Protuberant

Protuberant (pronounced proh-too-ber-uhnt, proh-tyoo-ber-uhnt, or pruh-too-ber-uhnt)

Bulging out beyond the surrounding surface; protruding; projecting; swelling from the surrounding surface; bulging.

1640–1650: From the sixteenth century French protubérant (prominent beyond the surrounding surface), from the Late Latin protuberantem (nominative protuberans), present participle of prōtūberāre (to swell, bulge, grow forth), the construct being pro- (forward) + tuber (lump, swelling) from the primitive Indo-European root teue- (to swell).  The most common form in the Late Latin was prōtūberāre (to swell).  The verb protuberate (bulge out, swell beyond the adjacent surface) dates from the 1570s, from Late Latin protuberatus, past participle of prōtūberāre.  Protuberant is an adjective, protuberate is a verb, protuberance & protuberancy are nouns and protuberantly is an adverb; the noun plural is protuberances.

Patting the protuberance of pregnancy: Ali Lohan (b 1993, left) photographed with her pregnant sister Lindsay Lohan (b 1986, right) wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress in (unattributed) Dodge Yorange (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms and may have been worn just for the photo-shoot; usually, pregnant people prefer something more sensible.

Artwork not by PM&C.

In Australia, PM&C (Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet) in 2022 released a new logo for the “Women’s Network”.  To the left of the construct was a cursive "W", the right stroke (the vertical diagonal line in a letter) adorned with a swash (a fancy or decorative replacement for a terminal or serif in an upper-case capital letter (although this w may be lower case (it’s hard to tell) in which case it would be a "flourish").  To the right was a capsular (technically a geometric stadium) protuberance which had been bitten into by the stylized W.  The logo’s graphical elements were rendered in a darkish purple which lightened as the shape extended right, the text below in two different sans serif fonts, one line in bold black, the other grey.  The design and placement of the text, though not obviously thoughtful, did at least add meaning to the graphic which might otherwise have been thought something to do with aubergines (eggplant).

Innocent interpretation: The aubergine (eggplant).

The logo proved to have a short life, withdrawn from circulation in response to complaints it resembled male genitalia; on Twitter, #logonono quickly trended.  Almost immediately the furor erupted, PM&C issued a statement saying the logo had been “removed” from its website “pending consultation with staff”.  Noting the phallic creation was part of a rebrand of staff DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) networks “to establish a consistent look and feel” between the logos used for various groups, PM&C added “the Women’s Network logo retained a ‘W’ icon which staff had been using for a number of years” which seemed an unnecessary clarification given nobody had objected to the W.  Anxious to assure the country that whatever controversy might have been induced by the purple protuberance, PM&C announced the “…rebrand was completed internally, using existing resources, and designs were consulted on widely.  No external providers were engaged for this work… (and that) the prime minister and the prime minister’s office were not part of this logo design.”  Well that cleared that up.

Graphic designers do seem sometimes unaware of the levels of anatomical comparison their work offers.  Of course, on the basis that "no publicity is bad publicity" there may be the odd "intentional inadvertence", there being much to be gained from a good handling of a controversy. 

The errors cut across cultures.  Here technical advice from an architect would have helped, more historically correct additional minarets should have been added and only a single dome depicted.

The attitude of critics was exemplified by the NOWN (National Older Women’s Network), which issued a statement describing the logo as “either thoughtless or an insult” although as a re-branding exercise, the project had to be labeled a success, most of the country now aware of the existence of the Women’s Network, a mysterious body previously familiar probably only to a handful of souls devoted to it causes.  A discussion of what it does or whether it fulfils any useful purpose wasn’t stimulated by the outcry over the offending logo so whatever the Women’s Network was doing before, it presumably continues to do.  One thing it achieved was to flush out the competition; it seems there are in the country a number of organizations with "Women's Network" in their title but whether there are demarcation disputes or all work together is collective feminist harmony seems not to have made the news.

Logo developed in 1973 by Gerry Kano Design on a commission from Roman Catholic Church's Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Designed for the Archdiocesan Commission of Catholic Youth, remarkably as it may now seem, the imaginative creation won an "Excellence in Design" award from the Art Director's Club of Los Angeles.  An example of how things have changed, it was a time when what priests did behind closed doors tended to be "hushed up" with bishops "solving the problem" by shifting the perpetrator to another parish when he would find new victims against whom to visit his sins.

Perhaps the men involved in the “Women’s Network” design didn’t notice the shape of the protuberance because they were focused on the color, anxious to avoid what might once have been the obvious choice: pink.  That would of course have been condescending and gender-stereotyping so the staff at PM&C deserve some praise in this aspect of a matter in which they weren’t involved.  Pink stuff for products aimed at the female market may be less of a thing than once it was but for men wanting a gift with a difference for women, it seems more of a thing than ever, pink tool kits popular gifts with sales spiking reliably in the run up to Christmas and even Valentine’s Day.  In truth, whatever the color, it's probably a good idea for the modern young spinster to have her own tool kit because as many of them will attest, men just can't be relied upon.  However, while working well for novelties like hammers and screwdrivers, pink doesn’t always have a good record as a marketing device writ large, failure exemplified by the Dodge La Femme.

Chrysler show cars, 1954:  Chrysler Le Comte (his, top) & Chrysler La Comtesse (hers, bottom).

Chrysler offered the La Femme package in 1955 and 1956 on the Custom Royal Lancer (the division's top trim line), the creation not a stylistic whim but a response to sociological changes in an unexpectedly affluent post-war US society in which women were found to be exerting a greater influence on the allocation of their family’s rising disposable income and of most interest to Chrysler was that those increasingly suburban families were buying second cars, women getting their own.  Adventurous color schemes were nothing new for Detroit, the cars of the art deco era noted for their two-tone combos but shades had been more subdued in the years immediately after World War II (1939-1945).  That changed with the exuberance of 1950s experimentation when three and four-tone renderings hit the showrooms though for the La Femme concept which had been previewed in the La Comtesse, two were judged enough.  The Le Comte & La Comtesse show cars in 1954 attracted most attention for their clear Perspex roofs (a craze at the time which didn’t last long as buyers found themselves slowly being cooked) but, following the grammatical conventions of their French definite articles, they were very much a “his & hers” brace, the darker (black & bronze) Le Comte with a “masculine” image and the La Comtesse, painted in  "Dusty Rose" & "Pigeon Grey", a softer and more “feminine” look.

1955 Dodge La Femme by Chrysler (left), accessories by by Evans of Chicago (right).

The public and critical response to La Comtesse must have been positive enought to encourage production and for the 1955 model year, the La Femme option was offered on the Dodge Custom Royal Lancer two-door hardtop, finished in a two-tone combination of "Heather Rose" (a shade of pink) & "Sapphire White", highlighted with gold-colored "La Femme" badges in a display script but if the exterior was (almost) subdued, the interior, a sea of pink, was femininity laid on with a trowel.  Trimmed in a tapestry fabric unique to the La Femme which wove pink rosebuds on a silver-pink background in pastel-pink vinyl, confronting those who sat there was a dashboard painted in bright-pink lacquer.  In case nobody sitting inside got the message, there was another La Femme badge in anodized gold-tone making explicit this was "a car for women". 

In the pink: Dodge La Femme (1955-1956).

In a marketing ploy which turned out to be years ahead of its time, the La Femme also came with coordinated accessories, the centrepiece a pink calfskin handbag that fitted neatly into a storage compartment built into the back of the passenger’s seat, the shape of which included a scallop which meant the handbag’s escutcheon plate was visible, Dodge’s press-kits noting the brushed-metal was designed to permit the owner’s name to be engraved.  The handbag contained a compact, lipstick case, cigarette case, comb, cigarette lighter, and change purse, all made variously with faux-tortoiseshell or pink calfskin, both combined with yet more anodized gold-tone metal.  In a matching compartment on the back of the driver’s seat was a rain coat, rain-cap and umbrella, all made with a vinyl patterned to match the rosebud interior fabric.  The design and production was by Evans of Chicago, a furrier and maker of fine accessories, famous for the display of "Black Diamond" mink coats in their flagship store at 36 South State Street.  Evans later would fall victim to the anti-fur movement which would lay waste to an industry on which many regional economies had been built.

The advertising message which at the time seemed a good idea.

In toned-down form, the La Femme option re-appeared in 1956.  The external color combination was changed to a "Misty Orchid" & "Regal Orchid" scheme and the interior finish was simplified, the previous year’s tapestry fabric proving challenging to produce in volume.  The revised upholstery used a heavy white cloth with random patterns of short lavender (purple's most "feminine" hue) and purple loops, matching the loop-pile carpeting and the accessories were limited, restricted in 1956 to just the rain coat, rain cap and umbrella.  Over the two seasons, fewer than 2,500 buyers chose the US$143 option and it didn’t re-appear for 1957.

Dodge in 1955-1956 had advertising for men (HP (horsepower), speed and V8 engines, left) and for women (everything pink, the paint, the rosebuds on the upholstery, the handbag, compact, lipstick case, cigarette case, comb, cigarette lighter, change purse, rain coat, rain-cap and umbrella, right).  In an interesting (though unverified) juxtaposition of men's perceptions, several sources suggest at least three La Femme buyers chose the most powerful engine on the option list, Dodge’s D-500 (a 315 cubic inch (5.2 litre) V8 with hemi heads and a four barrel carburetor, rated at a then most masculine 285 HP); perhaps not all clung to 1950s gender stereotyping.

Dodge La Femme advertising copy (1955, left) and pony-tail friendly headrest (right).  The men at Dodge were not wrong in concluding the “discriminating, modern woman” existed in commercially significant numbers and that she might buy a car but didn't grasp that functional features would have more appeal than pink paint. Ironically, the evidence does suggest men at the time were rather more susceptible to being drawn to a car because it was marketed as “masculine” than were women to something cynically and superficially “feminized”.

Other manufacturers did dabble with feminine-themed cars in a similar vein including GM's (General Motors) 1958 Chevrolet Impala Martinique and Cadillac Eldorado Seville Baroness but neither reached series-production.  The special detailing on GM’s 1958 show cars was the work of two of the seven women hired by the corporation's then head of styling, Harley Earl (1893–1969) and within the studios, the septep were known as the “Damsels of Design”, Jeanette Linder working on the Impala Martinique convertible and Suzanne Vanderbilt on the Eldorado Seville Baroness.  Had their presence continued Detroit’s design language in the 1960s might at least subtly have followed a different path but, upon Earl’s retirement in 1958, he was succeeded by Bill Mitchell (1912–1988; head of design at GM 1958–1977) whose world view was different: “No women are going to stand next to my male senior designers”.  Under the Mitchell regime, the damsels departed although probably he’d approved of their work at GM’s Frigidaire division designing the 1955 “Frigidaire Kitchen of Tomorrow” which genuinely was influential.  While doubtlessly Mr Mitchell opened a fridge only to get himself a beer when no woman was on hand to fetch one for him, he’d have thought women just the people to design how fridges should look.  Much later, there would be innovations in car design which women found genuinely helpful such as a hook on which a handbag could hang while remaining conveniently accessible and headrests which comfortably would accommodate a ponytail.

Six and the Single Girl, 1966.  Describing the Mustang's politely behaved six-cylinder engine as a "husky brute" might seem a stretch but it was rugged and dependable so maybe a case could be made.

What in the US did find a receptive audience among women was the new generation of smaller (the "compacts", "pony cars" & "intermediates") automobiles introduced in the early 1960s, women sensibly drawn to something smaller than the standard-size machine which after 1957 grew to an absurdly inefficient size (to which men would continue to be attracted until economic reality bit in the 1970s).  FoMoCo (Ford Motor Company) in 1966 took advantage of the shift in the tastes of some with its “Six and the Single Girl” campaign, promoting to a suddenly numerous sub-set of the female demographic the virtues of the six cylinder version of its Mustang which wildly had been successful since introduction in 1964.  That subset was “the young white women of the baby boom”; many had jobs which meant they had either the capital or credit rating required to buy a new car and the Mustang, stylish, small (in US terms) and affordable could have been designed with them in mind which, to some extent, it was.  Coincidently, at the time, FoMoCo was struggling to meet demand for V8-powered Mustangs but had the capacity to produce more sixes so in 1966 the planets aligned nicely and “Six and the Single Girl” played a part in stimulating demand, the fitment rate of the "six-pot" engine at times approaching 50%, the same phenomenon experienced by the main competition, the Chevrolet Camaro, introduced that year.  Because the survival rate of the era’s six-cylinder pony cars is so low, the general perception of the breed overwhelmingly is of V8-powered, tyre-smoking muscle cars but many were built as modest commuters (the so-called “secretary’s car”) purchased by those more interested a car’s gas (petrol) consumption than its ET (elapsed time) over a drag strip’s ¼ mile (400 metres).

Sex and the Single Girl: The first edition hardback published by Bernard Geis (1909–2001) had a plain cover with just the title in text (the “S1NGLE” was a gimmick) but after huge sales, the re-print rights were on-sold and some editions (including the 1963 paperback by Cardnal) featured pink-themed artwork.

In a form of “ambush marketing”, FoMoCo picked up “Six and the Single Girl” from the title of Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012), a book which sold by the million (more quickly than even the Mustang managed) and spent more than a year on the NYT (New York Times) best seller list.  In a sense, Sex and the Single Girl was a product of pharmacological determinism, published as it was some two years after the first oral contraceptive pill (even then famously known as “the pill”) was approved for prescription use in the US by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).  Without women gaining some degree of autonomous control over their fertility, the premise of the book would have been absurd because as well as arguing the importance of them being financially independent of men, she advocated pre-marital sex, if need be with multiple partners and, obviously, without benefit of marriage.  Women with their own money was an idea subversive enough but the notion of unrestrained promiscuity upset the priests and politicians even more and although in the era a number of books (including Rachel Carson’s (1907–1964) Silent Spring (1962), Anthony Burgess’s (1917–1993) A Clockwork Orange (1962), William S. Burroughs’ (1914-1997) Naked Lunch (1962), Edward Albee’s (1928–2016) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962), Betty Friedan’s (1921–2006) The Feminine Mystique (1963) and James Baldwin’s (1924–1987) Another Country (1963)) appeared which appalled many in the conservative establishment, there was something about S&theSG which seemed especially threatening.  The protests of course made it a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) which is the literary or artistic term encapsulating the dictum Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment 1933-1945) followed when dealing with the press in the difficult years before the party was handed power (like the consequences of Benito Mussolini's (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & Prime-Minister of Italy 1922-1943) "March on Rome" the Nazi's "seizure" of the state is something of a myth): “Let them abuse us and let them damn us but let them say something about us”, a variant of Oscar Wilde’s (1854–1900): “It doesn’t matter what people are saying about you as long as they’re saying something”.  Goebbels truly was evil but his point was well made and among a prolix crowd, he was succinct, the acerbic thumbnail sketches of his Nazi colleagues he noted in his diaries in some ways reveal in a few words as much about them as their inch-thick biographies.

Tussy Cosmetics promotion, 1966.

The Tussy Cosmetics company in 1966 offered three 1967 Mustangs as prizes for contest winners, each finished in a shade of pink which matched the lipsticks Racy Pink (“A pale pink”), Shimmery Racy Pink Frosted (“Shimmers with pearl”) & Defroster (“Pours on melting beige lights when you wear it alone, or as a convertible top to another lip color”).  The fate of the cars is unknown but nerds might note the three prizes were 1967 models while the model (as in the Mustang) in the advertisement was from the 1966 range.  That's because the advertising copy had to be made available before the embargo had been lifted on photographs of the 1967 range.  The men on Madison Avenue presumably dismissed the suggestions that might be what would now be called “deceptive and misleading” content with the familiar “she'll never know”.  Ten years on from Dodge’s La Femme debacle, old habits were dying hard.

Single girl Sydney Sweeney (b 1997) amply filling the cover of Cosmopolitan's “Love Edition”, January 2026.

When in 1965 of Helen Gurley Brown was appointed editor of the glossy women’s magazine Cosmopolitan, the title switched focus to a publication aimed almost exclusively at the emerging and growing demographic with disposable income in which FoMoCo would become interested.  In what proved a perfect conjunction: a target market with (1) economic independence, (2) social freedom, (3) an embryonic feminist awareness and (4) the birth control pill, the magazine thrived, surviving even the rush of imitators its success spawned.  It’s a bit of a long bow to suggest Cosmopolitan for decades reproduced variations of 1962’s best seller advice manual in a monthly, glossy package but clearly, there was a gap in the market and there were more similarities than differences.  The approach was a success but there was criticism.  Conservatives disliked the choices in photography and the ideas young women were receiving.  Second wave feminists were divided, some approved but others thought the themes regressive, a retreat from the overtly political agenda of the early movement into something too focused on fun and fashion, reducing women yet again to objects seeking male approbation.  FoMoCo, neutral on the squabbles, sold women six-cylinder Mustangs by the truckload, feminism's S&theSG and capitalism's 6&theSG proving symbiotic.

Kitsch

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 & kitchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is kitsch (especially collectively) or kitsches.  Kitschesque is non-standard.

Kitsch can become ironic: a lava lamp in "hot dog stand" red & mustard.  Lava lamps were in the 1970s briefly fashionable as symbols of the modern but were soon re-classified kitsch.  In the twenty-first century, such was the demand that re-creations of the originals became available, bought because they were so kitsch; iconic can thus be ironic.

For something that lacks an exact definition, the concept of kitsch seems well-understood  although not all would agree on what objects are kitsch and what are not.  Nor 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 be part of the motif include rotary dial phones ("retro" can be a thing which transcends kitsch) and three ceramic ducks "flying" up the wall (although when lava lamps were in vogue, lava lamp buyers probably already thought them kitsch).  An application of physics of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, the lava lamps once so admired by stoned hippies work by exploiting differences in density, thermal expansion, and buoyancy within two immiscible fluids (ie they do not mix), the dynamics driven by a localized heat source and the construction is simple; in a variously shaped glass vessel, there is a wax-based compound (the “lava”, which typically is paraffin wax mixed with additives to adjust density and melting point), floating in a liquid (usually water or a water-based solution with salts or alcohols to achieve the desired density).  At the base of the vessel there is a source of light and heat which traditionally was an incandescent bulb, the heat a product of the inefficiency with which the energy was converted into light; when the bulb is switched on, the liquid becomes heated and as the wax absorbs some of this heat, it melts and thermally expands, density thereby decreasing to the point it’s slightly less dense than the surrounding liquid.  Buoyant force then causes the wax to rise through the liquid in blobs, randomness meaning tiny variations in surface tension and viscosity create infinitely different shapes of the rounded forms which cool as they move away from the heat source, meaning the wax contracts, increasing its density beyond that of the liquid, causing it to sink back toward the bottom.  Because it’s a closed system working on a continuous cycle, the heating & cooling repeats continuously and, component failure and material decay aside, in theory a lava lamp could run forever.

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.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi regime devoted much attention to spectacle and representational architecture & 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, executed competently 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 misocapnic 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.

To the Berghof, his alpine headquarters on the Bavarian Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, Barvaria, 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 gifts sometimes would be accompanied by suggestive photographs and offers of marriage.  Truly that was “working towards the Führer”.  At the aesthetic level he of course didn't approve but appreciated the gesture although they seem never to have appeared in photographs of the house’s principle rooms, banished to places like the many surrounding buildings including the conservatory of Hans Wichenfeld (the chalet on which the Berghof was based).

Hitler's study in the Berghof with only matched cushions (left) and the conservatory (centre & right) with some pillowshams (embroidered with swastikas and the initials A.H.).

In the US, Life magazine in October 1939 (a few weeks after the Nazis had invaded Poland) published a lush color feature focused on Hitler’s paintings and the Berghof, the piece a curious mix of what even then were called “human-interest stories”, political commentary and artistic & architectural criticism.  One heading :“Paintings by Adolf Hitler: The Statesman Longs to Be an Artist and Helps Design His Mountain Home” illustrates the flavor but this was a time before the most awful aspects of Nazi rule were understood and Life’s editors were well-aware a significant proportion of its readership were well disposed towards Hitler’s regime.  Still, there was some wry humor in the text, assessing the Berghof as possessing the qualities of a “…combination of modern and Bavarian chalet” styles, something “awkward but interesting” while the interiors, “…designed and decorated with Hitler’s active collaboration, are the comfortable kind of rooms a man likes, furnished in simple, semi-modern, sometimes dramatic style. The furnishings are in very good taste, fashioned of rich materials and fine woods by the best craftsmen in the Reich.”  Life seemed to be most taken with the main stairway leading up from the ground floor which was judged “a striking bit of modern architecture.”  Whether or not the editors were aware Hitler thought “modern architecture” suitable only for factories, warehouses and such isn’t clear.  They also had fun with what hung on the walls, noting: “Like other Nazi leaders, Hitler likes pictures of nudes and ruins” but anyway concluded that “in a more settled Germany, Adolf Hitler might have done quite well as an interior decorator.”  There was no comment on the Führer’s pillows and cushions.

Lindsay Lohan themed pillowshams are available.

Whatever Life’s views on him as interior decorator, decades later, his architect was prepared to note the dictator’s “beginner’s mistakes” as designer.  In Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences), published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled:

“A huge picture window in the living room, famous for its size and the fact that it could be lowered, was Hitler s pride.  It offered a view of the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, and Salzburg. However, Hitler had been inspired to situate his garage underneath this window; when the wind was unfavorable, a strong smell of gasoline penetrated into the living room.  All in all, this was a ground plan that would have been graded D by any professor at an institute of technology. On the other hand, these very clumsinesses gave the Berghof a strongly personal note. The place was still geared to the simple activities of a former weekend cottage, merely expanded to vast proportions.”

He commented also on the pillowshams: “The furniture was bogus old- German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression.  There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of "eternal loyalty."  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: "I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them."

The gush was also trans-Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1870-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  The idea of Hitler having a "friend" (as the word conventionally is understood) is not plausible but that an invitation was extended might in the circumstances have been though is unexceptional.  Although when younger, Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals).  General Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather breeches) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of probably hundreds of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when he claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

As a "cut & paste" working journalist used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, he inserted and deleted as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food severed at der Tabellenführer, (the leader's table) the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) in polka-dots.

Briefly, Putzi Hanfstaengl was engaged to the US author Djuna Barnes who, although she denied being predominantly lesbionic, was regarded by some contemporary critics as having written the most definitive expressions of lesbian culture since Sappho.  It was one of Hanfstaengl's wives who spoke the most succinct thumbnail sketch of Hitler's sexuality: “I am telling you Putzi, he is a neuter.”

Fitz-Gerald was though skilled at his craft and interpolated enough that was known to be true or at least plausible to paint a veneer of authenticity over the whole.  Of the guests he reported: (1) Hitler’s long-time German-American acquaintance & benefactor (when speaking of Hitler, both better words than "friend") Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl (1887–1975 and a one-time friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) was a fine piano player (which nobody ever denied), (2) that Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) was a wine connoisseur (he entered the wine business after marrying into the Henkell family’s Wiesbaden business although his mother-in-law remained mystified, remarking of his career in government it was: “curious my most stupid son-in-law should have turned out to be the most successful” and (3) that Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) was an engaging dinner companion and a “droll raconteur” (it is true Goebbels’ cynicism and cruel wit could be amusing even to those appalled by his views, something like the way one didn’t have to agree with the press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) to enjoy his tart cleverness).  Much of the credibility was however sustained by it being so difficult for most to “check the facts” and few would have been able to find out that in the spring of 1936 when Fitz-Gerald claimed to be enjoying the Führer’s hospitality, the quaint old Haus Wachenfeld was part of a vast building site, the place being transformed into the sprawling Berghof, the whole area unliveable and far from the idyllic scene portrayed.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Dutifully, Hitler acknowledged the many paintings which 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 artists 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 court photographer (Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957)) to supervise the exhibition and the depictions of happy, healthy peasants and heroic nude warriors returned.  Hitler must have been satisfied with Herr Hoffman's selections because in November that year he conferred on him the honorific "professor", a title he would award about as freely as he would later create field marshals.

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…

Matinée de septembre (September Morn (1911)), oil on canvas by Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (not currently on display).

What makes something defined (or re-defined) as kitsch is thus a construct of factors including artistic merit (most obviously when lacking), the price tag and the social or political circumstances of the time.  When Paul Émile showed Matinée de Septembre at the Paris Salon of 1912, it did not attract much comment, female nudes having for decades been a common sight in the nation’s galleries (although there had been a legislative crackdown on low-cost commercial products, presumably on the basis that while the “educated classes” could appreciate nudes in art, working class men ogled naked women merely for titillation).  In other words, Parisian salon-goers had seen it all before and Matinée de Septembre, while judged competently executed, was in no way compelling or exceptional.  The work may thus have been relegated to an occasional footnote in the history of art were it not for the reaction in Chicago when a reproduction appeared in the street-front window of a photography store.  Reflecting the contrasting aspirations of those Europeans who first settled in the continent, in the US there has always been a tension between Puritanism and Libertarianism and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the USSC (US Supreme Court) is that it has, over centuries, sometimes imperfectly, managed usually to interpret the constitution in a way which straddles these competing imperatives with rulings cognizant of what prevailing public opinion will accept and while the judges weren’t required to rule on the matter of Matinée de Septembre’s appearance in a shop window, the brief furore was an example of one of the country’s many moral panics.

Although at first instance a jury found the work not obscene and thus fit for public view, local politicians quickly responded and found a way to ensure such things were restricted to art galleries and museums, places less frequented by those “not of the better classes”.  The notoriety gained from becoming a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) made it one of the best-known paintings in the US and, not being copyrighted, widely it was reproduced in prints, on accessories and parodied in what would now be called memes.  The popularity however meant a re-assessment of the artistic merit and many critics dismissed it as “mere kitsch” although it was in 1957 donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art where it has on occasion been hung as well as being loaned to overseas institutions.  The Met placed it in storage in 2014 and while that’s not unusual, whether the decision was taken because of it’s the depiction of one so obviously youthful isn’t clear.  The artist claimed his model was at the time aged 16 (thus some two years older than the star-cross’d lover in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) and half a decade older than the girl who appeared on the cover of Blind Faith’s one-off eponymous album (1969)) but there is now heightened sensitivity to such depictions.

Kitsch also has a history also of becoming something else.  As recently as the 1970s, tea-towels, placemats, oven mitts, tea-trays and plenty else in the West was available 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.

Kitsch at work: Lava Lamps and Random Number Generation

Some may have dismissed the Lava Lamp as "kitsch" but the movement of the blobs possesses properties which have proved useful in a way their inventor could never have anticipated.  The US-based Cloudflare is a “nuts & bolts” internet company which provides various services including content delivery, DNS (Domain Name Service), domain registration and cybersecurity; in some aspects of the internet, Cloudflare’s services underpin as many as one in five websites so when Cloudflare has a problem, the world has a problem.  For many reasons, the generation of truly random numbers is essential for encryption and other purposes but to create them continuously and at scale is a challenge.  It’s a challenge even for home decorators who want a random pattern for their tiles, their difficulty being that however a large number of tiles in two or more colors are arranged, more often than not, at least one pattern will be perceived.  That doesn’t mean the tiles are not in a random arrangement, just that people’s expectation of “randomness” is a shape with no discernible pattern whereas in something like a floor laid with tiles, in a random distribution of colors, it would be normal to see patterns; they too are a product of randomness in the same way there’s no reason why if tossing a coin ten times, it cannot all ten times fall as a head.  What interior decorators want is not necessarily randomness but a depiction of randomness as it exists in the popular imagination.

Useful kitsch: Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.  Had this been in an installation in a New York gallery circa 1972, it would have been called art.  

For most purposes, computers can be good enough at generating random numbers but in the field of cryptography, they’re used to create encryption keys and the concern is that what one computer can construct, another computer might be able to deconstruct because both digital devices are working in ways which are in some ways identical.  For this reason, using a machine alone has come to be regarded as a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) simply because they are deterministic.  A True Random Number Generator (TRNG) uses something genuinely random and unpredictable and this can be as simple as the tiny movements of the mouse in a user’s hand or elaborate as a system of lasers interacting with particles.

One of Cloudflare’s devices encapsulating unpredictability (and thus randomness) is an installation of 100 lava lamps, prominently displayed on a wall in their San Francisco office.  Dubbed Cloudflare’s “Wall of Entropy”, it uses an idea proposed as long ago as 1996 which exploited the fluid movements in an array of lava lamps being truly random; as far as is known, it remains impossible to model (and thus predict) the flow.  What Cloudflare does is every few milliseconds take a photograph of the lamps, the shifts in movement converted into numeric values.  As well as the familiar electrical mechanism, the movement of the blobs is influenced by external random events such as temperature, vibration and light, the minute variations in each creating a multiplier effect which is translated into random numbers, 16,384 bits of entropy each time.

Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.

The arrangement of colors which avoids any two being together, in the horizontal or vertical, was a deliberate choice rather than randomness although, there's no reason why, had the selection truly been random, this wouldn't have been the result.  Were there an infinite number of Walls of Entropy, every combination would exist including ones which avoid color paring and ones in which the colors are clustered to the extent of perfectly matching rows, colums or sides.  What Cloudflare have done in San Francisco is make the lamps conform to the popular perception of randomness and that's fine because the colors have no (thus far observed) effect on the function.  In art and for other purposes, what's truly random is sometimes modified so it conforms to the popular idea of randomness.