Ask A Genius 265 – Why is Kitsch?
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/20
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, can you explain to me again what the hell is Kitsch? How does it differentiate from quiche? Why are we talking about it?
Rick Rosner: Quiches is an egg pie. Kitsch is easily appreciated pandering to the easy emotions art. Like cute puppies, cherubic figurines that your grandma, your unsophisticated grandma likes. Last time we talked, we talked about how kitsch is an endorsement of order that you have to have these fragile glass figurines, though kitsch can apply to any art.
It doesn’t have to just be breakable art. But it endorses things like love and beauty and kindness and innocence and flowers and babies. Part of my thesis here is kitsch provides a touch of order for people, maybe, who have less order in their lives or less satisfaction in their lives than they’d want to.
I think the last time we talked about how Michael’s the crafting store – and it applies to Hobby Lobby too, these giant craft stores. So, you can always find people in there who have been disappointed in other areas of their lives, disdained by their families or spouse, unsuccessful in other areas.
But you can always scrapbook or make stuff. It’s pretty. So, the opposite of kitsch is sophistication and sophisticated art, which embraces hard to appreciate aesthetics and themes. It’s for people who have order to spare.
It’s like bragging. But I don’t need any extra order in my life because I’m rich, well-educated and I have control of my life. So, I have the sophistication to appreciate art that ponders less easy to comprehend sensibilities and certain sentimentalities.
You can make a case that it’s like Thorsten Veblen and his theory of the leisure class that you’re not really rich; unless, you can afford to squander money on bullshit. So, people who spend hundreds of thousands or millions on art where the aesthetic satisfaction is hard to find or where the easy appreciation is undermined by sneering irony like Jeff Koons stuff.
These are people who have enough resources in the rest of their lives that they can show that they have sophisticated taste. They don’t need to resort to cheap kitchen sentimentality. They can buy expensive, nihilistic or sophisticated stuff that explores darker themes.
Now, that’s my thesis that sophisticated art says, “I have order to spare. I don’t need to resort to cheap satisfaction and cheap sentimentality. I have power in the world.”
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