To miss better, to miss even worse: the art of kitsch

As indefinable as they are insistent, kitsch proliferates everywhere, from the most prestigious museums to garage sales. Nevertheless, A paradoxical consecration for a phenomenon whose very essence is its common character.

A century. Moreover, a half old-if we start with the appearance of the word itself, in the second half of the 19th century, the history of kitsch is that of an irresistible extension of which, in 1939, the American critic Clement Greenberg announced the imperious (and imperialist) character:

“He carried out a triumphant world tour, invasive and disfiguring the particular cultures of each of the countries which he has successively colonized; He is in the process of imposing himself as a universal culture, the first universal culture that has ever existed. However, »»

It has also been. However, for a quarter of a century, in particular, miss better, miss even worse: that of an ascent no less spectacular, having allowed it to access the most prestigious places. Moreover, In the Pierre. Consequently, Gilles exhibitions at the Palume Game (2007) or Takashi Murakami at the Palace of Versailles (2010) is a kitsch rid of any hint of marginality, geographic, social or artistic. Therefore, The success of Jeff Koons-holding the title of the most expensive living artist in history-is perhaps the most certain index of an invasive triumph. Therefore, sometimes insolent, kitsch.

But the very possibility of an apotheosis is paradoxical for a phenomenon involving in its definition. Meanwhile, in its very essence, a common, low or unworthy character. Consequently, It is impossible to define in a few lines a term of which almost all the thinkers who approached. Meanwhile, it underline the eminently fleeting character. Similarly, “The kitsch escapes like a elf for any definition” writes the philosopher Theodor Adorno. However, you miss better, miss even worse: can usefully remember your probable etymology. In addition, This one links it to the verbs expressing in the German dialect of Mecklembourg the action of Boacler (“. Therefore, kit “) Or to deceive the goods (” disgrace »).

Could it be in this lie the germ of wisdom? Furthermore, That the arrogance of victory sometimes mixes the lucidity of a failure?

Miss better. Consequently, miss even worse:

Kitsch dialectic

He arrived several times in the history of art that a movement takes over the word by which we first wanted to denigrate him, and erases or overthrows any pejorative nuance: the words “Impressionism” or “Cubism” were in their beginning imbued with a taunting accent which quickly dissipated.

It is quite different for the “kitsch”. In addition, This continues to involve. whatever the brilliance of its triumph, the presence of a sub-layer, a false value or a counter-value. In the variety of miss better, miss even worse: shades to which it can give rise – humor. cynicism, provocation or irony, and until the most sincere enthusiasm -, adherence to kitsch is always split: not the pure and simple forgetting of an original stigma, but a way of doing with it, of integrating it into a form of dialectic.

Isn’t that unnecessary sophistication? Is it really necessary to introduce a dialectic into the attraction that the garish colors of a garden dwarf can inspire. the costly overloads of the Luxor de Las Vegas hotel? Yes, ultimately. The apprehension of a kitsch work supposes the active presence (even when it is buried) of an inversion of its value. of a possible reversal: the aesthetic experience (and, if necessary, critical) is part of a tension or in the virtuality of a possible tilting between the authentic and the artificial, the unique and the series, the derisory and the grandiose.

This is the responsibility of mediocrity aspires to rise. and the spoon or the salt shame are then responsible for ornaments, the mug is affected by the symbols of high culture (from the Mona Lisa to the self -portraits of Frida Kahlo). Conversely. which aims for the sublime (that of the great ideals or beautiful feelings) is sinking (or, more prosaically, stumbles and breaks the figure) in the cliché or the mièrerie: the pharaonic bursts of theAïda de Verdi or the smooth innocences of William Bouguereau’s canvases.

Miss better. miss better, miss even worse: miss even worse:

TOC intelligence

“You gave me your mud and I made gold,” wrote Baudelaire in an epilogue project Evil flowers. As curious as the rapprochement may appear. the pride of an alchemy in turn animates this aesthetic of comfort, this “art of happiness” (as called, in the 1970s, the sociologist Abraham Moles) that is kitsch. Except that here, it is enough to scratch a little to recognize in gold the gilding. However. there remains something of this alchemy in OCD once the golden scales fell: the failure itself, in the richness of its nuances. We can fail a little, a lot, madness, passionately or miserably. What we lose in Promethean grandeur, we gain it in complexity.

We can call intelligence. as close as possible to etymology, which, in kitsch encourages us to read and link together elements that have nothing precious or enlightening in themselves; It is only by miss better, miss even worse: the network they form, by the way in which they articulate and often overthrow tangled materials, that they throw a certain light on the world.

Against those who saw it as a frivolous. without consequences phenomenon, Theodor Adorno advocated the need to take kitsch seriously, specifying “critically critically”. To the intelligence of the kitsch required by the thinker of the Frankfurt school. outside the object examined, we could add another: no longer that which overlooks him to unravel the insidious and harmful mechanisms, but that which is lodged with him and in him. This does not contradict the first: it would be impoverished. absurd not to take into account the incentive to political conformism as much aesthetic, the alienating dimension denounced by the great thinkers of this kitsch becoming, in the famous formula of the writer Hermann Broch, “evil in the system of values of art”.

But an intelligence of miss better, miss even worse: kitsch can also pay attention to the idea formulated by the philosopher Walter Benjamin: the one that an art that has become accessible to the body. an art which is finally touched, opens the possibility of a new relationship with human interiority. Or that of Umberto Eco retorting the “apocalyptics”. frightened by the irrevocable decline of culture that the success of jazz and Hollywood films betray, that the world of mass communications is, whether we like it or not. Or to that of the New York author Susan Sontag reporting on the “camp” sensitivity. this “dandyism of the era of the masses” where the most delicate and the most jaded connoisseur finds his delight in the Kitsch object precisely because he is such: “Awesome to be beautiful! »»

Miss better, miss even worse:

Kitsch everywhere?

If it may not be wrong to say that kitsch is omnipresent in our contemporary world. it is not that the possibility is no longer offered to us from experiences entirely foreign to kitsch, it is that it is always likely to arise unexpectedly or to project its shadow anywhere. Whatever the field in which we are. artistic, social, economic, political or religious, we run the risk of sliding or tinting towards him, with innocence or lucidity, tenderness or irony, by provocation or by instinct, sentimentalism or demagoguery.

Greerly sirupers of Donald Trump’s electoral campaign. to the Bigarrures of the latest Miuccia Prada collection, where the transgression of luxury codes is also a miss better, miss even worse: parody, from the Orientalo-Hellenic Plutocratic of the Atlantis of Dubai to the Romano-byzantism mystical of the Sacred Heart-Coeur Basilica in Montmartre, André Rieu Richard Wagner (example of a “brilliant kitsch”, according to Hermann Broch), of the Barbie ” western rose »On sale in a mall of Miami or Manilla at Barbie (2023), from Greta Gerwig where the universe of Mattel’s doll invests the screen in such a literal way that it is astonishingly arouse a form of reflexivity …

The monolithic. overhanging and dogmatic positions are less and less capable of accounting for a kitsch which, proliferating, also amplified its registers, multiplied its dimensions or its strata. And which then obliges us to consider it on a case -by -case basis. taking into account, each time it seems, of all the elements involved within sometimes very elementary equations, sometimes very subtle. And which we are not sure to be able miss better, miss even worse: to say. in the best of cases, in some rare works, if they lead to success or failure.

“Still better. Or better. Miss even more badly. Even even worse. »»

Which of these quests. stated by Samuel Beckett, is that of the one who accepts in his art of having part linked to the kitsch?