Finding kitsch's inner beauty - The Diigo Meta page

• 08 Jun 09
  

  jagannath rao adukuri

  "Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations," said Harold Rosenberg, the great art critic. Milan Kundera argued, "No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition." And they were writing before the appearance of "reality" television, which repackages kitschy old conventions of popular drama as public competition, bringing to "real" people the humiliation and cruelty traditionally endured by imaginary losers in mass-culture fiction

  • "Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations," said Harold Rosenberg, the great art critic. Milan Kundera argued, "No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition." And they were writing before the appearance of "reality" television, which repackages kitschy old conventions of popular drama as public competition, bringing to "real" people the humiliation and cruelty traditionally endured by imaginary losers in mass-culture fiction
• 09 May 09
  

  David Powelstock

  • We miss the point if we think that beauty in art or literature or music has finished its job when it provides pleasure. Scruton argues, reasonably, that beauty also makes ethical demands on us. Its existence challenges us to "renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world."

    
    

    Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please, a level requiring a minimum of mental effort.

    
    

    Beauty, on the other hand, demands we consider its meaning. It implies a larger world than the one we deal with every day. Even for those with no religious belief, it suggests the possibility of transcendence. Faith has declined in much of the West, but "art bears enduring witness to the spiritual hunger and immortal longings of our species." As one reviewer has already pointed out, Scruton's "perspective is religious without belief."

    
    

    At the other end of the scale, kitsch ("that peculiar disease that we can instantly recognise but never precisely define, and whose Austro-German name links it to the mass movements and crowd sentiments of the 20th century") degrades beauty through the Disneyfication of art. Kitsch trivializes human conflict and demotes feeling into bathos. It's a mould that forms, as Scruton says, over a living culture.

  • We miss the point if we think that beauty in art or literature or music has finished its job when it provides pleasure. Scruton argues, reasonably, that beauty also makes ethical demands on us. Its existence challenges us to "renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world."

    
    

    Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please, a level requiring a minimum of mental effort.

  • 1 more annotations...
  • • The moral effect of kitsch may be obscured by sentiment but it's there. Kitsch, Scruton correctly points out, is a heartless world. It directs emotion away from its proper target towards sugary stereotypes, permitting us to pay passing tribute to love and sorrow without truly feeling them.
• 02 May 09
  

  sergioaugusto Pinto

  Culture

• 30 Apr 09
  

  Nicole Leffel

  essays academia kitsch art beauty

  • an imitation of human feeling wrapped in a thick layer of cuteness.
  • Kitsch has its defenders, often articulate ones. Typically, they find it endearing because full-bore kitsch can be enjoyed in two ways at the same moment, for itself and as a parody of itself. A one-size-fits-all style, it's designed to satisfy audiences at any level of sophistication.
  • 3 more annotations...
  • • Scruton argues, reasonably, that beauty also makes ethical demands on us. Its existence challenges us to "renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world."
    • Kitsch encourages us to dwell on our own satisfactions and anxieties; it tells us to be pleased with what we have always felt and known. It reaches us at the level where we are easiest to please, a level requiring a minimum of mental effort.
    • it suggests the possibility of transcendence.
• 29 Apr 09
  

  Jason K

  kitsch

Page Comments

• 
  jagannath rao adukuri on 2009-06-08
  Apart from the fact that kitsch is a product of mass culture of he modern times there is the need in modern democratic societies to serve up constant kitsch to its ever hungry populace whose immediate cultural needs need to be satisfied before they turn into unhealthy expressions of anger and resentment against the ruling elite .In India calendar art has played an important role in satisfying the need for "beauty" but surprisingly some fine art has emerged out of plain kitsch too .We too often find some really fine specimens of art in rural and traditional painting styles although in their mass production form they turn out to be plain kitsche.The afternoon "soaps" on the glitzy T.V. channels are thinly disguised attempts to pass off as profound social commentaries but basically they are kitsche catering to the bored housewife category.

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