Kitsch

Etymological origins

The term “ kitsch ”, introduced in a rather accidental way towards 1860, presents a dubious etymology. One generally resorts to three different assumptions to explain his origin. One connects sometimes the sources of the word “kitsch” to the German verb verkitschen , which means “to sell off”, “to sell in lower part of the price” or “to sell something with the place of what had been required”. One also makes go up his origin with the German verb kitschen , which means “to collect waste in the street”. Sometimes finally, one sees in the word English Sketch, pronounced with allemande, the possible origin of the term “kitsch”. (William Styron indicates an origin Yiddish of this word in its novel: " the choice of Sophie ")

Historical origins

The concept appears towards 1860 - 1870, in Bavaria, under the mannerism of Louis II. It is closely related to the idea of unauthentic, the overload and the bad taste. Indicating at the beginning the “artistic and industrial production of cheap objects” (Legrand), the concept is indissociable industry of consumption of mass. In the language running, the kitsch indicates objects of bad taste, decorated superfluous decorations, which generally copy the works recognized like the traditional ones. The kitsch is the product of social and historical changes. It emerges during two precise periods.

The first phase of the kitsch is brought, in the middle of the 19th century, by industrialization and the urbanization. In Europe and North America, those which benefit from the positions offered by industry form a new middle-class. These workers, satisfied formerly by rural and traditional art, now have access to new cultural products. The new middle-classes seek to be diverted with means adapted to them. These last are thus satisfied with what Greenberg calls a “substitute of culture intended for a population insensitive with the authentic cultural values, but nevertheless avid of this entertainment that only the culture, in a form or another, can offer”. The leisures allow inter alia the middle-classes developing a taste for the imitations at a cheap rate great traditional art. Manufactures and the trade with the detail thus make it possible the middle-classes to easily acquire cultural products distributed to large scales.

In the middle of the 20th century, when the second phase of the kitsch develops, this last becomes a privileged target to criticize the mass culture. The intellectuals of left use the kitsch to condemn the culture of the new business of consumption. This time, one does not reproach the kitsch for eroding the culture of elite. One rather shows it to be a tool privileged to handle the masses: “Reducing adults to children, the new kitsch made masses easier to manipulate by reducing to their farming needs to the easy gratification offered by Disney cartoons, pulp literature, and lovesong novels” (Binkley) (What means: “Reducing the adults to children, new the kitsch makes the masses easier to handle by reducing their cultural needs to the easy gratification offered by the cartoons for Disney, the literature “pulp” (reduced), and the mawkish novels”). For certain thinkers of the Années 1950, the kitsch, insofar as he encourages the lowering of the mass in front of the authority, operates same manner in the American capitalist context that he operated at the fascistic and communist .

The kitsch today

Parallel to the progressive globalisation of the markets and the exchanged products, the kitsch involuntarily became one of the most widespread styles in the world through the consumables current. The term, between pejorative and emotional, reflects however the esthetic point of view generally cultivated and Western individuals: the kitschity of an object is especially corollary tastes of its observer. Thus, art Rococo, the Neapolitan tablecloths and the Bavarian clocks are often taxed with kitsch, sometimes with condescension, or humor.

In the Years 1980, Jeff Koons carried the kitsch to esthetic heights transcendantales, finding in the marketisation of the images of the potential resources of creation. With the Japan, the culture manga, and in particular the style kawai (nice) were the vectors of incalculable kitsch productions: Takashi Murakami diverted the puerile connotation of these productions in its works.

One can estimate today that the esthetic currents of after Post-modernism, accessible with benevolence all the plastic forms testifying to a personal history, largely revalorized the concept of kitsch , associated with the ideology of an elite of the good taste, being an average esthetic value having powerful resources within a world in loss of landmarks.

See too

External bonds

kitsch in India the specificity of the Indian kitsch
Kitsch and avant-garde: cultural strategies and esthetic judgment Conference, New Acts Semiotics