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Quote by Hermann Broch

“Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical”

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Hermann Broch (November 1, 1886 - May 30, 1951) was an Austrian writer, one of the most important novelists of the 20th century, known for his profound psychological descriptions and complex narrative structures. more

“The problem with kitsch is that it is all too profound, manipulating deep libidinal and ideological forces, while true art knows how to remain at the surface, how to subtract it's subject from it's deepest context of historical reality. The same goes for contemporary art, where we often encounter brutal attempts to return to the Real, to remind the spectator or reader that he is perceiving a fiction, to awaken him from a sweet dream.”

“Did Wagner really accomplish the first step towards the kitschy 'fetishization' of music that reaches its apogee in classical Hollywood?”

Firsts Steps Hollywood Accomplish First Steps Wagner

Author:Slavoj Žižek

“Undoubtedly [Beethoven's] music often verges on kitsch”

Verge Kitsch

Author:Slavoj Žižek

“At a certain point in history monuments became associated with kitsch, (it had never previously been so) and one might well ask why this unforeseen aesthetic and ethnic debasement of their values came about, or why monuments have not adapted to the times. Perhaps, instead of evoking authentic religious, patriotic or mystical sentiments, they evoke only the customary ersatz for these sentiments and have suffered the fate of becoming sentimental.”

Wells Might Certain Values Asks Religious Fate Becoming Patriotic Sentiments Aesthetic Mystical Sentimental Monument Evoke Adapted Kitsch Unforeseen

Author:Gillo Dorfles

“If the embodiment of the fundamental idea of our age were to be found in Victorian architecture, in the Church of Cristo Re in Rome or the Church in Brasilia, in Moscow University or the Capitol in Washington, then our age would undoubtedly be called the 'age of kitsch.'”

Ifs Ideas Age Found Church Fundamentals University Architecture Rome Embodiment Victorian Moscow Capitol Kitsch

Author:Hermann Broch

“One of the characteristics of kitsch is precisely the neutralization of 'extreme situations', particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll.”

Situation Extremes Characteristics Sentimental Kitsch

Author:Saul Friedlander

“Facing the kitsch aesthetic is the unfathomable world of myths.”

World Myth Aesthetic Kitsch Unfathomable

Author:Saul Friedlander

“There is a kitsch of death. For example, death transformed into sweet sleep: The 'good night, sweet prince' of the last scene of Hamlet.”

Lasts Night Sleep Example Sweet Scene Transformed Good Night Kitsch Sweet Sleep

Author:Saul Friedlander

“Kitsch generates pseudonovelty with no new insight into reality, or else does not concern itself at all with the new and produces its effects with more or less academic eclecticism.”

Doe Reality Effects Produce Concern Insight Academic Kitsch

Book:Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860-1920

Source: Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and His Time: The European Imagination, 1860-1920

“Kitsch offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, wihtout sublimation.”

Effort Emotional Offers Intellectual Distance Requirements Gratification Kitsch Instantaneous

Author:Walter Benjamin

Quote by Hermann Broch

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