KITSCH

Some Stylistic Considerations (249)

Kitch as a style
Product of certain category of artists, makers or designers
for average consumers
predictable messages in stereotyped aesthetic packages
Specific kitsch elements
appear in process of mass production and diffusion of art
unintentional
From vantage point of consumer
accept aesthetic lie of kitsch
can perceive even genuine works of art as kitsch

impressing and pleasing average consumer
principle of mediocrity
Aware of public's diversity of interests and desires
leads to eclecticism
Hominess
intimacy
beauty

Purpose is display
futile display
Symbol of a particular social status
Large amount of futile display inseparable from well-to-do life

relaxing and pleasing
wish fulfilling--assuages fear of emptiness
response to modern sense of spiritual vacuum
fills empty time of leisure with fun and excitement

semiotic ambiguity - look both genuine and skillfully fake
kitsch object insists on its anti-elitist availability

Established rules
Predictable
audience
effects
rewards
Older forms of kitsch enjoyed by the sophisticated
camp - redeem affected kitsch of la belle epoque

Baudelaire - intoxicating effect of bad taste

opposites, but attracted
Avant-garde interested in kitsch for aesthetically subversive and ironical purposes
kitch may use avant-garde as stereotypes
caricature of modernity
Duchamp's Mona Lisa with mustache
To advocate abandonment of aesthetics based on appearances

KITSCH