Kitsch

La palabra kitsch se origina del término alemán y yiddish "etwas verkitschen". Kitsch define al arte que es considerado como una copia inferior de un estilo existente. También se utiliza el término "kitsch" en un sentido más libre para referirse a cualquier arte que es pretencioso o de mal gusto.

Historia

Aunque su etimología es incierta, está ampliamente difundido que la palabra se originó en los mercados de arte de Munich entre los años 1860 y 1870, el termino era usado para describir los dibujos y bocetos baratos, hotly marketable pictures o sketches (El termino en ingles mal pronunciado por los alemanes, o mal asociado con el verbo en aleman verkitschen, que significa 'hacer barato'). Otra palabra alemana kitsch esta asociada al verbo kitschen, que significa "to scrape up mud from the street". El Kitsch apelaba a un gusto vulgar de la nueva y adinerada burguesía de Munich que pensaba, como muchos nuevos ricos que podían alcanzar el status que envidiaban a la clase tradicional de las élites culturales copiando las características más evidentes de sus hábitos culturales.

Lo kitsch empezó a ser definido como un objeto estético empobrecido con mala manufactura, significado más la identificación del consumidor con un nuevo status social y menos con una respuesta estética genuina. Lo Kitsch era considerado estéticamente empobrecido y moralmente dudoso. El sacrificio de una vida estética convertida en pantomima, usualmente, aun que no siempre, con el interés de señalar un status social.

Archivo:September morn.jpg

la pintura September Morn de Paul Chabas paso a ser kitsch por sus falta de características interesantes: contraste, lineas coordinadas y un tema digo pero que raya en lo melodramático

La palabra se popularizo en los años 1930s por los teoricos Clement Greenberg, Hermann Broch, y Theodor Adorno, que intentaban definir lo avant garde y el kitsch como opuestos. En aquella epoca el mundo del arte persivia la popularidad del kitsch como un peligro para la cultura. Los argumentos the los tres teoricos confiaban en una definición implícita del kitsch como una falsa consciencia, un termino Marxista que significa una actitud mental presente dentro de las estructuras del capitalismo que esta equivocada en cuanto a sus propios deseos y necesidades. Los marxistas suponen que entonces existe una separación entre la situación verdadera y su fenomenología.

Adorno perceived this in terms of what he called the "culture industry", where the art is controlled and formulated by the needs of the market and given to a passive population which accepts it — what is marketed is art that is non-challenging and formally incoherent, but which serves its purpose of giving the audience leisure and something to watch. It helps serve the oppression of the population by capitalism by distracting them from their alienation. Contrarily, art for Adorno is supposed to be subjective, challenging, and oriented against the oppressiveness of the power structure. He claimed that kitsch is parody of catharsis, and a parody of aesthetic consciousness.

Broch called kitsch "the evil within the value-system of art" — that is, if true art is "good", kitsch is "evil". While art was creative, Broch held that kitsch depended solely on plundering creative art by adopting formulas that seek to imitate it, limiting itself to conventions and demanding a totalitarianism of those recognizable conventions. To him, kitsch was not the same as bad art; it formed a system of its own. He argued that kitsch involved trying to achieve "beauty" instead of "truth" and that any attempt to make something beautiful would lead to kitsch.

Greenberg held similar views; believing that the avant garde arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society, and seeing kitsch and art as opposites. He outlined this in his famous essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch". One of his more controversial claims was that kitsch was equivalent to Academic art: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch." He argued this based on the fact that Academic art, such as that in the 19th century, was heavily centered in rules and formulations that were taught and tried to make art into something learnable and easily expressible. He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as it became heavily criticized. While its true that some Academic art might have been kitsch, not all of it is, and not all kitsch is academic.

Other theorists over time have also linked kitsch to totalitarianism. The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), defined it as "the absolute denial of shit." His argument was that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions."

In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast, "everything that infringes on kitsch," including individualism, doubt, and irony, "must be banished for life" in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, "Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch."

For Kundera, "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."

Arte académico

19th century Academic art is still often seen in terms of being kitsch, though this view is coming under attack from modern critics. Perhaps it is best to resort to the theory of Broch, who argued that the genesis of kitsch was in Romanticism, which wasn't kitsch itself but which opened the door for kitsch taste, by emphasizing the need for expressive and evocative art work. Academic art, which continued this tradition Romanticism, has a twofold reason for its association with kitsch.

It is not that it was found to be accessible — in fact, it was under its reign that the difference between high art and low art was first defined by intellectuals. Academic art strove towards remaining in a tradition rooted in the aesthetic and intellectual experience. Intellectual and aesthetic qualities of the work were certainly there — good examples of Academic art were even admired by the avant garde artists who would rebel against it. There was some critique, however, that in being "too beautiful" and democratic it made art look easy, non-involving and superficial.

Many Academic artists tried to use subjects from low art and ennoble them as high art by subjecting them to interest in the inherent qualities of form and beauty, trying to democratize the art world. In England, certain academics even advocated that the artist should work for the marketplace. In some sense the goals of democratization succeeded, and the society was flooded with Academic art, the public lining up to see art exhibitions as they do to see movies today. Literacy in art became widespread, as did the practice of art making, and there was a blurring between high and low culture. This often led to poorly made or poorly conceived artworks being accepted as high art. Often art which was found to be kitsch showed technical talent, such as in creating accurate representations, but lacked good taste.

Secondly, the subjects and images presented in Academic art, though original in their first expression, were disseminated to the public in the form of prints and postcards — which was often actively encouraged by the artists — and these images were endlessly copied in kitschified form until they became well known cliches.

The avant garde reacted to these developments by separating itself from the aspects of art such as pictoral representation and harmony that were appreciated by the public, in order to make a stand for the importance of the aesthetic. Many modern critics try not to pigeonhole Academic art into the kitsch side of the art/kitsch dichotomy, recognizing its historical role in the genesis of both the avant garde and kitsch.

Postmodernismo

Kitsch Las Vegas welcomed people with a kitsch sign decades before this photo was taken.

Con el surgimiento del Postmodernismo en los años 1980s, el borde entre lo Kitsch y el arte se volvió otra vez borroso. también surgió el concepto de Camp que es una apreciación irónica que de otra manera se consideraría tonta y pedante, como Carmen Miranda con sus sombreros tutti-frutti, o de otra manera Kitsch, como eventos culturales populares que tienen una fecha en particular o son inapropiadamente serios, como las películas de de ciencia ficción con bajo presupuestos de los años 1950s y 60s. "Camp" se deriva del termino frances camper que significa "presentarse de una manera exagerada" Susan Sontag argued that camp was an attraction to the human qualities which expressed themselves in "failed attempts at seriousness", the qualities of having a particular and unique style and of reflecting the sensibilities of the era. It involved an aesthetic of artifice rather than of nature. Indeed, hard-line supporters of camp culture, have long insisted that "camp is a lie that dares to tell the truth."

Much of Pop art attempted to incorporate images from popular culture and kitsch; artists were able to maintain legitimacy by saying they were "quoting" imagery to make conceptual points, usually with the appropriation being ironic. In Italy, a movement arose called the Nuovi Nuovi ("new new"), which took a different route: instead of quoting kitsch in an ironic stance, it founded itself in a primitivism which embraced the ugliness and garishness, emulating it as a sort of anti-aesthetic.

Conceptual art and Deconstructionism posed as an interesting challenge, because, like kitsch, they downplayed the formal structure of the artwork in favor of elements which enter it by relating to other spheres of life.

Despite this, many in the art world continue to have an adherence to some sense of the dichotomy between art and kitsch, excluding all sentimental and realistic art from being considered seriously. This has come under attack by critics who argue for a reappreciation of Academic art and traditional figurative painting, without the concern for it appearing innovative or new. A different tactic is taken by the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum, who composed a manifesto entitled "On Kitsch", where he makes a political point of declaring himself a Kitsch painter rather than an artist, even though very few critics would actually think of his artwork as kitsch.

Nerdrum has claimed that in his career and the career of many other artists, the art establishment, what he calls the Curatoriat, imposes values and prevents honest personal expression — he turns around the formulations of Adorno and Kundera. He states that while art serves the public, kitsch serves personal expression; art serves politics, while kitsch loses itself in the eternal and is pure sensuality, "naked talent exposing itself". Nerdrum declares: "Art exists for art itself and addresses the public. Kitsch serves life and addresses the human being."

Postmodernism is also under attack by Nerdrum, because it holds to a camp taste, which only appreciates kitsch in terms of the irony of a "failed seriousness", while he argues that kitsch should in fact be looked at as real, sincere expression of beauty.

In any case, whatever difficulty there is in defining its boundaries with art, the word kitsch is still in common usage to label anything felt in bad taste.

Uso del termino Kitsch en Hispanoamérica

México

En México la palabra tiene un uso limitado al mundo del arte moderno, su uso generalmente implica definir una obra de arte o un suceso que tiene características vulgares, de mal gusto o popular. La palabra probablemente pueda ser comparada con la palabra Naco, pero a diferencia de esta lo que se define como Kitsch aun que de mal gusto adquiere una valoración artística o por lo menos positiva.