Living with the Everyday Kitsch Object: A New Existential Potentiality

Abstract

1. Introduction

It was suddenly obvious that there were levels of kitschiness and that kitsch was somehow also a contextual issue.

(Barragán and Ryynänen 2023: 14)

In a recent publication collecting scholarly contributions to the philosophy of kitsch, Barragán and Ryynänen identified contextuality as one of the problems driving the latest waves of academic research on this fascinating aesthetic phenomenon. In particular, the spatial contextuality of the kitsch object appears evident even on a cursory look; objects that are universally labelled as kitsch might acquire a deeper value when in the right context. For instance, fake palms or pink flamingos would be considered unequivocally kitsch in a European medieval castle, but their presence is less disturbing in a modern mall or international airport, whereas a plastic key holder representing a blond surfer on an orange board would be kitsch almost everywhere in Austria, but becomes somehow acceptable in the Sunshine Coast, Australia. In this paper, I argue that the abundant literature on the phenomenon of kitsch did not consider the implications of spatial contextuality and displacement in full. A deeper analysis of this dimension will lead us to understand how the everyday kitsch object has the potential to emancipate itself from the traditional bad publicity and even play an existentially relevant role for the individual of the twenty-first century.

I will start by summarizing the aesthetic and existential needs to which the kitsch object has historically offered a response, following a well-established sociological view developed by Clement Greenberg and others. I then elaborate on the traditionally elusive definition of kitsch, commenting on and supplementing Thomas Kulka’s influential list of necessary conditions for kitsch. The purpose of these two sections is to build the foundation for an analysis of kitsch in the twenty-first century (Section 3). As intermediate conclusions, we will find that: (1) the sociological view needs refinement, (2) contemporary everyday kitsch has some peculiar characteristics that make it different from traditional kitsch—like unpretentiousness and lack of beautification, (3) a previously disregarded value—that we call anthropo-historical value—might play a role in building everyday kitsch’s new legitimacy. The paper continues in Section 4 with a deeper analysis of the peculiar power of everyday kitsch, that is, its capacity to disrupt lives and existences by means of its compositional incongruity obtained through displacement. This analysis will allow us to challenge some traditional interpretations of kitsch as lacking any form of incongruity and critical layer. In turn, this new awareness will support our final stance that everyday kitsch has the potential of becoming a meaningful multi-layered symbol for the individual, who can exploit the peculiar characteristics of the object to cultivate personal authenticity.

2. The Birth of Kitsch—A Response to an Aesthetic and Existential Need

Kitsch is a concept born in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although the precise etymology of the term is contested (see, for instance, Kulka 2015: 18–19), the word soon started to denote artworks of poor quality, done cheaply and in bad taste. It is thus not surprising that for a long time, philosophers who studied this phenomenon—scholars like Herman Broch, Clement Greenberg, and Gillo Dorfles (1969)—interpreted kitsch as an aesthetic category for understanding somehow deficient art.

From Greenberg onward, a successful sociological view has been developed to explain why the concept appeared only very recently in the history of Western philosophy. The idea is that a society characterized by mass production and consumption, which slowly allows for the emergence of a middle class with time for leisure, is a necessary condition for kitsch art: ‘Kitsch is a product of the industrial revolution which urbanised the masses’, notices Greenberg (1961: 9). The Industrial Revolution made kitsch possible for at least two reasons: ‘First, the new factories could mass-produce art-like items […Second, they produced] the people who would find these objects appealing’ (Morreall and Loy 1989: 64–5). For kitsch to spread, it was indeed necessary not only to overcome a technical limitation, that is, producing artwork for cheap, but also to create the need for this type of object. In this sense, the aesthetically deprived working class, flocking to the cities in search of new means of survival, was the perfect environment for the birth of kitsch.

As efficaciously explained by Greenberg, ‘losing their taste for the folk culture whose background was in the countryside, and discovering a new capacity for boredom at the same time, the new urban masses set up a pressure on society to provide them with a kind of culture fit for their own consumption’ (Greenberg 1961: 9). It is worth noticing that the need of the new masses was at the same time aesthetic and existential; aesthetic, because the rapid urbanization did not give cities the opportunity to organize cultural and emotional stimuli that were comparable to those guaranteed by countryside traditions; existential, because the cultural poverty of the city needed to be added to the exhausting working conditions; together, they produced a melancholic and alienated working class, ever more longing for new meaning. After all, these people moved from an environment of established customs and traditions, with art and festivities that celebrated common faiths and daily life in connection to natural cycles. They came from places where everyone worked in a vocational field from a young age and developed a precise personal identity and authenticity in the context of a very strong sense of community (Crone 2015). The urbanized and industrialized city could not offer such cultural and emotional formation unless with artifice. Here is where kitsch found its nurturing space; as summarized by Karsten Harries: ‘The need for kitsch arises when genuine emotion has become rare, when desire lies dormant and needs artificial stimulation’ (1968: 78 cited in Solomon 2004: 245).

Once this aesthetic and existential need was created, the focus could move towards building the specific mass appeal of the kitsch object, a mass appeal that distinguishes this phenomenon from bad art in general; in fact, confirms Kulka, ‘“kitsch” is by no means coextensive with bad art. Though kitsch is bad, not all bad art is kitsch’ and only the former gets the appreciation of the vast majority of people, whereas the latter tends to remain a product scarcely consumed by people who do not have a specific interest in art (Kulka 2015: 19). Bad taste is thus not the only characteristic of kitsch; an element of display, for example, needs to be present too, insofar as ‘Kitsch objects call attention to themselves and their owners’ (Morreall and Loy 1989: 63). On the one hand, this appeal is arguably a natural consequence of the industrial civilization, where the factory-produced object seizes the central position in society. Abraham Moles, reminiscent of the Marxist tradition, called this phenomenon ‘fetishism’ (mentioned in Mecacci 2014: 120), which in this context, can be understood as a heightened exchange value of almost religious connotations. This exaggerated value that exceeds the costs of materials and production is typical of many forms of kitsch and, explains Marx, ‘attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities’ (1954: 77) in a capitalist society (McNeill 2021: 39–55). On the other hand, the appeal of the kitsch object is accrued by its ability to convey ‘dramatic effects, pathos and overall sentimentality’ (Kulka 2015: 15), which is a characteristic that Hermann Broch famously ascribed to the influence of Romanticism (Broch 2006). Therefore, this overall sociological perspective describes kitsch as an object of mass consumption that is imbued with sentimentality for the easy consumption of its aesthetically deprived audience.

In the last century, it has become evident how right Milan Kundera was when he wrote that no one could escape kitsch completely (1984). Today, kitsch culture has become increasingly acceptable and enjoyed even by the critical parts of the art scene; respected artists like Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, and Takashi Murakami contributed to making kitsch a big thing in the art market by elevating once scorned formal features of kitsch—that is, its ‘sugared, cheesy, glittering, banally beautiful, eloquently but serious-mindedly campy’ traits (Barragán and Ryynänen 2023: 4)—to expensive art. From a theoretical standpoint, the revaluation of kitsch started with the so-called ‘second wave’ (Barragán and Ryynänen 2023: 11) of kitsch critics, which includes Eco and Călinescu (1987), passes through Sontag and Kulka and is still alive with Solomon, who is an open defender of the value of sentimentality in the kitsch object (2004). The question that might be raised is, however, whether the contemporary masses are in the same position of aesthetical deprivation and existential need as they were in the nineteenth century, such as to justify the centrality still given to the kitsch phenomenon. If the answer to this question is no, as I think is arguably the case, we need to be ready to revise the sociological view; when one considers the overexposure of the masses to aesthetic stimuli today, the reasons for the uninterrupted success of kitsch should be sought somewhere else than the ‘aesthetical deprivation’ traditionally understood. Of course, being aesthetically overexposed does not mean that our existential needs are automatically satisfied; the challenge for a sociological view of kitsch in the twenty-first century is to make these needs explicit and explain how the kitsch object can potentially cater to them. To cast a light on this fundamental matter, however, it is first important to outline a more precise definition of kitsch, something I endeavour to do in the following section.

3. The Nature of Kitsch—Definition and Value

Thomas Kulka gave us one of the most recent and influential lists of necessary conditions of kitsch, that is, sentimentality, identifiability, and explicitness:

• (1) the kitsch object is emotionally charged ‘with stock emotions that spontaneously trigger an unreflective emotional response’ (2015: 26);

• (2) there is an ‘instant and effortless identifiability of the depicted subject matter’ (2015: 29);

• (3) the meaning or message is absolutely explicit and intellectually arid, as ‘it does not sharpen, amplify or transform the associations related to the depicted subject matter in any significant way’ (2015: 37).

Such a list made immediately clear why the kitsch experience is in contrast with the common understanding of art developed by modern European philosophy from Kant (2000). In the economy of the transcendental faculties, the peculiarity of the aesthetic experience lies in the ‘free play of imagination and understanding’ that the beautiful art object triggers. In turn, this free play is guaranteed by the impossibility of anchoring the artistic object to a univocal interpretation or a single intellectual concept; the imagination of the viewer—whose main job is described in the Critique of Pure Reason in terms of ‘“synthesizing the manifold of intuition” under the governance of rules that are prescribed by the understanding’ (Ginsborg 2022)—in the aesthetic experience is not constrained by the understanding as it is in cognition. In contrast, the absolute identifiability and explicitness of the kitsch object make it easily categorizable and therefore already something different from proper art, as traditionally understood.

Moreover, the centrality of sentimentality in kitsch is an additional element of differentiation from high art. If it is true for Kant that art should be for art’s sake, critics soon noticed that the kitsch object develops an ill-conceived relationship with sentimentality. On the one hand, noticed Hermann Broch in the early twentieth century, kitsch gives sentimentality too much weight; kitsch overturns the causes and ends in art as it mistakes the consequences of aesthetic appreciation—that is, emotion—for the starting point of artistic experience, and for everything that counts in it. ‘Kitsch is “false”’—sharply summarizes Solomon—‘because it is the emotion, and not the object of emotion that is the primary concern’ (2004: 247).

On the other hand, in order to comply with Kulka’s conditions (2) and (3), such sentimentality is not original but parasitic in nature; that is, ‘its appeal is not generated by the aesthetic merit of the work itself but by the emotional appeal of the depicted object’ (Kulka 2015: 42). The common kitsch representation of a crying child triggers an emotion that is not the consequence of the quality of the work but relies on the stock response that the average person has in front of a crying child. In turn, such parasitism and automatic emotional response brings with it some mental passivity in the audience; indeed, the kitsch object ‘hits viewers over the head with its message; it tells them how to react to the painting and so leaves them with no cognitive steps to go through’ (Morreall and Loy 1989: 68).

Explicitness, identifiability, and parasitic sentimentality explain why the kitsch object is not considered high art, and why it has sometimes been described more precisely as a symbol based on an archetype. Kathleen Higgins explains that ‘kitsch presents an image, or icon, that makes reference to a culture’s beliefs about the world and about what goals are desirable and attainable. These beliefs, which I call archetypes, are semiconscious and pervasively reinforced through cultural practices’ (2003: 92). If it is true that kitsch works fundamentally as an icon or a symbol, we found another reason for considering this phenomenon fundamentally different from high art; traditionally, symbols can be a compositional element of successful artworks, but they are rarely considered proper art themselves. Symbols are created to represent something very specific and identifiable; once their meaning is recognized and digested, they allow for passive consumption from the audience.

In his influential book, Kulka (2015) argued that kitsch things are defective in all the three traditional categories that give aesthetic value to an artwork, that is, unity, complexity, and intensity. Kulka shows this deficiency rather ingenuously, explaining how, contrarily to proper artworks, the kitsch object does not suffer from possible alterations of its form:

The difference between kitsch and other manifestations of bad or mediocre art is not just quantitative but also qualitative. It does not consist only in the fact that typical kitsch may be altered in many more ways without being aesthetically damaged or improved, but also in the fact that it is very difficult for kitsch to be damaged or improved by alterations at all. (Kulka 2015: 76–7).

This heightened modifiability, concludes Kulka, gives the kitsch object a low aesthetic value, or more precisely, it does not even allow kitsch to be described in terms of unity, complexity, and intensity, which is how aesthetic value is traditionally understood from Aristotle onward.

Beyond the aesthetic value, however, there is also what Kulka calls the artistic or art-historical value, which is dependent on the influence an artwork has in what Danto famously called the Artworld (1964) and in society in general. To exemplify artistic value, Kulka talks about the impact of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon; a stylistic gamble and innovation that turned out to be incredibly influential in the history of contemporary art. We know, however, that the kitsch object cannot engage with this level of innovation because the kitsch consumption needs to be effortless and its message immediately recognizable. Therefore, it follows from the definition of the kitsch object that it cannot have artistic value either.

And yet, although Kulka is right in stressing that kitsch lacks aesthetics and artistic values as traditionally understood, there is perhaps a third dimension to consider, and this time, it might be within kitsch’s reach. I am thinking about what we might call the anthropo-historical value of artworks, which is something very common in the economy of the art market in late capitalism. Anthropo-historical value refers to the fact that artworks acquire or lose value because of the history they have, because of the people who created them and, quite importantly, because of the people who owned them for some time. A Modigliani painting is always appreciated by art buyers around the world, but even more so if it comes from an important private art collection or has been previously owned by a famous person. Even if kitsch objects cannot aspire to acquire aesthetic value or artistic one, perhaps part of their success depends on a form of anthropo-historical value that they acquire through time and acquaintance with specific persons.

The rest of this paper aims to characterize more precisely the form of anthropo-historical value to which the kitsch object can aspire. We will see that instead of a heightened market value, as in the Modigliani example, the kitsch object with a history of common life with an individual person might acquire a special value for that person, which I will characterize as existential in nature. Existential value is often considered one of the primary qualities of successful art in general, insofar as art helps us give meaning to our life and, more specifically, meet some of our most basic existential needs such as remembering, finding hope, channelling sorrow, cultivating emotional balance and self-knowledge, and exploring new experiences and perspectives (de Botton and Armstrong 2013; Maes 2022). My thesis is that (at least some) kitsch has the potential to cater for these needs, notwithstanding its structural deficiency in other dimensions that make high art so valuable. Certainly, a crucial difference needs to be highlighted: high art has existential value by means of its original unity, layered complexity, and meaningful intensity, whereas the kitsch object acquires existential value through its intimate cohabitation with the individual. In short, art has existential value by means of its aesthetic and artistic value. In contrast, kitsch can acquire it only anthropo-historically, that is, through time and in relation to an individual. The case study of the everyday kitsch that follows is meant to clarify these points.

Before moving onto that, however, let us summarize the results of our investigation on the nature of kitsch. We can now define the kitsch object as a highly modifiable passive symbol that is parasitic on the emotional effects of its artistic referent and mistakes the consequences of legitimate art for its only aim. This object is traditionally created in response to the aesthetic deprivation of the modern individual, and its characteristics of immediateness and explicitness prevent it from acquiring aesthetic and artistic value. The only other value that likely remains available is what we call the anthropo-historical one, which can potentially offer the kitsch object the possibility of catering to some existential needs of the individual, thus legitimizing its ubiquitous presence and confirming that, although imperfect, the sociological view of kitsch is still relevant today. The following analysis of the everyday kitsch object will further investigate this hypothesis.

4. The Everyday Tropical Kitsch—Building a New Legitimacy

We previously mentioned that the condition of aesthetic deprivation is likely to be a factor that does not reflect the living conditions in the twenty-first-century Western world, which is often characterized by excessive exposure to aesthetic stimuli—both in the sense of heightened sensory stimulation and, more importantly, in the sense of facilitated access to artistic experiences of different kinds and levels. It is, in fact, easier to imagine the contemporary individual as bulimic rather than deprived when considering their relationship with aesthetic experiences. However, this judgement probably merits some specification and an extra layer of analysis. It is indeed true that the contemporary post-industrial, globalized world makes it almost impossible to live a life deprived of aesthetic stimuli, but on a closer look, even if the aesthetic need is abundantly satisfied, the connected existential need might be ever more present if the quality of the aesthetic stimuli is poor or our relationship with them is passive and superficial.

Morreall and Loy notice that ‘because few work with materials such as wood, fabric, and metal, and fewer still do anything artistic, most are unable to appreciate or evaluate things aesthetically’ (1989: 66). As consumers, we live in a passive relationship with aesthetic stimuli, and this poor experience does not allow for the emergence of sophisticated critical tools. Our general shallowness in judging the aesthetic stimuli we are bombarded with is, of course, a fertile terrain for kitsch to establish itself as the dominant provider of aesthetic input: ‘With the lack of developed taste in our society goes an inability to make subtle discriminations and a tendency to evaluate things by their most obvious features. What sells today are slickness, gaudiness, flashiness, and sentimentality – in general, whatever elicits a quick automatic response from a passive perceiver’ (Morreall and Loy 1989: 67). The success of kitsch today is thus the result of a precarious aesthetical education of the masses, which traditionally prefer passive consumption over active critiquing (Horkheimer and Adorno 2002), and is also the result of the worldwide homogenization of culture (Kundera 1984), where the reference embodied by the kitsch object is immediately recognizable, in Tokyo as in New York, in Rome as in Lagos. Arguably, it is too bold to claim that kitsch is still responding to the aesthetic deprivation of the masses, but it is plausible to say that the phenomenon keeps flourishing in a space where the critical eye is indolent and the taste for complexity rare.

If this is true, it is not surprising that ‘kitsch has become an integral part of our modern culture, and it is flourishing now more than ever before’ (Kulka 2015: 16). Over time, it even developed its formal features, of which Abraham Mole provided a partial list in 1971—the curve line, excessive decoration, sentimental chromatism, counterfeited materials, and distortion of original dimension (mentioned in Mecacci 2014: 122–3). Following this or other similar lists, it is not hard to identify examples of kitsch objects in our everyday lives, from the trash we buy to the way we dress, up to the music we listen to or the food we eat. If we take one of the most paradigmatic examples of kitsch object, however, and we look at it closely, we can perhaps identify the core of a possible re-evaluation or even the space for a new legitimacy; even if the aesthetic needs of people have changed, the existential need for meaning is a universal feature of humanity, and kitsch is perhaps one of the many ways we try to make sense of our life.

Take your favourite example of a tropical kitsch object; it can be the classic fake palm and pink flamingo setting used as a photo shoot background or swimming pool adornment, or a key holder representing an Australian surfer or Alpine skier, or again any car stickers saying ‘I love [exotic place]’—anything embodying our ‘exoticising way of thinking, a discourse in which the tropics are constructed as the environmental Other’ (Ryynänen and Sysser 2021). These examples fit perfectly with Kulka’s definition of kitsch; they are ‘totally parasitic on its referent’ (2015: 78) by invoking explicit and effortlessly identifiable emotions connected to free time, holidays, sports, and relaxation. In the tropical kitsch, confirm Ryynänen and Sysser, we ‘face banal products, often large in size and not really meant to cherish bourgeois, sentimental respect, or nostalgia for cultural tradition but to accentuate pastime, non-seriousness, and easy pleasures’ (2021). This description hints towards the most original peculiarity of everyday kitsch when compared with traditional ‘artistic’ kitsch, that is, its humble relationship with beauty.

In contrast with traditional artistic kitsch, which was parasitic on some artistic forms, mimicked the beauty of the original, and often advertised itself as an artwork of the same level (Eco 2013: 112), everyday kitsch does not have the pretence of being mistaken for art. Everyday tropical kitsch objects lack pretentiousness; they are openly banal, done with cheap materials, and they do not target grace and beauty. This avoidance of beautification is not really the result of the lessons on the twentieth-century avantgardes, which taught us ‘that beauty, or some near kin of it, is unsavoury, a temptation that might get the soul off-track’ (Higgins 2003: 89), but it is more likely a sign of maturity of everyday kitsch, which tries to establish itself as a meaningful experience detached from any artistic reference; if this detachment can be interpreted negatively as another sign of poor quality—‘detached from their origins they become just icons, without really much reference, losing all connections to originality’ (Ryynänen and Sysser 2021)—I argue that it can also be understood as a late attempt to build a totally new, this time more-than-parasitic identity.

It is worth noticing that nobody buys tropical kitsch objects, mistaking them for artworks; everybody knows they are not authentic and nonetheless consumes them to enjoy the emotional surrogates they provide. As confirmed by Ryynänen and Sysser, ‘banal tropical kitsch is not a challenger of beauty, and neither is it about an attempt to elevate the user socially or class-wise. It is simple. It lacks pretentiousness, and it brings joy to people’ (2021). This joy is far from Kant’s experience of the beautiful, but it is a joy nonetheless, very much in line with the love for the excess, the unnatural, and the exotic, which are typical of the so-called ‘camp’ culture famously described by Susan Sontag (1966)—who, incidentally, already recognized the partial overlapping of the two concepts of kitsch and camp in her seminal paper. This taste for extravaganza reveals an element of laughter in the everyday tropical kitsch, that is, the camp tendency to turn seriousness into frivolousness, and this is perhaps the reason why: ‘laid-back tropical kitsch might be a territory inside the world of kitsch that somehow does not raise negative reactions’—as admitted by Ryynänen and Sysser (2021).

To further study this new essential quality of the kitsch object, with its capacity to bring a very specific joy to the contemporary individual, it is perhaps necessary to follow the lead of Yuriko Saito (2007), who strongly advocates treating everyday aesthetics as complemental to art-centred aesthetics, and not dominated by it. When studying tropical kitsch as the quintessential example of everyday kitsch aesthetics, we should not make the mistake of looking at it only through the lenses and standards of art but understand how it responds to the existential needs of the contemporary individual in its own peculiar way. The characteristics of tropical kitsch identified in this section—lack of beautification and unpretentiousness—suggest that the twenty-first-century updating of the sociological view should talk about an individual who does not see beauty as the only experience that is capable of catering for their aesthetic and existential needs. What makes this individual think that kitsch is another candidate to help meet their needs is explored in the next section.

5. The Power of the Everyday Tropical Kitsch—Incongruity Through Displacement

Traditionally, the kitsch object is considered free from any interpretative challenge. Kulka’s criteria of recognizability and absolute explicitness seem to prevent any exegetic uncertainty from taking place. And yet, on a closer look, one can identify different levels of interpretative openness in aesthetically appreciated objects. On the higher side of the spectrum, one can reach the absolute openness to interpretation of the Kantian beautiful object, in the face of which the imagination of the viewer—which normally organizes the data of sense-perception around the rule given by concepts—now ‘functions in a rule-governed way but without being governed by any rule in particular’ and thus establishes a ‘free play’ or ‘harmony’ with the faculty of understanding (Ginsborg 2022). Whereas on the lower side, one can create a much milder exegetic indeterminateness by using common elements reorganized in unfamiliar ways. In light of the previous discussion on the everyday kitsch object eschewing beautification, it would arguably be misleading to investigate whether objects organized in the latter sense qualify as ‘beautiful’ in the Kantian sense. And yet, if kitsch objects can be recognized as having at least such a type of interpretative openness, it means that the traditional view that sees them as totally apparent, self-explanatory, and aesthetically and intellectually arid is uncharitable. To cast a light on the potentialities of kitsch in this context, I propose to use the concept of ‘incongruity’, borrowing it from the philosophy of humour (Carli 2023). Jokes typically trigger comic amusement by using an incongruity that is far from being conceptually abstract or uncategorizable; on the contrary, it must be effortlessly and unambiguously graspable to be effective and reach a wide audience. This is true even for simple puns like the following, which plays on the incongruity generated by the different semantic use of the word ‘religious’:

My parents are really religious. My dad is a priest and my mom is a nun. (Carli 2023: 9)

For many critics, the fascination for kitsch derives at least in part from a type of incongruity that is very similar to the one described above as typical of humour. Lyell D. Henry Jr. notices that in many instances of kitsch, the charm of the object is guaranteed by its incongruity; for example, when one buys a small replica of the Venus de Milo with a clock in its abdomen. The two references—Venus and clock—are explicit, their recognition is effortless, and nonetheless, their weird togetherness gives the object an original attractiveness as well as a vague comic layer. This element of kitsch was considered such an important one by Henry Jr. that he ended up advocating for a ‘Test of Incongruities’ to establish something as kitsch:

True kitsch never fails to combine things that we somehow don’t expect to see combined or that conventional judgement continues to insist don’t belong together. In its aesthetic principle of incongruities, I believe, we have the source of kitsch’s engaging qualities, of its charm, of its immense success in the world. (Henry 1979: 207).

To analyse it deeper, the typical incongruity of kitsch objects is an incongruity achieved through displacement; very familiar elements, effortlessly recognizable, that nonetheless are placed or arranged in a surprising way. Of course, different types of displacements have been traditionally used by great art, from Duchamp’s Readymade to Jean-Paul Gautier’s use of garments, with the aim of adding a critical layer to the artwork. In Duchamp, the artistic legitimization of the everyday object (that is, the displacement of common objects now celebrated in formal, institutional spaces) targeted the traditional canon of beautiful art and of the artist as creator, whereas in Gautier, the use of underwear as outerwear (a quintessential form of displacement) and the exaggerated sensualization of the feminine figure aimed at ‘deconstructing stereotypes and proposing strategies of displacement of fetishized femininity, now appropriated by women’ (Castro-Diaz 2023: 190). In kitsch, this critical dimension is traditionally thought to be lacking, but it is worth reflecting on whether displacement itself automatically gives a critical dimension even to simple objects like the everyday kitsch.

In order to address this hypothesis, it is important to realize that the appreciation of everyday aesthetics is strictly connected with the notion of ambience, which can be defined as ‘contextual appropriateness’ (Saito 2007); the right time, the right place, and the right atmosphere are essential to appreciate the aesthetics of everyday objects or experiences. Such contextual appropriateness does not encompass the visual dimension only—‘most of us appreciate a squirrel for its jerky and sprightly movement when running […] These actions highlight the quintessential squirrel-like qualities, which is not quite forthcoming if it is just slowly walking across the street’ (Saito 2007: 104)—but also the other sensitive ones, like the auditory—‘the experience of biting a juicy apple cannot be separated from its crunching sound’ (120)—or the olfactory—‘the smell of a turkey roasting in the oven […] will not be appreciable if it is wafting through an operating room in a hospital’ (122).

Kitsch’s incongruity through displacement disrupts the very ambience upon which everyday aesthetics relies. Pink flamingos and alpine skier keyholders are in demand precisely for their capacity to bring us somewhere else, to disrupt the harmony and routine of everyday life, and to play as a means of release in a life otherwise perceived as flat. This perturbance of everyday life is indeed one of the main pushes for kitsch collectors (Henry 1979). The characteristic of displacement and disruption of ambience suggests that everyday kitsch is not only used for passive consumption of a vague otherness—that is, as a form of escapism—as traditionally understood but can also act as an attempt to add layers of meaning to one’s life. Thus, in its own way, the kitsch object has a critical dimension after all, although rarely recognized. Perhaps, the difficulty in bringing such a critical dimension into focus is due to the fact that the kitsch object is one of the only examples of disruption done by means of absolutely familiar references that nonetheless appear out of place.

The importance of such displacement in the experience of everyday kitsch can also be appreciated negatively by considering the problem of contextuality (Barragán and Ryynänen 2023: 14); the same object can indeed appear as kitsch in one context and less so in another, kitsch at one time, but less kitsch when enough time has passed. The alpine skier keyholder is definitely kitsch in the Maldives but kind of appropriate in a Tirol resort, to the same extent as a Christmas t-shirt is kitschy when worn in August on the beach but becomes somehow acceptable in December with a cup of chocolate on your hands. In some cases, objects can lose or acquire kitschiness completely in relation to their relative appropriateness. For example, one would not be surprised to find an art nouveau sugar bowl in Gaudí’s Casa Battló, but the same object would be perceived as kitsch if used during a formal meeting in Gropius’ Bauhaus Building. One might even be tempted to say that there is no kitsch without the incongruity guaranteed by displacement, with the interesting grey area represented by what Mark Augé called non-places like airports, malls, and the like (2020a), that is, spaces that struggle to establish an original ambience. If a place can be described as a space representing the history and constant re-elaboration of individual and collective identities (Augé 2020b; Carli 2022) a non-place ‘se définira comme un espace où ne peuvent se lire ni identités, ni relations, ni histoire (will be defined as a space where one cannot identify any identity, relationships or history)’ (Augé 2020b: 8–9). In these spaces, kitsch objects seem to fit better than elsewhere, and in some cases, they even concur with creating the peculiar ambience of the non-place—one sophisticated example might be Urs Fisher’s Lamp Bear at the Hamad International Airport in Doha, which contributes in giving a character to an otherwise anonymous space. Although Augé would not necessarily see this type of art installation in a positive way—as he criticized the so-called Disneysation of places (2020b)—art installations such as Fisher’s contribute to building an identity of the place and are an opportunity to interact with a space that otherwise would be perceived as identical to the many similar others. However, the existence of this grey area is perhaps due more to the original sterile ambience of non-places than the specific quality of the kitsch objects living there. The discussion of whether these kitsch objects are still to be considered kitsch even in the context of a non-place, as opposed to being in the process of building a totally new essence, goes beyond the purposes of this paper, but being aware of their existence is enough to signal the centrality of displacement for the kitsch experience properly understood.

Therefore, we can now appreciate how this dimension of displacement forces us to reassess some characteristics of kitsch, previously understood as incontestable. In particular, the idea that kitsch objects lack irony and critical dimension. First, Kulka’s idea of irony being incompatible with kitsch (2015: 97) needs readjustment considering specific types of everyday kitsch and their peculiar irony. Let us take our inflated pink flamingo as an example; the object in itself can be perceived as vaguely funny, but adding the right displaced detail can increase the comic effect. For example, imagine the same pink flamingo smoking a Havana cigar. The recognition of the two references is effortless, they both refer roughly to the same exotic area of the world, and nonetheless, the incongruity of a bird smoking a cigar increases the comic effect of the composition and—we are likely inclined to say—the overall kitschiness of the object. The same cannot be said if, instead of a cigar, one hangs a sign on the flamingo’s neck saying, ‘Mass tourism is killing me!’; in itself, the same incongruity seems to be in place as no bird goes around protesting with signs, but the reference to the effects of mass tourism and the destruction of habitats for wild animals living in exotic places turns the irony into social or political satire, with the result of making one doubt whether we are still in front of a kitsch object. The type of irony kitsch objects can sustain is in line with the essence of the object, which includes the quality of unpretentiousness identified in the previous section. As soon as the flamingo is used for social critique and pretends to do something more than embodying exoticism, it loses its kitschiness.

Social critique and satire are not critical dimensions to which the kitsch object can aspire. And yet, neither are they the only critical dimensions available, as more nuanced forms of criticism are possible. I contend that the characteristic of displacement allows the kitsch object to develop its own way of critiquing reality. One peculiarity is that kitsch does not have a specific target of criticism; it is an aesthetic disturbance or dissonance in everyday life that nonetheless is not a response or reaction to other aesthetic experiences—for instance, its lack of beautification is not a critique of beauty, the value of which remains unaffected by the presence of kitch. This is one of the reasons why those who attempted a comparison between kitsch and Pop Art were fundamentally misdirected. Pop Art was very traditional in this sense, as it has been interpreted as a reaction and criticism to very specific phenomena: ‘Pop Art, especially in its early stage, was (among other things) a protest against the increasing commercialisation of art’—says Kulka (2015: 109)—to which we can at least add Pop Art’s revolt against abstract expressionism and its innovative use of wit and genuine ambiguity. And yet, even if the kitsch object does not have such explicit critical targets, it would be wrong to conclude with Kulka that ‘Kitsch never questions anything’ (2015: 109). As explained in the last two sections, kitsch’s fundamental characteristic of displacement functions as a veiled critique of contemporary life and as a promise of escapism that the modern individual finds somehow comforting and a source of joy.

6. The Potentialities of Living With Kitsch—Seeking Authenticity Through Inauthentic Means

As predicted by Kundera, the kitsch object is everywhere, and no one can escape it (1984). Two options seem available for the contemporary individual who is destined to live among kitsch: (1) they can passively embrace the easy but superficial satisfaction of our aesthetic needs it offers, perhaps enjoying the sheer accumulation of these stimuli, or (2) they can reflect on the existential need these objects are trying to cater for, realize their subtle critical potential and use them to build a more fulfilling existence. The first option seems to be the default today, as it is best suited to the characteristics of the average person:

We don’t want anything that calls for attention to detail, interpretation, analysis, or any reaction other than ‘I like it’ […] Kitsch is perfectly suited to most people’s passivity, short attention span, and shallow understanding, for it promises them immediate gratification requiring no special background knowledge or activity. It offers itself as instant art. (Morreall and Loy 1989: 67–8)

However, the second option promises something more than passive consumption and would award the kitsch object with a functionalist dimension previously unthinkable. Kathleen Higgins is one of the scholars who recently pointed towards this possibility; after declaring herself ‘a kitsch relativist’, Higgins admits: ‘I think kitsch is in the eye of the beholder and that whether a given object or gesture is kitsch depends on the function it serves in a person’s life’ (2023: 124). Higgins’ words open up a promising scenario for the kitsch object, and in the remainder of this paper, I will try to outline this functionalist dimension with a few examples; ultimately, this will clarify how kitsch’s anthropo-historical value is also an existential value and explain how kitsch’s characteristics, including the disruption of everyday life through displacement, can be instrumental in building a more authentic existence for the individual.

From its very beginning in the nineteenth century, kitsch has been the response to an authentic spiritual need by means of an inauthentic aesthetic experience (Mecacci 2014). Such a strategy exposes the individual to some obvious risks, the most important of which is the so-called ‘risk of simulacrum’; lost in the excitement of the aesthetic stimulation and in the rush of finding new means for satisfying their existential needs, the individual finds themselves trapped in an inauthentic experience. That is why Adorno described kitsch as the ‘parody of a catharsis’, that is, the exercise of a false liberation (Mecacci 2014: 14), and why the Russian word of Poshlost has been used to describe the inauthentic nature of the subject, as complemental to the inauthentic nature of the object defined by kitsch (Mecacci 2014: 49–50). In themselves, all kitsch objects, including the tropical ones in our examples, offer a simulacrum of an ideal experience that cannot be otherwise experienced. And yet, when we do not surrender to bulimic consumption, our everyday familiarity with these objects can perhaps produce some long-term positive effects.

Several kitsch scholars attempted a taxonomy of the positive effects of living with kitsch. In order to identify the peculiar benefit emerging from our reflection, it is worth mentioning a few of these traditional positive effects, as they all contribute to the search for individual authenticity we are aiming for. In the sixties, Umberto Eco was one of the first experts to highlight the positive potentialities of kitsch. In his thesis in defence of mass culture, he stresses how the spread of concepts that are easy to digest might work as an intellectual stimulus, and the accumulation of low-level information might be an opportunity for cultural and aesthetic formation (2013: 40–5). The idea that with kitsch, quantity can occasionally turn into quality is fascinating, and I can offer a personal example to support the claim. The first encounter I had with philosophy was through a series of easily digestible books in which the author cherry-picked the most famous thoughts of ancient philosophers, described them in lay terms, and used them to describe everyday life situations in a vaguely ironic tone. To all standards, the content was simplified to the point that those books perfectly fit the category of kitsch: their content was totally explicit, effortlessly recognizable, and emotionally charged. And yet, the congeries of displaced topics in those books produced such a peculiar experience that created a disruption in my reading habits as a child. With time, such a disruption grew into a genuine interest and then a passion and work that today characterizes my authenticity as an individual.

A second positive function that kitsch objects might acquire with time is that of a life-meaning repository; their constant presence in an individual life can lead them to the accumulation of references, associations, and experiences related to the host person. If Higgins is right in categorizing kitsch objects as icons or symbols (2003), it is quite normal to think that symbols can acquire or lose layers of meaning over time. The possibility of stratification of meaning in kitsch objects can be seen in Higgins’ example of sympathy cards; when tastefully used, one can exploit the shallow sentimentality of the kitsch image to convey a deeper emotional engagement otherwise hardly representable. Or, as Higgins explains:

Kitsch, which exploits networks of culturally ingrained images and meanings, can similarly serve as a means for sending gestures of love and thoughtfulness to those who are at some distance, whether physical or emotional. Like the telegraph, its messages tend to be short, unfiltered, and to the point, banal but potentially as powerful as ‘I love you’ or ‘I care’. (Higgins 2023: 135)

The third possibility that emerges from living with kitsch is connected to the parasitic nature of their essence. Remember, kitsch objects leverage the meaning and emotional charge of their referent to be significant. And yet, this parasitic nature and original ‘emptiness’ of the kitsch object leaves the door open for the accumulation of new meaning over time. Saito (2007) briefly discusses this potentiality of everyday aesthetics by counterposing the Zen attitude to Kant’s scepticism about experiencing the thing-in-itself. The latter is unapproachable for Kant by definition. In contrast, the Zen approach to art—which can be summoned with the slogan ‘being truth to materials’—does not only imply a general optimism about experiencing ‘the thuss-ness or being-such-ness (immo) of the other-than-me’ (Saito 2007: 134) but also encourages the artists in their effort to cast a light on this essence with their ‘listening to the material voice and working with it’ (135). As a consequence of this approach, if one starts with an object that is nothing—that is, that does not have independent meaning, as in the case of a parasitic symbol—and builds experiences and an environment around it, one slowly creates the possibility for this object to become a thing with its own authenticity. Just imagine a farmer using the same Christmas-themed t-shirt every time they go to work in the fields; over the years, the kitsch references of the image do not change, but the specific object acquires an authentic experience that testifies to the farmer’s life, struggles, desires, and expectations.

Here we come, in conclusion, to the specific anthropo-historical value of kitsch, which I raised as a hypothesis earlier in this paper and characterized as existential in nature. Contrary to the anthropo-historical value typical of the official art market, where the monetary value of an artwork is proportional to the fame and importance of the past collectors, in this case, the value is more abstract and personal, related to the individual who surrounds themselves with specific kitsch objects. On the one hand, because of the initial absence of independent essence, the kitsch object acquires a value connected to the life history of the individual who spends meaningful time with it. On the other hand, the person benefits from the opportunity to cultivate one’s individuality and authenticity, thanks to an object that can disrupt an ambience through displacement but at the same time lacks any pretentiousness in directing the individual existence after the disruption, an object that is pleasant and vaguely ironic, but also open to accumulate new essential meaning in connection to the individual person. The examples provided in this section—kitsch philosophy books that inspire to undertake a new career, kitsch sympathy cards capable of elaborating and conveying deep emotions, and Christmassy t-shirts embodying life struggles and desires—testify of some of the existential needs that even the shallowest kitsch object can meet, such as exploring new perspectives and cultivating emotional literacy and self-knowledge. This is how a value anthropo-historically acquired is at the same time existentially relevant. This is where the existential potentiality of the everyday kitsch lies. Although this is one potentiality only, and admittedly a very rare one, the mere possibility of playing such an existential role in our life is enough to redeem kitsch from a history of unfavourable publicity and for us to accept the challenge of making sense of kitsch’s ubiquitous presence today.

Funding

None declared.

References