Kitsch and art

DanielOB · Jan 6, 2009

When you make your masterpiece would you like to call it
- kitsch, or
- art
I think you choose word art rather than kitch.
BUT
This is not just about photography. Words kitsch and art, nowadays has reversed its name completely. Kitsch used to be dustbin for what is rejected in artworld. Now art is what is rejected in kitsch world.
Do not beleive?
Take art history book with around 1000 pages and leaf it fast from begining toward end. You will get impression that the book got upside-down what more you are close to the end, or you notice something does not fit well but lets be polite.
Today "art" historians try to find excuse for way too bad condition in what used to be "art".
Someone screwed-up heavily.
By the way this is what is considered KITSCH nowadays, and Odd Nerdrum is just next to Rembrandt (even they are both kitsch today).
www.nerdrum.com

So whenever you think you make art-photography you actually make garbage. Be careful with your skilfull masterpiece!

Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

naeroscatu · Jan 6, 2009

Well, art follows the social evolution which is going from bad to worse. It is an everyday occurrence that art is replaced by kitsch since in the last 100 years or so we are witnessing a severe degradation of traditional values. Industrial revolution has reached its peak, people are only preoccupied with immediate consumption of everything including art. Thinking is not cool anymore so why bother looking at art and trying to understand it. Schools gave up on preparing kids to look at art and understand art. Kitsch is art in a can. Here you go...:munch:

Nicholas Lindan · Jan 6, 2009

Van Gogh painted his Sunflower series to brighten up the walls of the guest room when Gauguin came for a visit. That's all the paintings were intended to be: wallpaper.

I try to make photographs in the same vain - decoration, not art. It's so much easier to make decoration and its so much more easily accepted. If all I do is make someone's wall pleasant to look at I feel I have done enough.

Marc Leest · Jan 6, 2009

Nicholas Lindan said:
Van Gogh painted his Sunflower series to brighten up the walls of the guest room when Gaugin came for a visit. That's all the paintings were intended to be: wallpaper.

I try to make photographs in the same vain - decoration, not art. It's so much easier to make decoration and its so much more easily accepted. If all I do is make someone's wall pleasant to look at I feel I have done enough.

I had the luck to see the Gauguin painting of van Gogh painting the sunflowers.
What is art ? is the ongoing question. What is kitsch ? To me it is not a fact of expression/interpretation/zeitgeist of the artist but to serve a another (lower?) goal. Imitations to be sold for strong prices, porn, false reclamations/statuses etc.
It's only human.

-M-

Nicholas Lindan · Jan 6, 2009

Marc Leest said:
What is kitsch?

I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

Slixtiesix · Jan 7, 2009

"There´s only a thin line between art and kitsch" - I always use to say ;-)
Greetz, Benjamin

BetterSense · Jan 7, 2009

Van Gogh painted his Sunflower series to brighten up the walls of the guest room when Gauguin came for a visit. That's all the paintings were intended to be: wallpaper.

This reminds me of what a professor told us in an art class I took in college. Nowadays if you go to a symphony hall, there is a strong protocol...you must be quiet and not talk, not even open candy wrappers, you must not get up to leave during a performance, and often they won't even let you in if you are late, because you might disturb others in the audience. Additionally most people feel you should dress up when you go.

However this is a relatively modern phenomenon, and at the time the pieces were written, composers expected people to eat and talk quietly at their performances. However now that the music is old, and that music is portable, and cheap, some justification is needed as to why it's still relevant to buy tickets and go to the symphony hall to listen to old-fashioned music. Thus the atmosphere of reverence and importance arises.

Sometimes I shudder at the thought of Stephen King and Friends being studied in art college in A.D. 2314 as the great works of the turn of the 21st century.

mabman · Jan 7, 2009

Nicholas Lindan said:
I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

Isn't that the legal definition of porn?

kevs · Jan 11, 2009

DanielOB said:
When you make your masterpiece would you like to call it
- kitsch, or
- art
I think you choose word art rather than kitch.

<snip>

So whenever you think you make art-photography you actually make garbage. Be careful with your skilfull masterpiece!

Whenever I photograph, I don't try to 'make art'. I try to communicate, using the medium and equipment of my choice. I don't use gimmicks, i don't try and use fancy techniques or special effects. I just want to present an image of the object or scene in front of my lens in a way that communicates to my 'audience'.

If someone enjoys my print as 'art', I'm flattered; it means my communication has been successful. Yet someone else may walk past and ignore it, in which case I've failed to communicate to that person.

The point of art, visual or otherwise, is to communicate. The maker should know what s/he is communicating, even if the audience doesn't. If the image doesn't communicate, it doesn't fulfill its purpose; then I suppose it might be regarded as kitsch or junk.

All IMO, of course.

phc · Jan 12, 2009

I used to think the purpose of art is the communication of emotion, but I'm not so sure anymore. Seems too narrow a concept.

To be honest I'm not sure what art is, or what it's purpose is. I do agree with Gombrich: "There is no such thing as art, only artists". It's down to the artist what he thinks his art is for.

Cheers, Paul.

Aurum · Jan 12, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicholas Lindan
I can't define it but I know it when I see it.

Isn't that the legal definition of porn?

I believe the definition is "Literature that you can read single handed"

Aurum · Jan 12, 2009

BetterSense said:
This reminds me of what a professor told us in an art class I took in college. Nowadays if you go to a symphony hall, there is a strong protocol...you must be quiet and not talk, not even open candy wrappers, you must not get up to leave during a performance, and often they won't even let you in if you are late, because you might disturb others in the audience. Additionally most people feel you should dress up when you go.

However this is a relatively modern phenomenon, and at the time the pieces were written, composers expected people to eat and talk quietly at their performances. However now that the music is old, and that music is portable, and cheap, some justification is needed as to why it's still relevant to buy tickets and go to the symphony hall to listen to old-fashioned music. Thus the atmosphere of reverence and importance arises.

Always makes me laugh the way that Shakespeare's works are treated with such reverence. Bill was a jobbing poet, a commercial writer who wrote his plays for a paying audience of the raucous locals. They would be eating, drinking, Belching and blowing off in the crowd, and pelting the actors with anything they could lay their hands on if they didn't like it.

kevs · Jan 12, 2009

phc said:
I used to think the purpose of art is the communication of emotion, but I'm not so sure anymore. Seems too narrow a concept.

To be honest I'm not sure what art is, or what it's purpose is. I do agree with Gombrich: "There is no such thing as art, only artists". It's down to the artist what he thinks his art is for.

Cheers, Paul.

I like your honesty, and I'm not 100% certain what art is either. But I'm sure it communicates whereas 'kitsch' or 'trash' (taken as meaning poorly-made or tasteless artefacts) doesn't. I think the artist should *know* what his/her art is for - s/he is the original cause of it, after all.

Colin Wilson writes:

"Man has discovered an interesting method of increasing his power to 'focus'; it is called art. ... But even pornography qualifies as a crude form of art, for its purpose is to focus sexual desire. Novels of violence focus our aggressions. Landscape painting focuses our longing for the impersonality of nature. A great painting or symphony may focus so many complex desires that it is impossible to express its aim in words; nevertheless it is perfectly easy to recognise it as a means by which we concentrate and intensify our feelings. And, by so doing, descend more deeply into ourselves." (His italics).

(Wilson, C. 'Mysteries'; Hodder and Stoughton, 1978.)

Maybe that's what Daniel meant - 'bad' art focuses our desire to see 'good' art...

All IMO, of course.

Kitsch and art

DanielOB

naeroscatu

Nicholas Lindan

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Marc Leest

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Slixtiesix

BetterSense

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phc

Aurum

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Kitsch and art

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