http://eu.lib.kmutt.ac.th/elearning/Courseware/ARC359/Beauty.ppt
Kitsch
Kitsch refers to the low-art artifacts of everyday life. It encompasses lamps in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, paintings of Elvis Presley on velvet, and lurid illustrations on the covers of romance novels. The term comes from the German verb verkitschen (to make cheap). Kitsch is a byproduct of the industrial age’s astonishing capacity for mass production and its creation of disposable income.
The critic Clement Greenberg characterized kitsch as “rear-guard” art—in opposition to avant-garde art. Kitsch, he observed (in “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” published in Partisan Review in fall 1939), “operates by formulas…it is vicarious experience and faked sensation. It changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our time.” He defined kitsch broadly to include jazz, advertising, Hollywood movies, commercial illustration—all of which are generally regarded now as popular culture rather than kitsch. Although Greenberg’s definition of kitsch is overly expansive, his analysis of how it operates remains apt. Today kitsch is most often used to denigrate objects considered to be in bad taste.
Attitudes toward kitsch became more complicated with the advent of Pop art in the early 1960s. What had been dismissed as vulgar was now championed by individuals who were fully aware of the reviled status of the “low-art” objects of their affections. This ironic attitude toward kitsch came to be known as “camp,” following the publication of the essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” by the cultural commentator Susan Sontag in Partisan Review in fall 1964.
Obscuring the distinctions between low and high art was key to the repudiation of modernism and the emergence of postmodernism. Beginning in the late 1970s, kitsch became a favorite subject for such artists as Kenny Scharf, who depicts characters from Saturday-morning cartoons, and Julie Wachtel, who appropriates figures from goofy greeting cards.
Extracts from 'Artspeak' by Robert Atkins (copyright (©) 1990, 1997 by Robert Atkins) reproduced by permission of Abbeville Press, Inc.
(source: Museum of Contemporary Art. http://moca.org/pc/viewArtTerm.php?id=19)
Postmodern
Architecture: The Birth of Kitsch
Postmodernism has a different attitude to mass culture. Modernism had drawn
rigid distinctions between high and low culture.
Postmodernism was one of the most significant cultural developments of the
twentieth century. In the fields of architecture and design it can best be
understood as a reaction against the Modern Movement of the early twentieth
century.
Architects began to find the Modernist vocabulary restrictive. They grew
bored with the sterile, puritan forms. This shift was signalled by two famous statements.
The Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe had coined the phrase ‘Less is more,’
meaning that decoration and detail had to be stripped away. The postmodernist
architect Robert Venturi responded with the phrase ‘Less is a bore’. The faith
in a universal aesthetic was shattered. Postmodernism marks a return to colour,
variety and historical reference.
In particular, Postmodernism has a different attitude to mass culture.
Modernism had drawn rigid distinctions between high and low culture. The Modernist
art critic Clement Greenberg published an influential essay entitled ‘Avant
Garde and Kitsch’, which makes a distinction between high culture (such as
opera, abstract art and indeed Modernism) and low culture (television,
Hollywood movies and so on). He argues that high culture is the preserve of a
privileged, educated few and that popular culture represents a lowering of
standards, which he calls this the ‘democratization of culture under
industrialisation.’
This is an elitist view that is challenged by Postmodernism and its
enthusiasm for mass culture. Postmodernism actively celebrates kitsch (a German
term for cheap, tacky artefacts) because it is a language that everyone can
understand. For example, the Disney Corporation has been hiring famous postmodernist
architects for the last few decades. The Eisner Building was designed by
Michael Graves. It features the Seven Dwarfs in place of the caryatids found in
Ancient Greek buildings.
This is how the device looks in genuine ancient Greek architecture - the
Erechthium at Athens, which has columns sculpted into the form of female
figures. Michael Graves has appropriated this device, but altered it to
create in a parody of Classicism.
Postmodern
Architecture: The Birth of Kitsch
Postmodernism has a different attitude to mass culture. Modernism had drawn
rigid distinctions between high and low culture.
Postmodernism was one of the most significant cultural developments of the
twentieth century. In the fields of architecture and design it can best be
understood as a reaction against the Modern Movement of the early twentieth
century.
Architects began to find the Modernist vocabulary restrictive. They grew
bored with the sterile, puritan forms. This shift was signalled by two famous statements.
The Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe had coined the phrase ‘Less is more,’
meaning that decoration and detail had to be stripped away. The postmodernist
architect Robert Venturi responded with the phrase ‘Less is a bore’. The faith
in a universal aesthetic was shattered. Postmodernism marks a return to colour,
variety and historical reference.
In particular, Postmodernism has a different attitude to mass culture.
Modernism had drawn rigid distinctions between high and low culture. The Modernist
art critic Clement Greenberg published an influential essay entitled ‘Avant
Garde and Kitsch’, which makes a distinction between high culture (such as
opera, abstract art and indeed Modernism) and low culture (television,
Hollywood movies and so on). He argues that high culture is the preserve of a
privileged, educated few and that popular culture represents a lowering of
standards, which he calls this the ‘democratization of culture under
industrialisation.’
This is an elitist view that is challenged by Postmodernism and its
enthusiasm for mass culture. Postmodernism actively celebrates kitsch (a German
term for cheap, tacky artefacts) because it is a language that everyone can
understand. For example, the Disney Corporation has been hiring famous postmodernist
architects for the last few decades. The Eisner Building was designed by
Michael Graves. It features the Seven Dwarfs in place of the caryatids found in
Ancient Greek buildings.
This is how the device looks in genuine ancient Greek architecture - the
Erechthium at Athens, which has columns sculpted into the form of female
figures. Michael Graves has appropriated this device, but altered it to
create in a parody of Classicism.
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