From melodrama to kitsch (M. Mazzocut-Mis)

If, synthesizing, you try to line up the features that make a piece of literature, theatre, or cinema kitsch you come close to superimpose the kitsch to the melodramatic. Among the first features, universally recognized in kitsch, there are accumulation, repetition, synaesthesia, lyricism, which, if not make a work of art kitsch itself, can be used to call it melodramatic.

e. m. crawford @ flickr

It would seem then that kitsch embodies only a pejorative highlighting of melodramatic and that it is nurtured from it. The problem is not solved so simply. A distinction based only in degrees and not contents does not justify the emergence of a new category. The problem arises because the category of melodramatic as that of kitsch, is a "crossing" category. Melodramatic and kitsch need for an investigation, not through uniform literary genres, but passing all arts. From here there is the possibility for highlighting theoretical nuclei which make out of them two different aesthetic categories, although related.

A characteristic of kitsch, but lest present in melodrama is the light and feeling expression of the desire to escape. In melodrama, the emotions can last up to the breaking point, turning or revolting in the disgusting, although the sweetener moment will come soon to save the viewer. Kitsch is an complacent, projective and heady expression of the present. 

Kitsch does not want to resist the passage of time and embodies one of the most unsettling aspects of contemporary art: the ephemeral, that which evaporates, what you use and throw away, what you see once, if you're there to catch it, otherwise, you know you have lost one of the many enjoyable opportunities that life has in store for you. On the other hand the very ephemeral communication belongs more than ever to our present. It lies on the side of extemporaneous communication, fast, dead when it is consumed, but not because of that does it necessarily belongs to the lowest level. Although it is difficult to define melodrama and kitsch according to a final and stable set of features, it is certain, however, that both are not, as critics wanted them to be up to now, the expression of bad taste. First, because the reduction to bad taste is not simplifying, but confusing. Secondly, because the definition of bad taste has an implicit moral or moralising condemnation.

Mazzocut-Mis, Maddalena (2005) Il gonzo sublime. Dal patetico al kitsch. pp 179-180. Milano: Mimesis.

Crisis (R. Koolhaas)

"You know very well that at the high point of a crisis we always work by impulse, just the opposite of foresight, doing the most unexpected and wildest sort of thing. And at that moment precisely it could be said that there was a sort of saturation of reality, don't you think? Reality comes on fast, it shows itself with all its strength, and precisely at that moment the only way of facing it is to renounce dialectics, it's the moment for shooting somebody, jumping overboard, swallowing a bottle of gardenal like Guy, unleashing the dog, a free hand to do anything. Reason is only good to mummify reality in moments of calm or analyse its future storms, never to resolve a crisis of the moment. But there crises are like metaphysical outbursts, like a state that perhaps, if we hadn't chose the path of reason, would be the natural and current state of Pithecanthropus erectus." 

Koolhaas, Rem (1995) S, M, L, XL. New York: The Monacelli Press

"Kitsch" and culture I (G. Dorfles)

Gillo Dorfles (gliitaliani.it)

"Culture can become part of the process of industrialization that has now, so relentless, extended its ramifications to all productive sectors. And by saying 'production' it is clear that I intend to extend the meaning not only to the material production, but also to the intellectual, social, etc. Production of 'consumer goods' then, but also images, art objects, as the shares of any other consumable product. 

And it is precisely on this consumability and their ability to be consider as the 'spiritual bread' the same way as the material which covers the question of industrialization of culture, or of a culture that is, little by little - and perhaps, in the future, globally - industrialized. The art and culture, in fact, in their becoming increasingly the prey of the industrialized production and consummation process, in their frequent loss of intentionality, are likely to become an element that is the opposite of art and that is usually now defined by the German word Kitsch.

[...] However, if the taste was to be discussed at length and in depth, if there are, in turn, some similarities to physio-psychological analogies between aesthetic sense and taste, [...] what had been done instead is to  address the question of a possible 'phenomenology of bad taste', comparing it with 'good taste'. Understanding precisely such 'bad taste' (or Kitsch) as something tied not only to products - objects, art works - which possess peculiar features, but also linked to the very user, ie the individual 'with a bad taste' , thus establishing a kind of phenomenological question addressed to a particular class of individuals having the property and the good fortune (or misfortune?) to enjoy the works of art with a particular attitude of 'bad taste', then taken to benefit also from original artwork in a wrong, erroneous, fake way. This fact seems to me really the crux of the problem, to turn from an examination of the object of bad taste to the person who enjoys 'in bad taste' any object. In this way, along with works of art (or pseudo-art) of bad taste, we would have 'men of bad taste' (Kitschmenschen) and moreover we will assimilate this class of individuals as a particular category of users in a certain sense opposed to cultural and artistic elite; that elite which is, or should be, the custodian of the most updated and refined 'taste of the time'."  

Dorfles, Gillo (2003) Nuovi riti, nuovi miti. Milano: Skira.

The Bottle Castle

The Bottle Castle.

Images: Fantasy Worlds

Space to dwell - Space to live (F. Hundertwasser)

"Today, just like 100 years ago, urbanism must obey the most severe dogmatic rules. An urban planner must have the courage to chose plurality, especially when it is about romanticism and what is qualified as kitsch.

THE ABSENCE OF KITSCH MAKES OUR LIFE UNBEARABLE.

1977-86 Hundertwasserhaus, Viena
(Hundertwasser Architecture)

Architecture is always dominated by the totalitarian scheme of authority and those subjects who submit to it.

Architect and architecture are the reigning masters. Architecture's inhabitants and users are key. An urban planer should not become a minion of an international doctrine, poor and mediocre, which is currently in fashion.

Modernity has nothing revolutionary; it is the comeback to the human, to human dimensions, to the dreams of the individual, it is because of this it is revolutionary.

But fashion urban planers continue to abuse the man-inhabitant as if he was a guinea pig for dogmatic, educational and absurd architecture experiments.

Linearity, which is an alignment of windows the same size, absolutely straight skyline, flat floor, aggressive edges in straight angles are the signs of an oppressive architecture.

Architecture must elate man and not subject it. Just an urban planner who allows one building of a hundred to be different, away from the system of a totalitarian straight-line grid, especially industrial buildings which must be allowed to have the mark of a human romanticism."

Hundertwasser, F. (1993) Espace pour habiter - Espace pour vivre - Pour un autre politique du logement.
Entrevista escrita para una discusión, editada por la SPD Bundestagsfraktion, Bonn. Preguntas de Norbert mappes.Niediek, marzo 1993.


En: Taschen (1997) Hundertwasser Architecture. Pour une architecture plus proche de la nature et de l'homme. Köln: Taschen.

Hundertwasser Haus (F. Hundertwasser)

Kegelgasse and Löwengasse, Vienna. 

Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 1983-85.

More info: http://www.hundertwasserhaus.at/index.htm

Cunégonde et Malabar

Cunégonde et Malabar
Nice, France
Ben Vautier

Images: Fantasy Worlds

Il Giardino dei Tarocchi

Il Giardino dei Tarocchi
Gravicchio (Tuscany), Italy
Niki de Saint Phalle

Images: Fantasy Worlds
More info:
http://www.nikidesaintphalle.com/
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardino_dei_Tarocchi

Fantasy Worlds (I)

Deidi von Schaewen & John Maizels (1999) Fantasy Worlds.
Köln: Taschen.

The only book I know who presents more than a handful of out-of-the-box original and creative kitsch architecture... whether their creators (architects, sculptors, painters and the next door neighbour) aimed for kitsch or not!

Definitely makes us think about what would happen if we all had free time, some knowledge on sticking stuff together and a teensy bit of imagination. Some of the examples could make you smile, some others just make your eyes pop out of their sockets while your brain thinks "this cannot be, you've gotta be kidding me!", the rest of them are just too close to my dream house or park. 

It is amazing the way some of the examples showed are very much alike, even though they belong to distant corners of the world and are made by very different people. It makes me think about what Abraham Moles says about "the principle of variegation" in his book on Kitsch. Maybe most of us are just made like that, willing to collect stuff (colourful, shiny, diverse stuff) and to put it all together.

German Gardens (II)

The kitsch everybody luuurves...

 

The Arts and the Mass Media (L. Alloway)

Corbis

"Before 1800 the population of Europe was an estimated 180 million; by 1900 this figure had risen to 460 million. The increase of population and the industrial revolution that paced it has, as everybody knows, changed the world. In the arts, however, traditional ideas have persisted, to limit the definition of later developments. As Ortega pointed out in The Revolt of the Masses: 'the masses are to-day exercising functions in social life which coincide with those which hitherto seemed reserved to minorities.' As a result the élite, accustomed to set aesthetic standards, has found that it no longer possesses the power to dominate all aspects of art. It is in this situation that we need to consider the arts of the mass media. It is impossible to see them clearly within a code of aesthetics associated with minorities with pastoral and upper-class ideas because mass art is urban and democratic. [...]

If justice it to be done to the mass arts which are, after all, one of the most remarkable and characteristic achievements of industrial society, some of the common objections to it need to be faced. A summary of the opposition to mass popular arts is in Avant Garde and Kitsch (Partisan Review, 1939, Horizon, 1940), by Clement Green berg, an art critic and a good one, but fatally prejudiced when he leaves modern fine art. By kitsch he means 'popular, commercial art and literature, with their chromeotypes, magazine covers, illustrations, advertisements, slick and pulp fiction, comics, Tin Pan Alley music, tap dancing, Hollywood movies, etc.'. All these activities to Greenberg and the minority he speaks of are 'ersatz culture... destined for those who are insensible to the value of genuine culture... Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academic simulacra of genuine culture welcomes and cultivates this insensibility' (my italics). Greenberg insists that 'all kitsch is academic', but only some of it is, such as Cecil B. De Mille-type historical epics which use nineteenth-century history-picture material. In fact, stylistically, technically, and iconographically, the mass arts are anti-academic. Topicality and a rapid rate of change are not academic in any usual sense of the word, which means a system that is static, rigid, self-perpetuating. Sensitiveness to the variables of our life and economy enable the mass arts to accompany the changes in our life far more closely than the fine arts which are a repository of time-binding values."

Alloway, Lawrence (1958) in Architectural Design, London.
In: Harrison, Charles; Wood, Paul (2003) Art in Theory 1900-2000. Malden: Blackwell. p 715.

German Gardens (I)

The kitsch everybody likes.