Kitsch and Photography

I thought a thread like this would be fun, so here it is:

Oxford Dictionary: Garish, tasteless or sentimental art.

That doesn't really do it. I like novelist Milan Kundera's explanation: kitsch is what happened when plumbing was moved underground. I take this to mean that if we can deny our bodily functions and therefore our mortality, we can be capable of extraordinary banality of expression.

Examples of kitsch: pink flamingos, garden gnomes, the photographs of Anne Geddes, colorized photos of impossibly cute babies, mantelpiece bric-a-brac, Garfields stuck to the inside of car windows with little suction pads, the perfect family as imagined by American advertising, etc. Institutionalized bad taste. There is political kitsch Soviet Social realism, Nazi social realism, all of which leave out the diverse nuances of actual human beings.

The history of photography is, of course, full of kitsch. Even great photographers succumbed (Doisneau, and even occasionally Cartier-Bresson). Time is of course the great unmasker of kitsch as an entire generation is brought into an ironic vision. There is plenty of kitsch on the left, too (Peter Max posters, the whole strawberry fields aspect of the Sixties which images are now used as marketing tools. Some of the Sixties images resist Kitsch: the Civil Rights movement remains untouchable. Perhaps there is a good marker against which to evaluate.

In any case, the continuous evaluation of kitsch is a useful critical tool to apply to photography. Interested in other comments.

Cheers,

Doug Anderson

Art vs Kitsch!

doug anderson said:

.... Examples of kitsch: pink flamingos, garden gnomes, the photographs of Anne Geddes, colorized photos of impossibly cute babies, mantelpiece bric-a-brac, Garfields stuck to the inside of car windows with little suction pads, the perfect family as imagined by American advertising, etc. Institutionalized bad taste. There is political kitsch Soviet Social realism, Nazi social realism, all of which leave out the diverse nuances of actual human beings. ..

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A fun topic indeed Doug, thanks for bringing this up. I expect that we might have some passionate discussions on it ;-).

I thought I'd add the biggest kitsch artist of all times (LOL) to your list of examples: Jeff Koons

Cheers,

Cem_Usakligil said:

A fun topic indeed Doug, thanks for bringing this up. I expect that we might have some passionate discussions on it ;-).

I thought I'd add the biggest kitsch artist of all times (LOL) to your list of examples: Jeff Koons

Cheers,

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RE Koons: his use of kitsch is self conscious. Although I don't much like his work (I much prefer Red Rooms for that kind of thing) I see where he is coming from. To me, unconscious kitsch, of which we are inundated daily, is dwarfing the human imagination and is in concert with the great dumbing down of our times.

My wife, the painter, uses kitsch against itself in a very witty way, so that it becomes a form of criticism of the content.

doug anderson said:

RE Koons: his use of kitsch is self conscious. Although I don't much like his work (I much prefer Red Rooms for that kind of thing) I see where he is coming from. To me, unconscious kitsch, of which we are inundated daily, is dwarfing the human imagination and is in concert with the great dumbing down of our times.

My wife, the painter, uses kitsch against itself in a very witty way, so that it becomes a form of criticism of the content.

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I agree with you re JK, maybe I should have been more explicit rather than just putting in a "LOL" there. But then again, this is barely post number 3 and we are already heading towards a nice discussion, so I'll stop stipulating right now ;-)

Can you share any of your wife's work with us maybe? I am very curious.

Cem_Usakligil said:

I agree with you re JK, maybe I should have been more explicit rather than just putting in a "LOL" there. But then again, this is barely post number 3 and we are already heading towards a nice discussion, so I'll stop stipulating right now ;-)

Can you share any of your wife's work with us maybe? I am very curious.

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Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to upload my own work. I will talk to her about uploading some of hers. She's preparing for a show right now and is cloistered.

I can't decide whether to send things to flickr or wait till my website is constructed this summer.

No hurry!

doug anderson said:

Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to upload my own work. I will talk to her about uploading some of hers. She's preparing for a show right now and is cloistered.

I can't decide whether to send things to flickr or wait till my website is constructed this summer.

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Hi Doug,

Don't worry and don't rush things. I know how it feels being very busy.
If you want to have a continuity to your images here at OPF, I'd recommend waiting till your website is constructed. Images on flickr tend to have a short life span and get moved around. When that happens, the links here at OPF expire. We shall solve this problem when one can upload pictures to OPF but until then, it is good to be prudent.

Cheers,

Thanks, Cem. I'll take your advice.

Isn't kitsch just the meaningless, often mass-produced, version of Art?

The first guy/gal coming up with the Master of the Glen had something special, said something about nature and its beauty. Then others copied without putting in anything personal. They created kitsch.

Interesting about self-proclaimed kitschers, Koons possible the best known but Warhol and the rest of the Pop-Art bunch belong here, too, is that they do not produce kitsch. They put in a lot of personality, use kitschy elements and style to come up with something unique. Part of that may be self-referential, though I do not see that as a necessary ingredient.

Dierk Haasis said:

Isn't kitsch just the meaningless, often mass-produced, version of Art?

The first guy/gal coming up with the Master of the Glen had something special, said something about nature and its beauty. Then others copied without putting in anything personal. They created kitsch.

Interesting about self-proclaimed kitschers, Koons possible the best known but Warhol and the rest of the Pop-Art bunch belong here, too, is that they do not produce kitsch. They put in a lot of personality, use kitschy elements and style to come up with something unique. Part of that may be self-referential, though I do not see that as a necessary ingredient.

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I think kitsch can be very witty when used by artists.

I don't think that mass production defines kitsch: I think kitsch is a state of mind, like flag lapel pins, that which leaves out something essentially human, something that injects a gooey sweetness and self righteousness where there is darkness and uncertainty, or creates the appearance of sanity and decency where there is none.

I used the qualifier 'often' to denote that mass-production is not necessary for kitsch. I also tried to convey why Koons, Warhol et al. Do not produce kitsch. Kitsch can never be witty [at most it can be funny, involuntarily]. Artist, by definition, creat Art. It may be bad or boring, but not kitsch. Unless it lack personality - but then we are not talking artists but kitchists.

Dierk Haasis said:

I used the qualifier 'often' to denote that mass-production is not necessary for kitsch. I also tried to convey why Koons, Warhol et al. Do not produce kitsch. Kitsch can never be witty [at most it can be funny, involuntarily]. Artist, by definition, creat Art. It may be bad or boring, but not kitsch. Unless it lack personality - but then we are not talking artists but kitchists.

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I think we are not understanding each other. I agree with you: Warhol, Koons, etc. are artists. They sometimes use kitsch as content, thus recontexting it. This is what I mean by witty. Marilyn Monroe as seen by Warhol is all icon and no woman. Maybe this was his point: he took images that had become so common as to be numbing and made them fresh.