Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The enduring power of kitsch

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–19 of 19 posts

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#11

Post by TheGRS »

Kitsch feels easier to understand as just guilty indulgence. Some people do look at the calendar at the mall featuring cute babies playing jazz instruments and want to buy it for what it is: a series of cute images to delight you and your desk mates. I would personally buy it ironically, but still get a lot of enjoyment out of its genuine attempt. It would definitely make me smile by making me laugh inside every time I see it. FWIW I think both views validate the concept of kitsch.

Not covered in this article strangely, but kitsch is the most powerful when its genuine. I see the calendar of cats doing yoga poses and it only brings me fleeting joy, its trying to be kitsch, and it doesn't feel like the "artist" really put the effort in. When they do I can feel it, and for some reason I'm weirdly inspired by it (probably because if I really tried, I'd put out something like that).

I know movie examples way better than attempts at painting or sculpture. I watch bad movies weekly and its one of my favorite indulgences. When we watch a Neil Breen movie I can feel the genuine attempt to make a movie that says something...and failing spectacularly at it. When I watch Sharknado I see a pretty cheap attempt at a gag that might delight me for a bit, but feels empty in its attempt to make real entertainment. Ed Wood movies have that sort of charm, they score F's in every department from acting to sound editing, but you can feel the energy of the cast and crew as they try to make something special and fail. Hallmark Christmas movies are probably the best analogous thing to the sort of kitsch we think of when we use the word, they're ostensibly pro-Christmas spirit with a middling cast and plot line, but usually there's an element of genuine attempt to make something your 50-year old aunt would enjoy while she sips on egg nog. Personally, I love that shit.

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#13

Post by Tade0 »

torlok wrote: post #10
edgarvaldes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are quick to admit that people take bad financial decisions because of lack of education. Same with art and interior design/decoration, I think.

Art is a matter of taste, financial advice much less so. I can't imagine education in art affecting what you like, unless you only care about what others think of your taste.

You mean to tell me you don't believe in acquired taste?

A person who spent years studying art was necessarily introduced to much more of it than someone who didn't.

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#14

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

I like kitsch. I like that post card in the article.* I also like the old masters whose works were often commissioned from uneducated patrons who were lacking in any notion of "achieving wisdom" as the article puts it. I enjoy those works even without the historical contexts. To me many of them stand on their own and the ones that don't I have little interest in regardless of the historical value.

Meanwhile I don't like much of the art that is supposed to have intellectual value. I read a book about van Gogh and I still don't like any of his works: not enough kitsch for me to enjoy it I guess. I also don't care much about the life of the artist or the symbolism (in the case of van Gogh, any symbolism was probably unintended anyway). In fact in literature now we are supposed to not care about the author and interpret it on our own because Roland Barthes told us to.

Nobody has been able convincingly to explain to me why struggling to understand the artist's feelings from his work makes those feelings worth anything, or why those feelings are any different or more complex than regular feelings if they are wrapped in layers of symbolism.

I suspect that is in part why modern/contemporary artists and their consumers keep falling into the kitsch trap as described in the article. Perhaps some art consumers can give convincing answers to some of the above issues but I believe a large enough number cannot which is distorting their market.

*And look - They even reused the same work for an Easter postcard. Now it is double kitsch: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275158490852

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#15

Post by ninalanyon »

ursamin wrote: post #2

The notion of kitsch is ultimately an expression of disdain by the elite and the artisan classes that serve them towards common man. The principle reason that the phenomena of kitsch -did not- occur in earlier eras (where we certainly had elites and servant artisan classes - painters, architects, musicians, ..) is that their yet existed a shared cultural context (in the widest sense including religious and ~metaphysi…

Odd Nerdrum, a famous Norwegian painter, has described his own work as kitsch. Nonetheless it hangs in prestigious galleries around the world.

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#16

Post by hansjorg »

Tade0 wrote: post #13
torlok wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art is a matter of taste, financial advice much less so. I can't imagine education in art affecting what you like, unless you only care about what others think of your taste.

You mean to tell me you don't believe in acquired taste? A person who spent years studying art was necessarily introduced to much more of it than someone who didn't.

Many people would say that coffee is an acquired taste. Are you saying that people who don't like coffee are in the wrong?

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#17

Post by zitterbewegung »

memhole wrote: post #9
zitterbewegung wrote: post #6

Is GenAI art kitsch taken to its logical extreme ? I would think so especially given the backlash by artists.

I’d happily put it with ms paint art. If anything it’ll make it more palatable. I just don’t like the junk food aspect. At first glance it’s neat and a second longer you question what dimension the subjects came from

To clarify "to its logical conclusion" technically GenAI art encompasses some type of "ultimate kitsch" since it takes in all possible art and returns some kind of statistical representation of what you typed in.

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#18

Post by ursamin »

ggm wrote: post #4
ursamin wrote: post #2

The notion of kitsch is ultimately an expression of disdain by the elite and the artisan classes that serve them towards common man. The principle reason that the phenomena of kitsch -did not- occur in earlier eras (where we certainly had elites and servant artisan classes - painters, architects, musicians, ..) is that their yet existed a shared cultural context (in the widest sense including religious and ~metaphysi…

Mate, everyone's gran wants a China kitten washing its face be they a coal miner or a coal magnate. If you think kitsch is a tool of working class oppression you haven't spent enough time in the China collections of the museum. The commoditisation of art is personified by "bubbles" by John Everertt Millais and "Monarch of the Glen" by Edwin Landseer. The first is in the Lady lever collection at Port sunlight across f…

[flagged]

Re: The enduring power of kitsch

#19

Post by ursamin »

edgarvaldes wrote: post #5
ursamin wrote: post #2

The notion of kitsch is ultimately an expression of disdain by the elite and the artisan classes that serve them towards common man. The principle reason that the phenomena of kitsch -did not- occur in earlier eras (where we certainly had elites and servant artisan classes - painters, architects, musicians, ..) is that their yet existed a shared cultural context (in the widest sense including religious and ~metaphysi…

We are quick to admit that people take bad financial decisions because of lack of education. Same with art and interior design/decoration, I think.

No no no. I am -not- pinning this on "education". Note: a divergence between the world views (in a comprehensive sense) between elites and those who cater to their cultural consumption and the rest.
Post reply on HN