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Kitsch Quotes

Browse 144 quotes about Kitsch.

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Kitsch Quotes

“Kitsch. Can't think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that's so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there's more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. "It looks like...!" Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: "The sunset looks like a painting!" Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former's beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it's related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: "classy" kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.”

ArtBeautyFraudKitsch
Book:Trust
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“She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.”

BeautyPowerHumanWeaknessHuman ConditionLieArtificeKitschRevealAuthoritarian
Book:The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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“Kitsch tells you how nice you are: it offers easy feelings on the cheap. Beauty tells you to stop thinking about yourself, and to wake up to the world of others. It says, look at this, listen to this, study this - for here is something more important than you. Kitsch is a means to cheap emotion; beauty is an end in itself. We reach beauty through setting our interests aside and letting the world dawn on us. There are many ways of doing this, but art is undeniably the most important, since it presents us with the image of human life - our own life and all that life means to us - and asks us to look on it directly, not for what we can take from it but for what we can give to it. Through beauty art cleans the world of our self-obsession.”

BeautyKitsch
Book:Confessions of a Heretic
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“You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.”

PhilosophyHappinessNovelLaughterAdvertisingMeaning Of LifeExistentialismKitschCzech
Book:The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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“She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didn't mind. She'd never been superstitious. The apartment was filled with items she'd collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which she'd found a note reading, "Long may we run. -Gilbert." Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmaker's twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community. Other people's treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. She'd probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmother's antique shop.”

HistoryUnusualApartmentAntiquesKitschHeirloomsTess Delaney
Book:The Apple Orchard
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“Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influences cancel or limit one another can manage more or less to escape the kitsch inquisition: the individual can preserve his individuality; the artist can create unusual works. But whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.”

PoliticsKitschTotalitarism
Book:The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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“Het feit dat tot voor kort het woord stront met ... werd aangeduid had niets te maken met morele overwegingen. U wilt toch niet beweren dat stront immoreel is?! Afkeuring van stront is metafysisch. Ontlasting is het dagelijks bewijs dat men de schepping niet aanvaardt. Het één of het ander: of stront is aanvaardbaar (en dan hoef je de w.c.-deur niet op slot te doen!) of we zijn geschapen op een onaanvaardbare manier. Hieruit volgt dat het esthetische ideaal van de categorische instemming met het bestaan een wereld is waarin stront ontkend wordt en waarin iedereen zich gedraagt alsof die niet bestaat. Dit esthetische ideaal heet kitsch.”

GodKitschWereldScheppingIdeaalStront
Book:The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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“The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.”

ArtEndsLiteratureDifficultViewsTroubleCriticalPoint Of ViewInnocentPropagandaFascistsAvant GardeKitschAvant Garde Art
Book:Art and Culture: Critical Essays
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“In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn't about Sept. 11. It's about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies - or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers - and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.”

FeelsShouldTryingMayFeelingsTurnsEmotionCasesSadnessLonelinessCryTearsBabyResponseRageFamiliarFeel GoodImpulseLoudWorking ItVirtuousTwinsTowersExploitsPuppyDrainsKitschGenericSpecificityWellspringSept 11Twin Towers
Author:Manohla Dargis
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“Kitschis one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of "trashy," sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the "cliché" in discourse.”

EndsWholeModernObjectsMajorsMaskMuseumsCategoriesOddsDiscourseJunkKnackKitschSouvenirsRusticKnicksOdds And Ends
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“The Rolling Stones have been the best of all possible worlds: they have the lack of pretension and sentimentality associated with the blues, the rawness and toughness of hard rock, and the depth which always makes you feel that they are in the midst of saying something. They have never impressed me as being kitsch.”

WorldFeelsHas BeensHardRocksStonesDepthMidstImpressedRollingPretensionToughnessRolling StonesSentimentalityKitschHard RockRawness
Author:Jon Landau
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“While a forgery illegally exploits the elitist taste for rarity, a kitsch object insists on its anti elitist availability. The deceptive character of kitsch does not lie in whatever it may have in common with actual forgery but in its claim to supply its consumers with essentially the same kinds and qualities of beauty as those embodied in unique or rare and inaccessible originals.”

KindMayDoeCharacterLyingCommonQualityObjectsTasteUniqueClaimsOriginalsConsumersExploitsDeceptiveAvailabilityElitistKitschInaccessibleRarityForgery
Author:Matei Calinescu
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“High-class kitsch may well be "perfect" in its form and and composition: the academic painters were often masters of their craft. Thus, the accusation that a work of kitsch is based not on lack of for or aesthetic merit but on the presence of a particularly provocative emotional content. (The best art, by contrast, eschews emotional content altogether.)”

WellsMayArtFormPerfectClassEmotionalMastersPainterCraftsMeritAestheticAcademicContrastCompositionProvocativeAccusationKitschBest ArtHigh Class
Book:Entertaining Ideas: Popular Philosophical Essays, 1970-1990
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