Three questionable things to enjoy
My take on the Taste discourse. On bad taste, kitsch, and imitation
When I was 17, I used to go to a cine club every Saturday. This was pre-smartphones, still mostly analog communication, so I would go and watch whatever they were presenting. The curation was really good: I saw Freaks (1932), The 400 Blows (1959), M (1931), and my favorite movie of all times: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). I remember being surprised, confused, entertained by every turn and twist of the movie. At the end, there was a discussion between the five or eight attendants, that was my favorite part, and when we finished Rocky Horror, the cine club director described the movie with a word that became my obsession: kitsch. (fun fact, i've been using it as my roller derby name ever since).
Simply described by Wikipedia: "art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste". There’s an abundance of discourse about Taste with capital T recently, everyone knows(?) what is good taste, but what about bad taste? This three, questionable, things to enjoy are here to fill that gap and talk about something that has been fascinating me for the past decade: the ugly, the grotesque and kitsch. As this is a massive topic and area of study in theory of art and aesthetics, in order to make this easy and enjoyable for me, I'm focusing on the imitation aspect of kitsch, using only mostly the key definitions by the classic "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" by Clement Greenberg (AGK, from now on).
1. "Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas."; (p. 10, AGK)
If there's one work of art that has been reproduced, printed, repeated, referenced, imitated and re-reproduced again is the Mona Lisa, for me the kitschiest of kitsch. Observing the crowds around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre is a fascinating experience depicting what Greenberg describes, this painting is "destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide. Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits." (p. 10, AGK)
The most interesting reproduction of the Mona Lisa for me, besides the ones with big boobs that you can buy printed on a pillow in fineartamerica.com, is L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp. The name is a vulgar expression, which add a nice layer of kitsch but what really interests me is the mechanical formula of this artwork as a readymade.
Normally, a readymade is taking something that is not art and transforming them into art, the most famous example of this being the Fountain, but in this case, Duchamp is taking a cheap postcard reproduction of a work of art and making another work of art. So meta. Fascinating as an example of kitsch, as well as an example of using a formula over and over again to create results, and surprisingly, work and shocks every time.
2. "In the end the peasant will go back to kitsch when he feels like looking at pictures, for he can enjoy kitsch without effort." (p. 18, AGK)
Greenberg describes a scenario where a peasant is choosing between one artist or another, and comes to prefer the enjoyment of kitsch, easy and fast, due to his living conditions and uncomfortable circumstances. What most essays on Taste with capital T fail to mention is social, cultural and economic factors. It seems like taste lives in abstract land away from context considerations. Kitsch, as well as ugliness and taste, are social phenomenons. Even more "The encouragement of kitsch is merely another of the inexpensive ways in which totalitarian regimes seek to ingratiate themselves with their subjects." (p. 19, AGK), Greenberg states that regimes bring culture to the "level" of the masses in order to flatter, outcasting the Avant-Garde and "proper art". I don't fully agree to these terms, but trying to change would mean a more advanced critique that is not fit for this moment. My point is: kitsch relation to politics is key, and Greenberg essay is notorious for addressing it, as well as Gillo Dorfles: "whenever art has to bow to politics - or generally speaking, to some sort of ideology, even a religious one - it immediately becomes kitsch." (p. 113, "kitsch, the world of bad taste").
3. "If the avant-garde imitates the processes of art, kitsch, we now see, imitates its effects."; (p. 15, AGK)
An art form notorious for its tendency to imitate, others and itself, is Film. In its aim to depict real world and simulate experiences and concepts, it becomes the perfect case study for kitsch: faked sensations, simulacra of culture, formulaic, reliant in clichés, popular and mass made, "the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times."; (p. 10, AGK). This could sound as I'm a hater of cinema but it is the opposite, I love cinema because of all of the above and also, as in Umberto Eco: "Camp is also, but not always, the experience of kitsch of someone who knows that what he is seeing is kitsch." (p. 411 , On Ugliness)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) is all of this taken to the extreme. Not even trying to be original, is trying to imitate and reference a million things at the same time while coming up with a far-fetched plot that kind of makes sense. Maybe makes sense.
Addendum
It is always fun to revisit these texts that I love, there are always new things to notice and wanted to share this excerpt that seems relevant to this moment in time, mostly in reference to the so-called creative writing by AI:
"The precondition for kitsch, a condition without which kitsch would be impossible, is the availability close at hand of a fully matured cultural tradition, whose discoveries, acquisitions, and perfected self-consciousness kitsch can take advantage of for its own ends. It borrows from it devices, tricks, stratagems, rules of thumb, themes, converts them into a system, and discards the rest. It draws its life blood, so to speak, from this reservoir of accumulated experience." (p. 10-11, AGK)
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That's all!
Have a great day