1927, Benjamin observed that an artist who engages in kitschy reproductions of things and ideas from a bygone age deserved to be called a "furnished man" (in the way that someone rents a "furnished apartment" where everything is already supplied).

Kitsch is less about the thing observed than about the observer. According to Roger Scruton, "Kitsch is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious."

Tomáš Kulka, in Kitsch and Art, starts from two basic facts that kitsch "has an undeniable mass-appeal" and "considered (by the art-educated elite) bad", and then proposes three essential conditions:

  1. Kitsch depicts a beautiful or highly emotionally charged subject;
  2. The depicted subject is instantly and effortlessly identifiable;
  3. Kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations related to the depicted subject.

Kitsch in Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The concept of kitsch is a central motif in Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Towards the end of the novel, the book's narrator posits that the act of defecation (and specifically, the shame that surrounds it) poses a metaphysical challenge to the theory of divine creation: "Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner". Thus, in order for us to continue to believe in the essential propriety and rightness of the universe (what the narrator calls "the categorical agreement with being"), we live in a world "in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist". For Kundera's narrator, this is the definition of kitsch: an "aesthetic ideal" which "excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence".

The novel goes on to relate this definition of kitsch to politics, and specifically—given the novel's setting in Prague around the time of the 1968 invasion by the Soviet Union—to communism and totalitarianism. He gives the example of the Communist May Day ceremony, and of the sight of children running on the grass and the feeling this is supposed to provoke. This emphasis on feeling is fundamental to how kitsch operates:

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.

According to the narrator, kitsch is "the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements"; however, where a society is dominated by a single political movement, the result is "totalitarian kitsch":

When I say "totalitarian," what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously).

Kundera's concept of "totalitarian kitsch" has since been invoked in the study of the art and culture of regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Kundera's narrator ends up condemning kitsch for its "true function" as an ideological tool under such regimes, calling it "a folding screen set up to curtain off death".

Melancholic kitsch vs. nostalgic kitsch

A souvenir snow globe with an underwater motif

In her 1999 book The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience, cultural historian Celeste Olalquiaga develops a theory of kitsch that situates its emergence as a specifically nineteenth-century phenomenon, relating it to the feelings of loss elicited by a world transformed by science and industry. Focusing on examples such as paperweights, aquariums, mermaids and the Crystal Palace, Olalquiaga uses Benjamin's concept of the "dialectical image" to argue for the utopian potential of "melancholic kitsch", which she differentiates from the more commonly discussed "nostalgic kitsch".

These two types of kitsch correspond to two different forms of memory. Nostalgic kitsch functions through "reminiscence", which "sacrifices the intensity of experience for a conscious or fabricated sense of continuity":

Incapable of tolerating the intensity of the moment, reminiscence selects and consolidates an event's acceptable parts into a memory perceived as complete. This reconstructed experience is frozen as an emblem of itself, becoming a cultural fossil.

In contrast, melancholic kitsch functions through "remembrance", a form of memory that Olalquiaga links to the "souvenir", which attempts "to repossess the experience of intensity and immediacy through an object". While reminiscence translates a remembered event to the realm of the symbolic ("deprived of immediacy in favour of representational meaning"), remembrance is "the memory of the unconscious", which "sacrific the continuity of time for the intensity of the experience". Far from denying death, melancholic kitsch can only function through a recognition of its multiple "deaths" as a fragmentary remembrance that is subsequently commodified and reproduced. It "glorifies the perishable aspect of events, seeking in their partial and decaying memory the confirmation of its own temporal dislocation".

Thus, for Olalquiaga, melancholic kitsch is able to function as a Benjaminian dialectical image: "an object whose decayed state exposes and reflects its utopian possibilities, a remnant constantly reliving its own death, a ruin".

Further usage

Historical fiction

Jewish-American author Art Spiegelman coined the term "Holo-kitsch" to describe mass-market, overly sentimental depictions of the Holocaust from the end of the Cold War onwards, including works inspired by his own graphic novel on the subject, Maus. The term is usually used to criticize works seen as relying on melodrama and mass recognition to commercialize the experiences of Holocaust survivors, such as Life Is Beautiful or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, but also includes more positively received works like Polanski's The Pianist.

Reclamation

The Kitsch movement is an international movement of classical painters, founded in 1998 upon a philosophy proposed by Odd Nerdrum, which he clarified in his 2001 book On Kitsch, in cooperation with Jan-Ove Tuv and others incorporating the techniques of the Old Masters with narrative, romanticism, and emotionally charged imagery.

See also

Notable examples
  • Velvet Elvis – Painting of Elvis Presley on velvet
  • Chinese Girl – 1952 painting by Vladimir Tretchikoff
  • Christmas cards – A major type of greeting cardsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
  • Chocolate box art – Term describing idealistic paintings
  • Thomas Kinkade – American painter of popular realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects

References

Informational notes

  1. Despite being a direct borrowing from modern German, kitsch is most often left uncapitalized and without italics (cf. Gestalt, Sonderweg). Pronunciation may also be colloquially realized as /kɪʃ/ KISH.

Citations

  1. "Definition of KITSCH". www.merriam-webster.com.
  2. "Dialectic of Enlightenment - Philosophical Fragments" (PDF). Wayback Machine Internet Archive. 2002. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
  3. Dutton, Denis (2003), "Kitsch", Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t046768, retrieved 22 October 2021
  4. Scruton, Roger (21 February 2014). "A fine line between art and kitsch". Forbes. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
  5. Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity. Kitsch, p. 234.
  6. ^ Menninghaus, Winfried (2009). "On the Vital Significance of 'Kitsch': Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'Bad Taste'". In Andrew Benjamin and Charles Rice (ed.). Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity. re.press. pp. 39–58. ISBN 9780980544091.
  7. Broch, Hermann (2002). "Evil in the Value System of Art". Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. Six Essays by Hermann Broch. Counterpoint. pp. 13–40. ISBN 9781582431680.
  8. "Walter Benjamin: Dream Kitsch (trans. Edward Viesel) - -". www.edwardviesel.eu. Retrieved 20 December 2022.
  9. Eaglestone, Robert (25 May 2017). The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature. Oxford University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0191084201.
  10. "A Point of View: The strangely enduring power of kitsch". BBC News. 12 December 2014.
  11. Tomas, Kulka (1996). Kitsch and art. Pennsylvania State Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0271015941. OCLC 837730812.
  12. Higgins, Kathleen Marie; Kulka, Tomas (1998). "Kitsch and Art". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 56 (4). JSTOR: 410. doi:10.2307/432137. ISSN 0021-8529. JSTOR 432137.
  13. Kundera, Milan (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Harper Perennial. p. 248
  14. ^ Kundera, Milan (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Harper Perennial. p. 251
  15. Makiya, Kanan (2011). Review: What Is Totalitarian Art? Cultural Kitsch From Stalin to Saddam. Foreign Affairs. 90 (3): 142–148
  16. Kundera, Milan (1984). The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Harper Perennial. p. 253
  17. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury.
  18. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury. pp. 26, 75
  19. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury. p. 292
  20. ^ Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury. p. 291
  21. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury. p. 294, 292
  22. Olalquiaga, Celeste (1999). The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. Bloomsbury. p. 298
  23. Audi, Anthony. "Art Spiegelman: If It Walks Like a Fascist…" Literary Hub, 22 March 2017. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  24. Bourne, Michael. "Beyond Holokitsch: Spiegelman Goes Meta", The Millions, 22 November 2011. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  25. Corliss, Richard. "Defiance: Beyond Holo-kitsch", Time, 1 January, 2009. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  26. E.J. Pettinger Archived 7 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine "The Kitsch Campaign" , 29 December 2004.
  27. Dag Solhjell and Odd Nerdrum. On Kitsch, Kagge Publishing, August 2001, ISBN 8248901238.

Bibliography

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External links

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