Savour International

What is bad taste? The debate is over – the distinctions between kitsch, cult and trash have vanished.

 

The good old days were when the distinction between kitsch and art was so sharp that you could cut yourself without paying the slightest attention! In the 1930s, the American critic guru, Clement Greenberg, attributed everything that was not avant-garde to kitsch and wrote: “Kitsch is mechanical and functions according to fixed rules. Kitsch is second-hand experience, faked sensation.”

 

 

“Kitsch is the epitome of everything that is not genuine in our life and times.” The poet, Hermann Broch, was even more radical in his objection to kitsch: “Evil in the value-system of art.” For the art lover and connoisseur, kitsch was something unpleasant, unappetizing and objectionable – a con- sumer item suitable only for those who were incapable of thinking, insensi- tive and infantile. Anyone with principles did his or her best to steer clear of anything resembling kitsch. And anyone who was uncertain about good taste consulted Karlheinz Deschner’s best selling “Kitsch, Convention and Art”, first published in 1957. In the 1980 revised edition, the following statement is made: “Kitsch is always false, untrue, as-if-art, which almost all of us are susceptible to, and unfortunately not just ridiculous, but highly dangerous, infectious, epidemic and the most murderous drug in the world.”

 

We now know there are worse drugs. Moreover, the determined follow-up after the crusade against kitsch, and the danger of being infected by kitsch nowadays merely seem like a curiosity of cultural history. In the age of tolerance, it seems everyone is more tolerant of kitsch. And it’s logical that nobody wants to turn genuine art into a mission, and even less to warn about the deception of kitsch, given the tendency of art – just as much as kitsch – to seduce its consumers with aesthetic sensation. But the success of kitsch in the art world is surprising. Since the beginning of postmodernism, kitsch art, that is, artists’ work with kitsch, has enjoyed enduring popular- ity, but kitsch itself has also became the object of aesthetic desire. And the kitschier the kitsch or the more real the deception, the better it is. Kitsch as a collector’s object, or as a coveted record of everyday culture, kitsch as an object of scholarly texts and discourses or as a cult – that’s more than kitsch could ever have anticipated. Naturally, all attempts fail to define kitsch – and the same goes for art. Yet most people have an unmistakeable instinct for kitsch.

 

Kitsch subordinates everything to the charm offensive, and since nothing fades into thin air as quickly as blatant charm, kitsch is nothing more than an “accumulation” of charms to provoke the desired emotional reaction, and preferably a sentimental one. The idea that art ought not to charm and stir the emotions is a taboo that Immanuel Kant first analyzed: “Any taste remains barbaric if its liking requires that charms and emotions be mingled in, let alone if it makes these the standard of its approval.”
Wherever the gaze of the beholder and the eye of the reader is charmed, wherever a direct appeal is made to feelings, where yearning, unrequited and romantic love move to tears, wherever quivering bodies awaken the most tender desires, in Kant’s terms, aesthetic judgement has become impossible. In a manner of speaking, kitsch is therefore Kant’s worst nightmare: every- thing is only about charm and emotion and the end of aesthetic judgement is nigh. The perceptiveness of Immanuel Kant was later only repeated in Arthur Schopenhauer’s verdict on charm and emotion in art. Thus, art that feigns nature, awakening natural longing instead of aesthetic sense, was a horror for Schopenhauer – and perhaps only knowing about the virtuosity of the still-life painting preserves us from actually associating it with kitsch.