The age of kitsch: Our culture seen as a period of 'uncertainty of form'; art and Kitsch are not opposites

Abstract

The scorn expressed by the word ‘kitsch’ shows that in our culture there is a conflict between those who reject particular products as ‘kitsch’, and those who nevertheless find full satisfaction in those products, and thus regard the ‘artistic’ products of the ‘upper class’ as pure nonsense. In this conflict it is inadequate simply to support those who scorn kitsch, even though that seems easiest; there is still an enormous vitality in the admiration for kitsch, which one can only spurn if one per se places the snobbism of the ‘artistic’ world about all else. That is why it is in the first place necessary to take account of the utility of the concept ‘kitsch’; because neither the artist nor the maid-servant have the final say on the question of cultural production. An extremely incisive essay on this rich topic is Norbert Elias' 'The Kitsch Style and the Age of Kitsch'.