This word ‘kitsch’ probably has the most contested collection of understandings and meanings attributed to it via the language(s!) we share – or sometimes don’t. It may be worth mentioning that what we are talking about when we discuss “kitsch” is a set of ideas that carry a full quota of cultural cargo. Thus any meaning(s!) that it may have – wherever it is it’s being understood – is framed within the belief systems, and vernacular understandings, at work within the ‘locale’ of the cultural reality(ies), and precinct(s), within which it is discussed. Moreover, the languages/dialects/whatever (cultural context?) that define it/them are anything but insignificant.
I find the scurry to the dictionary interesting in so much as dictionaries inevitably contain interpretations of how words were understood up until the point they were complied and even then somewhat subjectively through the lens of some assumed common denominator. Nonetheless, without much else their serious (good?) intent makes them useful.
There are some issues to do with the understandings/meanings attributed to ‘kitsch’. There’s one in particular here to do with the ways the cultural reality(ies)/paradigm(s) in which it is being discussed impacts upon the way(s) in which it’s being understood – and variously. The assumption that because we are doing so in English – the Queen’s English indeed sometimes! – that this in its turn may confer concrete and irrefutable meaning upon the word. And, that there may indeed be some kind of hierarchical order imbedded in there too. Like to be ‘kitsch’ is bad, a negative, a minus, somehow less, worthless, pretentious and more yet in this vein I’d guess.
There is a little voice inside me just busting to shout out obscenities and then write them down but I pinch myself, and then remind myself, that I have UPG (unconditional positive regard for those who have forgotten or never even took note) for the group and all in it.
The cultural understandings embedded in ‘kitsch’ are made up of slippery stuff and it seems to me they’ll inevitably be interpreted differently in the various cultural precincts in which they’re interrogated and imagined. I find the idea of a <FLUXUSkitsch> rather interesting. I wonder if it would it be possible to define (construct?) such a thing in this group/network/whatever. Is such a construct already in progress?
Ray _from way out on the edge
eMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (when the server’s up)
On 3/7/04 3:13 AM, "Ann Klefstad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
My understanding of the nature of kitsch is that it's the commodified
sublime. It comes out of an era that sought the sublime in art--something
that likely is impossible, at least in terms of the Kantian sublime, that
experience that sort of strips the gears of perception, you know. But
seemingly representations of landscapes personifying the sublime were
accepted as sublime artworks (and this was true of poems, paintings, music).
Kitsch appears to be the response to the desire for the sublime. The
sublime, in an industrial landscape or a commodified life, is a sort of
negative space, a perpetually deferred longed-for experience that people
attempt to fill by means of acquisition. Artifacts of wish-fulfillment--that
is, representations of absent or impossible situations that promise
sublimity but cannot deliver it--are acquired and quickly "used up," they
become useless. And so more must be purchased. Kitsch/Sublime becomes a kind
of engine of consumption, the way a commodified culture paves its road
toward the desired consummation with the sublime, a road made of discarded
dreck, more of which is always needed.
In terms of this notion of kitsch, secret fluxus performances are only
kitsch in that they are place-holders for an experience that is arising
directly out of life and the dictates of current culture/history, an
experience of invention. The place-holder is the revived performance, that
does have a air of nostalgia about it.
I think what's being discussed here is the oddity of the preservation of
ephemera, and perhaps the point is that truly fluxus acts are not the
revivification of old (now culturally out-of-place or anachronistic)
performances, but the creation of new ones that have authentic immediacy. Of
course this criticism could apply to other performances; it's just much more
pointed with regard to fluxus because fluxus always had as a subtext that
sort of taoist regard for appropriate immediacy, act as response to context
or current state of affairs.
So in some sense, preserved, salted-down performances, as a primary activity
instead of an occasional apposite homage, could be seen in some sense as
kitschy, as place-holding entities that are empty and thus that need to be
endlessly repeated.
AK
On 7/2/04 8:50 AM, "secret fluxus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear Madawg,
>
> As the current secretary for Secret Fluxus, I?ll try to answer your question
> as I see it. I?ll be meeting the others next week, and if they disagree with
> my answer, I?ll report back. While I?m only speaking for myself for now, my
> guess is that the others will take a similar view.
>
> I?ve checked with the member who is best versed in art history, and this
> reply incorporates the advice I received.
>
> The answer is that we do not feel that we are doing kitsch.
>
> According to your definition, kitsch is an art form that looks back to the
> past. We are not looking back to the past. The work we perform is alive and
> contemporary when we perform it.
>
> Many performable works are far older that anything by the Fluxus artists and
> composers. Any drama or music written before 1960 is older than Fluxus. No
> one asks whether performing Euripides, Shakespeare, or Ibsen is kitsch. No
> one asks an orchestra that performs Handel, Scriabin, or Monteverdi (George
> Maciunas? favourite composer) if they feel that they are doing kitsch.
>
> So, the answer is no. Using your definition, we do not feel that we are
> doing kitsch.
>
> Our art history expert points out that kitsch should not be confused with
> the earlier Romantic painting that is the distant source of much
> contemporary kitsch.
>
> Today?s painting of the sublime mountain sunset may be kitsch. When the
> Romantics first painted such scenes during the industrial revolution, they
> were not kitsch. They were a response to changing times, a response to the
> conflict between the industrial landscape that was changing the face of
> Europe and a look backward toward an idealized but deeply felt past. Had you
> been a displaced cottager forced for lack of work to move from a country
> village to the new industrial cities of Northern England, you might have
> looked back to your country home without being accused of
> ?sentimentalising.? The nobility and the rich industrial and merchant class
> patrons who could afford paintings also preferred the clean air and pleasant
> surrounding of their country estates to the dirty air and noise of the
> cities.
>
> This is mope complicated than the short description I give here, but the
> kind of easel paining that might be kitsch today was not kitsch when it was
> a genuine part of its time. Thomas Kincaid is kitsch. Odd Nerdrum has
> apparently claimed that he is a kitsch painter. No one who painted in the
> early industrial revolution would have made such a claim. The themes they
> painted were part of a larger project and a greater debate. This debate
> remained significant through much of the industrial era, a fact that can
> readily be seen in Martin Heidegger?s writings on art.
>
> The Welsh novelist Richard Llewellyn wrote a marvellous book that wrestled
> with the changes that industrial life and its struggles brought to rural
> England. Llewellyn?s book was How Green Was My Valley. It became a movie in
> the early 1940s. The book and the movie both depict many of these problems
> with sensitivity and insight. In his book, Llewellyn wrote, something like
> ?There is no fence or hedge around time that has gone. You can go back and
> have what you like if you remember it well enough?. Is Llewellyn?s view a
> reflection of human emotion or is it mere sentimentality?
>
> As the great-grandchild of a Welsh miner on one part of my mother?s side of
> the family, I can tell you how my cousins feel and what the land means to
> them. When we meet and talk about the past and the future, they still speak
> with depth and feeling on what it must have meant to live in villages so
> close to the land while digging the coal that fuelled the industrial changes
> that brought our new world into being.
>
> This is a long way from Fluxus, but it has a great deal to do with the kind
> of art that became a major source of kitsch, at least until someone invented
> Elvis paintings on black velvet.
>
> I took David-Baptiste Chirot?s advice and consulted the Oxford English
> Dictionary.
>
> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, kitsch is ?art or objets d?art
> characterized by worthless pretentiousness; the qualities associated with
> such art or artefact?.
>
> To make something kitsch is ?to render worthless, to affect with
> sentimentality and vulgarity?.
>
> Now that I?ve answered your question, I?d like to turn the question around
> to ask you something, Madawg.
>
> Do you feel that the work of artists like Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles,
> George Brecht, Mieko Shiomi, Ken Friedman, or Robert Watts is kitsch? Do you
> feel that their work is ?characterized by worthless pretentiousness??
>
> If so, why?
>
> If not, why?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Secret Fluxus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: ArtnAnts
> Subject: Re: FLUXLIST: Please define kitsch
> Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 14:39:43 -0700
>
> Well, I think Kitsch is debated as to its exact meaning. As I understand it
> it is an artform that looks back to the past. Kitsch was born in the early
> days of the industrial revolution. Easel painting that reflected a sense of
> doom or the sublime. Sentimentilizing is associated with Kitsch in the way
> that anything far back enough in the past gets sentimentilized. Perhaps
> other fluxlisters can offer more.
>
>
> From: David-Baptiste Chirot
> Subject: RE: FLUXLIST: Please define kitsch
> Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 16:55:54 -0700
>
> Dear Friends:
>
> the best way to define the word is to consult the dictionary as a starting
> point
>
> certainly some aspects of kitsch can be what one might term the entropy of
> the sublime--or --its deteroraition--kitsch is usally a derogative
> tern--ceratinly associated with asp[ects of thesentimental that are
> borderingon the ?distasteful?--yet do evoke passionate feelings in
> some--while repulsion in others-
>
> there?s aloo camp--but i don?t think secret fluxus is either camp or
> kitsch--
>
> this is why i wondered if the aspect of mimicry is not a camouflage, thus
> attaineing to secret-hood-
>
> or if the ritual reenactment of a historical one-time-only event--is not an
> attempt as it were to ?contact the gods? via a sort of cathartic
> identification by means of mimicry---?acting out?--yet under strict
> controls--
>
> or, on the camp theme--there is the impersonation aspect--but i don?t think
> secret fluxus is into this
>
> maybe more like textbook illustrations? or like those reenactments one finds
> at historical villages?--
>
> it does--have to do with history, at the core of it--?getting it right?--
>
> but yes consult ye dictionary!--
>
> ?for now we see, as through a glass darkly?--david-bc
>
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