Kitsch: Art or Not? | Art Terms | LittleArtTalks
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- What is Kitsch and how did it become art? Watch to learn more about how kitsch went from the lowest of low art to the eye-grabbing pop art.
Subscribe to Little Art Talks for more art-filled educational videos: goo.gl/89YzFS
Be sure to click the bell next to the “Subscribe" button to be notified when new videos are published!
Help us caption & translate this video!
www.youtube.com...
Support Little Art Talks directly on Patreon: goo.gl/Nkr9VO
MERCHANDISE:
Arden Cove Bags & Backpacks: goo.gl/f41Bgy
Let’s Connect!
WEBSITE: goo.gl/8CnhJp
FACEBOOK: goo.gl/YScjms
TWITTER: goo.gl/UuSvyp
INSTAGRAM: goo.gl/MeahG0
TUMBLR: goo.gl/UvZQB1
PINTEREST: goo.gl/Cazd5J
GOOGLE+: goo.gl/RIE8pN
GOODREADS: goo.gl/by7dUF
Karin’s Links:
WEBSITE: goo.gl/f41Bgy
UA-cam: goo.gl/m64WCw
INSTAGRAM: goo.gl/mh12cV
TWITTER: goo.gl/MZ59mt
Thanks so much for watching! Here at Little Art Talks, I make free educational videos on art history and all things art related. From ancient Japanese paintings to Duchamp’s readymades, we want to talk about what makes these objects art, and attempt to better understand them. Come join us in the discussion :)
If you liked this video, please share it with your friends.
FAQ:
What camera equipment do you use?
Camera amzn.to/2ih4HXR
Lights amzn.to/2ikUrJW
Microphone amzn.to/2ih9AQD
Edit in Premiere amzn.to/2ihcSDz
---
Images: Wikipedia Commons, Public Domain, Fair Use
It's funny how the meanings of words like this change over time - I've always associated kitsch with tacky but cute stuff, like trash that knows and loves the fact that it's trash, if that makes sense.
Could you give me more examples of kitsch? Does it extend to music? I am searching for definitions but I don’t get it. How come that what is cute or over garnished is considered trash?!
I mean it sound more like what a perfectionist would produce... excuse my poor language
Something self-aware enough to know it's trash is camp rather than kitsch. These are very similar yet distinct things. Camp is art whereas kitsch is generally understood to not be art.
@@maryamghareeb4862 There is a video from just a few months ago called "What is Kitsch?" by the UA-cam channel Thorsten Botz-Bornstein which is a very clear examination of this question.
kitsch really is not a german word for trash tho. i'm german by the way. most common words for trash would be Müll and Abfall.
I've got a small board print picture in a plastic frame of a cartoon kitten looking cutely surprised while being confronted by a laid-back and fearless mouse nibbling at a cheese. I've had it since I was a kid in the 1960s. The image of the mouse, cheese and kitten is pure cartoon, but the print is framed by bold dark brush strokes. I just like it. Art to me.
Mr Rusty Actually I think the people mentioned in this video would say that that's pretty much the definition of kitsch: 'I just like it.' As opposed to art: 'It means something to me.' (Not because of your history with the picture, but because you find meaning in the picture itself.)
Of course I'm not suggesting it doesn't mean something to you, I just mean that that would be the way to tell one apart from the other. And that does imply that one man's kitsch can be another man's art, I'd say.
I just "LOVE" the blatant slap in the face to Norman Rockwell. Why do art-heads consistently balk at even the hint of him? He was a terrific illustrator/painter and gave us some truly iconic americana during the war and post war era. I find this sad. Please educate me, I'm not being sarcastic, I truly want to know.
Uggggh. Maybe you can't know, like are incapable.?
I think a big thing against him is that Rockwell promoted America as something positive without exposing its shortcomings in his art. Which I kind of understand but at the same time I just can’t hate his art. Same with Alex Ross, obviously their art isn’t transformative or serious but that doesn’t make it bad. Simple art shouldn’t be a bad thing.
Because his works are idealised and therefore a little propaganda-like. The things you see on his paintings are not true, they are very similar to the propaganda posters of totalitarian systems like the Sovietunion, only in his case, these ideas are more basic and not radical. His art can't really be considered art that much (these works at least), because its very idealised, therefore false, and were meant to be promotional imagery.
They were meant for business, which is the most basic definition of kitsch. A product that wants to appeal as a work of art in order to sell itself, but it lacks the meaning, and value of real art.
Its not about how he painted, because he was a professional there are no doubts. Its more about what, and why
art bad
I've been following your videos from long time ago and I still don't get how this channel has such few followers. Keep growing and inspiring. Your content is amazing.
Thanks and greetings,
Hanna.
Thank you so much for your continued support, Hanna! :)
(Refering to what that one critic said) I mean you can't just say people DON'T feel something deep about art regardless of it's sentimentality. Like you can't just decide what people feel.
ReadHeadPat yes he can. Not only was it legal for him to say that but he was completely right. He can say that and be taken seriously.
ReadHeadPat KITSCH tries to create an emotional response but in a mechanized calculating massified way, borrowing from mature culture when needed. That's why KITSCH is working with computers and parades. Kitsch is the thing that strips life and Concepts apart. It is an ethical stance to be opposed to kitsch.
the point is, he can't prove that's what other people are thinking or feeling. it's essentially a loaded weasel word that just lets anybody disparage art they don't like without intellectual effort (oh, the irony.)
Kitsch goes back to the late 19C. The term was popularised in a German magazine called Kunswart. German reformers used this periodical to educate the public on the dangers of cheap, mass-produced objects which they believed would dilute the taste of middle_class culture.
I came here after my artwork(s)/style was described as Kitsch from my professor, and I don’t know whether to be offended or not 😂
Thank you for this content
Thank you for the video! This was really helpful
Love kitsch. It's fun. I hate modern artists using "preemptive kitsch" in order to elevate their nonsense to the status of art.
nineteen's kitsch
Lol
Kitsch is also a new art movement started (I believe) by Odd Nerdrum. I don’t know much about it other than it is a movement which rejects modern art and follows classical European styles of painting.
In Odd Nerdrum's artist manifesto, he labels himself in the kitsch group as one that goes against the mainstream art culture. Modern Art as from the 1900s onward turned away from figurative and representational work to focus on more abstraction and technique of paint application. So when artists, like Odd Nerdrum are working in these other less popular genres of art such as painting classical figures and portraiture, it is looked on by THE ART POLICE: critics, teachers, curators and artists of Modern art as unfavorable, not innovative etc. Nerdrum calls himself Kitsch in a tongue-in-cheek way, like saying that he doesn't fit into the mainstream Modernist art movement and those gatekeepers are keeping him shut out. His artwork is far from the kitschy things like the gaudy gas station Elvis bust, vacation snow globes and lava lamps that might first come to mind when you hear the word kitsch. Is it because there is sentimentality in Nerdrum's art?
i would also want to know what you think about kitsch and avant-garde
Thaks for the video, it helps me a lot!
i've always described kitsch as camp without the fun and self satirization
I feel that all art is "real art" no matter if kitsch or not
Meh.
Kitsch and avant garde have all essentially destroyed the idea that art is something you should spend decades perfecting and mastering.
Kitsch is shallow, trivial commercial art. It ignores the breadth and depth of human experience, from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs.
Avant garde is "anything goes." It's honestly undeserving of the title "art" in the classical sense. People are arrogant about their uniqueness. They're too fragile to admit that they're uninteresting and not particularly unique.
I see avant garde art as a way to pretend that good taste doesn't exist, as a way to validate people's own mediocrity and pass it off as greatness. It's a tale as old as time, it's the story of the emperor's new clothes.
America is devoid of real art, art that is truly expressive, art that fills you with wonder, art that speaks to the depths of your soul. America's architecture reflects this: its McMansions are a mockery of good taste, misusing classical architectural elements into a bungled, chaotic mess.
It's no wonder to me that people commit suicide so often in the US. There's little here that hints at beauty as a transcendental virtue, other than our natural scenery. Though, we tend to ascribe a "wild west" sensibility to American landscapes, which also detracts from it and creates a kind of cheap, kitschy air out of something that is otherwise beautiful.
@@hellomate639 I womder what di you think about Odd Nerdrum. Doesn’t he do it in a classical sense? He calls himself a kitsch painte.
No
@@hellomate639 art is subjective lol
you're just elitist
people are different and what might fill you with enjoyment might not fill me and vice versa
real art and real bad art - it all falls under the same umbrella.
Thank you!
Western art needs more Kitsch and less 1960s postmodern culture.. Kitsch stimulates the senses and its great fo the spirit.
Is the essential nature of kitsch to be enjoyed only “ironically” or “knowingly?”
I live in Minnesota, which has a large German/Scandinavian diaspora. The way a lot of people decorate their homes up here could be described as “kitschy” but they seem to genuinely enjoy their design.
Granted there’s a distinction between art and decoration.
Huxley would beg to differ
@@glof2553 I believe that the "ironic" part is a subversion of traditional values like high technical standards by postmodern art critics.
You don't know what you're talking about I see!
Thank you for the video.
kitsch is not the german word for trash. don't know where you got that from. i'm german and the two most used words for trash are Müll and Abfall.
Maybe it’s an old germanic word?
@@Thesamurai1999 i'm sorry, not to be rude, but it really isn't.
@@pogglexiv ah, alright. No worries
@@pogglexivwhat does kitsch mean ?
@@lonelyberg1808 i think the best translation is probably corny, maybe also a bit like tacky. imagine u visit ur grandmas house and she has a shelf with ruffled decorations and on it theres a collection of pearly glazed chubby porcelain animals with bows and what not, thats very kitschig. at least thats how i know the word to be used as a german 20 something🤔
Thank you! It helped me a lot!
Very accurate Thank you❕
I'm thinking of taking Art History and am doing plenty of research on different genres ahead of time. Though Andy Worhol was a pop artist, what makes his art not kitsch? Or is it?
What seperates Warhol from kitsch is his intention - Warhol's pieces aren't clean, professional or really similar at all to the images he's replicating - Warhol added an artistic touch to the pieces by processing and printing them in non standard ways etc - As well as placing them in high art galleries. The context indicates that the pieces aren't made to say - sell you soup cans but instead act as an exploration of the nature of stuff made to sell you soup cans. Using newspaper images of car crashes too was a way to made confronting art that would certainly be considered avant garde by the average viewer. His topics are almost always darker then what one initially sees from viewing popular culture's interpretation of Warhol
thank you
Kitsch isn’t art
It’s the bomb ass theme from Tekken 4
Kitsch is much more than tacky ornamentation. Kitsch is a way of life for some. long live the futuristic who want truths to be true
which Is not what this video offers
Yeah ok!
Tks! Your content is amazing!
A definition of Kitsch that I appreciate is "made to please". It's not necessarily in bad taste. Indian religious art is a good example of tasteful Kitsch. There is also Kitsch in the second degree. In pop music the B52's are a good example. In Europe "Pierre et Gilles" have done a good job in this "Art".
ua-cam.com/video/hhr6qkQe35k/v-deo.html
I started a new comment to keep you noticing and small minds up to date. read below to understand. Annyyways. Kitsch is a word similar to how Baroque is. Baroque can be taken as a misshapen pearl but as a fan of art as you display yourself to be here. Is a pearl of little to no value how you take in the word baroque? No! Don't comment on things and spread false ideas about art around on your channel. learn how the best artists wrote about art and try and step in their shoes. Look up to other real writers who wrote on art especially the writings of intellegent artists and step up to the real plate that you're poetraying.
I like kitsch decor..it shows the quirky side of the owner.
is more and more difficult to define what is kitch and what is not , cause' today loads of people posts kitch images in social like fb or pinterest etc like paperback books and mags covers, b movies film posters , vintage postcards , relgious cards etc...and they seems to be "cool" and , kind of "beautiful" ...books label like taschen can release collection of kitck images , among artbooks about raphael, caravaggio or rembrandt....so it's like vintage images has often a sort of "dignity" that they make them appear "beautiful" and acceptable even from people who have good tastes in art/graphics etc . So it's kind of hard to know what kitch is
this video is great
Kitsch is the superior decorative motif.
I love kitsch!!!!!
Kitch is NOT a German word for trash, darling. It's assumed to have been a descriptive term for trashy things. There are two likely etymologies and none of them say that it actually was ever used for anything but art. Learn your subject before talking about it or you end up looking like a total amateur.
Yet you're the one who comes off as trashy here! Darling!
is there a reason this sounds exactly like the wikipedia article: was that based on this or the other way around?
as in it literally uses the same quotes + images
Let's be honest, if Norman Rockwell is kitsch and Andy Warhol is art then the real "trash" is art.
jokes on you my last name is Kitsch
Thanx for your video's, they are great ^^ Whish we could talk about these kind of topics further on. Writing now a bachelor thesis on the avant-garde of the 20th century (also read greenberg's work you discussed today ;) )
So would “the last Jedi” count as Kitsch?
No, just trash.
From 1:27 to 2:20 (almost 1/3 of your video) is completely plagiarized from the Wikipedia article’s section titled analysis. Below is the text from the Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch
Modernist writer Hermann Broch argues that the essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics-it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good.[7] According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch, unlike art, is a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer. According to critic Winfried Menninghaus, Benjamin's stance was that kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation".[6] In a short essay from 1927, Benjamin observed that an artist who engages in kitschy reproductions of things and ideas from a bygone age deserved to be called a "furnished man"[8] (in the way that someone rents a "furnished apartment" where everything is already supplied).
Kitsch is less about the thing observed than about the observer.[9] According to Roger Scruton, "Kitsch is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious."[10]
Un día vi un video gringo diciendo que las casas pobres eran muy Kitsch... Nosotros le decimos naco
Right???
What do you call avaunt-guard art with no risk? Trite orthodoxy or ...Kitsch. Oh the irony!
I'd say your generation is not very familiar with avant guarde anything. The rest of your comment I don't really get.
@@gaywizard2000 I am not sure what generation you think I belong to, but I am exactly the same age as Damien Hirst. My point being that in less recent times, when Damian and myself where young, there where at least some things that could shock the art savvy public. Now, art is shocking only in its lack of risk taking and has lost its ability to do anything apart from make money. It is not possible to be a rebel in a crowd of “rebels”.
@@parrycross8099 I can't tell because you are hiding your face but I looked it up because the age of random people is not known to me, so we are pretty close in age, I am 3 years younger! PHEW! But I agree! Yes, we remember when things were avant garde. I usually think most here are 24 years old! sorry!
@@gaywizard2000 No worries. Good to know some people still remember when conceptual art required more than JUST a concept.
You cannot translate Kitsch literally into trash.
Odd Nerdrum
Marcel Duchamp
I really wished you covered this debate in more detail. 36 minutes would do.
Tekken 4 is a good game
Really nice video. But i would give you the the advice to get some voice or sing lessons. your voice could be a little bit fuller.
I would give you the advice to learn how to use a fucking period when you type.
2020: 4459
You're so pretty
Trash is trash no matter what it looks like or how you dress it up.
You're cute as hell.
Down boy!
口音真难听，难受听着。
难听别听
The rear-gaurd isn't art.
I see kitsch as a piece of trash that all the people who have no taste in art like.
stream kitsch
purrr
Stream it
Where are you from honey?