Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"The terraced garden was liberally adorned with earthenware gnomes, mushrooms, and all kinds of lifelike animals; on a pedestal stood a mirrored glass sphere, which distorted faces most comically; there were also an aeolian harp, several grottoes, and a fountain whose stream s made an ingenious figure in the air, while silver goldfish swam in its basin . . . Over the outside door was an ingenious mechanism, activated by air pressure as the door closed, which played with a pleasing tinkle the opening bars of Strauss’s "Freuet Euch des Lebens"."--Confessions of Felix Krull (1954) by Thomas Mann "Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. There is no counterconcept to kitsch. Its antagonist is not an idea but reality. To do away with kitsch it is necessary to change the landscape, as it was necessary to change the landscape of Sardinia in order to get rid of the malarial mosquito. [...] Kitsch is art that follows established rules at a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist."--The Tradition of the New (1959) by Harold Rosenberg |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Kitsch: The world of Bad Taste (Il Kitsch: antologia del cattivo gusto, 1968) is a book on kitsch by Gillo Dorfles.
The cover of the English edition says "With special contributions by John McHale Karl Pawek, Ludwig Giesz, Lotte H. Eisner, Ugo Volli, Vittorio Gregotti and Aleksa Celebonovic and essays by Clement Greenberg and Hermann Broch."
Editorial assistance on the English-language edition was given by Vivienne Menkes.
ToC
Kitsch -- Myth and kitsch -- Notes on the problem of kitsch / Hermann Broch -- Monuments -- Transpositions -- The Betrothed and Co. -- Leonardo and India in Los Angeles -- The plastic parthenon / John McHale -- Politics -- Avant-Garde and Kitsch / Clement Greenberg -- Birth and the family -- Death -- Religious trappings -- Christian kitsch / Karl Pawek -- Tourism and nature -- Kitsch-man as tourist / Ludwig Giesz -- Advertising -- The film -- Kitsch in the cinema / Lotte H. Eisner -- Pornokitsch and morals -- Pornograpy and pronokitsch / Ugo Volli -- Styling and architecture -- Kitsch and architecture / Vittorio Gregotti -- Traditional kitsch -- Notes on traditional kitsch / Aleksa Celebonovic.
References
- Dorfles, Gillo (1969, translated from the 1968 Italian version, Il Kitsch). Kitsch: The world of Bad Taste, Universe Books. LCCN 78-93950
See also
