Kitsch (pronounced kich)
(1) Something though tawdry in design or appearance; an
object created to appeal to popular sentiment or undiscriminating tastes,
especially if cheap (and thus thought a vulgarity).
(2) Art, decorative objects and other forms of
representation of dubious artistic or aesthetic value (many consider this
definition too wide).
1926: From the German kitsch
(literally “gaudy, trash”), from the dialectal kitschen (to coat; to smear) which in the nineteenth century was
used (as a German word) in English in art criticism describe a work as “something
thrown together”. Among “progressive” critics,
there was a revival in the 1930s to contrast anything thought conservative or
derivative with the avant garde. The
adjective kitchy was first noted in 1965 though it may earlier have been in
oral use; the noun kitchiness soon followed. Camp is sometimes used as a synonym
and the two can be interchangeable but the core point of camp is that it
attributes seriousness to the trivial and trivializes the serious. Technically, the comparative is kitscher and the
superlative kitschest but the more general kitschy is much more common. The alternative spelling kitch is simply a
mistake and was originally 1920s slang for “kitchen” the colloquial shortening dating
from 1919. Kitsch & kitchiness are nouns,
kitschify, kitschifying & kitschified are verbs and kitschy is an
adjective; the noun plural is kitsch (especially collectively) or kitsches. Kitschesque is non-standard.
For something that lacks and exact definition, kitsch is probably
surprisingly well-understood as a concept although not all would agree on what
objects are kitsch and what are not. Nor
does is there always a sense about it of a self-imposed exclusionary rule;
there are many who cherish objects they happily acknowledge are kitsch. As a general principle, kitsch is used to
describe art, objects or designs thought to be in poor taste or overly sentimental. Objects condemned as kitsch are often mass-produced,
clichéd, gaudy (the term “bling” might have been invented for the kitsch) or
cheap imitations of something. It can take some skill to adopt the approach but other items which can compliments such a thing include rotary dial phones and three ceramic ducks flying up the wall (although when lava lamps were in vogue, lava lamp buyers probably already thought the kitsch.
Lindsay Lohan: Prom Queen scene in Mean Girls (2004). If rendered in precious metal and studded with diamonds a tiara is not kitsch but something which is the same design but made with anodized plastic and acrylic Rhinestones certainly is.
Führer kitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.
The
Nazi regime devoted much attention to spectacle and representational
architecture and art was a particular interest of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945;
Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state
1934-1945). Hitler in his early
adulthood had been a working artist, earning a modest living from his brush while
living in Vienna in the years before World War I (1914-1918) and his landscapes
and buildings were, if lifeless and uninspired, competent enough to attract
buyers. He was rejected by the academy
because he could never master a depiction of the human form, his faces
especially lacking, something which has always intrigued psychoanalysts,
professional and amateur. Still, while his
mind was completely closed to any art of which he didn’t approve, he was
genuinely knowledgeable about many schools of art and better than many he knew
what was kitsch. However, the nature of
the “Führer state” meant he had to see much of it because the personality cult
built around him encouraged a deluge of Hitler themed pictures, statuettes,
lampshades, bedspreads, cigarette lighters and dozens of other items. A non-smoker, he ordered a crackdown on
things like ashtrays but generally the flow of kitsch continued unabated until
the demands of the wartime economy prevailed.
In the Berghof, his alpine headquarters on the Bavarian Obersalzberg near
Berchtesgaden, there were constant deliveries of things likes cushions embroidered
with swastikas in which would now be called designer colors and more than one
of his contemporaries in their memoirs recorded that the gifs sometimes would
be accompanied by suggestive photographs and offers of marriage. Truly that was “working towards the Führer”.
Führer kitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler
dutifully acknowledged the many paintings which were little more than regime
propaganda although the only works for which he showed any real enthusiasm were
those which truly he found beautiful. However,
he knew there was a place for the kitsch… for others. In July 1939, while being shown around an exhibition
staged in Munich called the “Day of German Art”, he complained to the curator
that some German artist were not on display and after being told they were “in
the cellar”, demanded to know why. The
only one with sufficient strength of character to answer was Frau Gerhardine
"Gerdy" Troost (1904–2003), the widow of the Nazi’s first court
architect Paul Troost (1878–1934) and one of a handful of women with whom
Hitler was prepared to discuss anything substantive. “Because it’s kitsch” she answered. Hitler sacked the curatorial committee and
appointed his photographer to supervise the exhibition and the depictions of
farm-workers in the field and heroic nude warriors returned.
Kitsch: One knows it when one sees it.
What is kitsch will be obvious to some while others will
remain oblivious and the disagreements will happen not only at the
margins. Although there will be
sensitive souls appalled at the notion, it really is something wholly subjective
and the only useful guide is probably to borrow and adapt the threshold test for
obscenity coined by Justice Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the
US Supreme Court 1958-1981) in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964):
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of
material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and
perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I
see it…
Kitsch also has a history also of becoming something else. As recently as the 1970s, tea-towels, placemats, oven mitts, serving trays and plenty else was available in the West adorned with depictions of indigenous peoples, often as racist tropes or featuring the appropriation of culturally sensitive symbols. These are now regarded as kitsch only historically and have been re-classified as examples variously (depending on the content) of cultural insensitivity or blatant racism.
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