The absence of beauty is a device an artist uses to gain the viewer’s attention, to contemplate the ideas presented. Kitsch in its beauty is false and filled with utopia; romanticism, so very easy to like. It is imitation to falsify the finite reality of the world and a choice between the re-imagined and the genuinely new.  Kitsch does not take its realistic terminology directly from the everyday world, but uses prefabricated expressions.

Dear All,

Some "oevres" of kitsch:

If you look at details of these pictures, perhaps you get other impressions not related to kitsch?

Dear Marcel,

From this point of view everything must be an artwork. What matters is the real message of the object.

Not necessarily. Too much detail is not necessary perceived as art.

Some art products become beautiful only when you watch them from a distance, or not?

Dear Marcel,

The trouble with kitsch is that it expresses “this is the best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire: Candid) which is a manifest lie. I can accept that many (even each) of us need lies but we cannot build our life on untruth. By the way, the task of art is to approach truth.

Dear Marcel,

If you think that the delusion of truth must be truth, I cannot agree with you.

Dear Cecilia,

Easy singing is not kitschy singing.

Dear Doko,

Sweetness alone is boring. Eating much sweet food causes diabetes. Consuming too much kitsch hampers to recognise and evaluate true art. To consume kitsch is an easy and irresponsible behaviour. To recognise real artworks needs studying and can be risky. Kitsch is a 100% lukewarm bath, a total ignorant security.

Dear Georgios,

Thanks for your opinion. I think that in a commercially manipulated world also demands can be directed and the artificially manufactured demands are industrially satisfied as a product request. Another trouble may be the cultural differences, what is kitsch? There are traditional ways of life (cultures) where art and visual representation have been traditionally denied.

The Kitsch genre has become pretty popular in clothing, interiors or gifting. The splash of colours combined with pop culture makes it irresistible. Whether it is Mughal art on pillow covers and cushions, shoe printed phone covers, chairs with kettle motifs or cinema posters as wallpapers, It’s kitsch that raining everywhere!

It is an expression of the art, originality and creativity of every civilization in different regions of the world. It takes a great deal of time to be able to progress from other aspects of life.

If you "consume" art, you get a very personal message from it. If you get a positive message, you will say this must be art, if you can't do anything with it, you will say this isn't art and if you get a message you do not like and makes you feel uncomfortable you may say this is kitsch.

Everybody can do this and come to her/his personal result, but there will be no agreeable conclusions for everyone.

121

The situation so bad in wide world are unsuitable for finding any solution about people like kitsch, that relevant with wars, loss of jobs and the very lower economy 

Dear Rudolf,

Your thinking way you presented seems to be logical but quite subjective. Do you know any objective measure to assess artworks and to be able to set apart kitsch from art?

Dear András,

I think, that my answer implicates, that there are no objective criteria to set apart art from kitsch. 

Dear Rudolf and Andrar

Returning to my previous text,

When we recognize it as an art pattern and set objective to levels of art style,

So we can classify and do justice

I think "kitsch" is the kind of art that people can afford because it has been produced in a cost-efficient way. The same as any other kind of (expensive) art it satisfies the needs of people who are looking for something pleasant. While "art" is expensive because it is unique, "kitsch" is cheap because many copies exist. Kitsch is, however, a compliment for the artist because his/her art is very popular.

Simply because a good part of humanity is kitsch: they are born in kitsch and recognize kitsch as a form of expression.

Dear Jens,

Even poor people can afford cheap reproductions of great painters. I have in my room a Mona Lisa of Leonardo and entry of animals in Noah’s arc of Jan Brueghel.  

Dear Gioacchino,

If it is right the situation must be sad even miserable.

Dear Houda,

how are you going to set not yours but objective criteria to distinguish between art and kitsch?

Dear Rudolf,

I think kitsch is commercial and mostly made on conveyor belt (Laufbahn). Kitsch is a mass product. Generally, kitsch frames the beliefs of the average population on phenomena and ideas which has but a tangential relationship with truth/reality. Or they try to make their fake beliefs to reality in their life.

Dear András,

I know very commercial art as well as very unique kitsch. Just as with the relationship to truth/reality I cannot find a definition of art.

In most of the cases we will agree in our classification of art/kitsch, but there will remain a range, where we disagree.

And there are people with a different range of disagreement and people without any agreement with our point of view!

http://www.kritisches-netzwerk.de/forum/was-ist-kunst-eine-betrachtung-mit-zitaten

Well, the question was "Why do people like kitsch?". And the answer is: Because it is art. Another question could be "Why do people don't like kitsch?" And the answer is: Because they have already seen too many copies of it or its quality cannot reach the original. The two sides of the "art" medal is first, being beautiful (for some people) and second, being unique. Kitsch might just be beautiful or not even this. Unique kitsch, in contrast, is art (which is not necessarily pleasing for every one).

Dear Rudolf,

Many thanks for the German forum on „art and kitsch”. Coming back to your comment, I observed that in kitsch the commercial approach dominates. In art, the main thing is the independent idea, the desire to find the truth in the very complicated nets of life. This truth or truth fragments as well as the independent opinion are expressed in the frames of aesthetics. Art must be practically always a rebellion against the mediocrity and the uninspired, shallow view on things/phenomena of life.  

Dear Jens,

Please, show some examples. By the way, what is quality and what is originality?

Human can't be  satisfied by kitsch, and not by discussion about rktch as art

Vive Primitive Art, vive la Renaissance & sites

Kitsch art: love it or loathe it?

In fact, kitsch started out as a dismissive term for the entirety of popular culture. In his essay Avant Garde and Kitsch, published in 1939, the American art critic Clement Greenberg marvelled: "One and the same civilisation produces simultaneously two such different things as a poem by TS Eliot and a Tin Pan Alley song, or a painting by Braque and a Saturday Evening Post cover." For Greenberg there were only two polarities of culture: serious high modernist art, such as Eliot's poetry or a cubist painting, versus the vacuous art preferred by the majority, including pop music and the paintings of Norman Rockwell.

......

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2013/jan/28/kitsch-art-love-loathe-jonathan-jones

Dear Andràs,

in fact the situation is sad and miserable.

Regards

Dear Marpha,

I always try to speak FOR ART. One should look at, listen to and read artworks as paintings, sculptures, music and belles-lettres every day. I do it every day. Discussion is only a collateral activity to help others how and why to approach art.

The absence of beauty is a device an artist uses to gain the viewer’s attention, to contemplate the ideas presented. Kitsch in its beauty is false and filled with utopia; romanticism, so very easy to like. It is imitation to falsify the finite reality of the world and a choice between the re-imagined and the genuinely new.  Kitsch does not take its realistic terminology directly from the everyday world, but uses prefabricated expressions.

Dear András,

"the main thing is the independent idea", you said. In this point we are in complete agreement. Art needs a new idea, copying ideas of others leads to kitsch. But it is not always easy to recognize the new idea, for the consumer as well as for the artist.

Anyway, even this point is difficult if you want to get hold of art in a scientific way.

Dear Rudolf,

Thanks for your ideas. I think it is great when we try to reflect together.  

It is difficult to evaluate the performance/meaning of independence in art. I have always thought the art must serve the progressivity or at least the conservation of the good, the beauty in the life and for the life.

Thank you, András, I like it a lot.

There are no "musts" in art, art has no purpose. But this impletes, that it may have purpose. 

Kitsch is typically rich in superficial sentimentality, often presenting to the observer highly charged imagery that triggers automatic, unreflective emotional reactions, happy scenes or bright colors that create an immediate positive response. Kitsch is an interesting phenomenon because it tends to lead to polarization, dividing the masses who respond positively from critics.

Dear Yogesh,

I agree with you.  Yes, kitsch is superficial and sentimental. Kitsch is easy to digest, easy to consume. Kitsch does not need thinking or efforts from the consumers. Kitsch products created stereotyped commonplaces and clichés – a kitschy world - according to the demands of the “average” consumers.

Dear Wolfgang,

Unfortunately, the lower average. Not the brainworker but the beer drinker population.