The era of scientific and technical progress brought a lot of disappointments in the field of art and culture. One of them was the standardization of style, which received the abusive definition of “kitsch.” The spitting and ridicule of critics did not save the culture from decline and even contributed to the development of the most pretentious variety of kitsch, which was reflected in interiors.

History and definition of kitsch or kitsch

Kitsch (kitsch) is a phenomenon that originated in the 19th century in response to the cultural hunger of the petty bourgeoisie, who had mastered city life, but did not have the need to master urban culture. The word “Kitch” comes from Germany, literally meaning cheap or bad taste. Such an ironic definition was given to art that had acquired a mass character and lost true meaning for the educated cell of society. The Industrial Revolution created universal literacy everywhere, reducing reading and writing skills to the category of common knowledge. The intelligentsia, which previously had the only influence on cultural development, was diluted by the working people, who did not show an aesthetic need for genuine art.

Kitsch is an example popular culture, which captivated the masses with its accessibility. He is a rationalized virus that has simply infiltrated cities, villages and deeply ethnic colonies.

Clement Greenberg, famous critic XX century, called kitsch the second cultural phenomenon that arose in the West simultaneously with ). The commercialization of art has become a sore subject for many reviewers and aesthetes. Even the peculiar analogue of kitsch in England did not give rise to such a wave of indignation and discontent.

Russian direction: origins in the USSR

The territory of the united Republics was simultaneously engulfed in the industrial revolution and popular revolutions. The change of system and power, the change of the ruling elite and the criteria of elitism served as direct prerequisites for the appearance of kitsch. The working class, the engine of progress, did not have the time and special desire to become familiar with the beautiful, which had nothing in common with the culture that previously surrounded it.

Kitsch is an object of low quality production, stamped according to a model, marks a triumph social status over the need for aesthetic pleasure. What has proven itself well in the design of Russian Khrushchev and Stalin buildings.

The meaning that artists and architects carefully placed into objects of art was replaced by simplicity and uncomplicatedness. The feeling of involvement in intangible values ​​was sufficiently satisfied by replicated examples that were closer to the hearts of the people.

Contemporary culture and art

Kitsch is everywhere. For him, the principle “demand creates supply” applies. Everything that we see in the interior around us is its direct manifestation in everyday life. Kitsch is the style of modernity. All other styles, especially if you take into account traditional ones, such as or, are a relic of the past, recreated by designers and architects as a fashion trend or aesthetic longing.

Intentional “exaggerated” kitsch appeared relatively recently. This newfangled category implies deliberate bad taste, excessive brightness of colors, and the combination of incompatible interior items.

The impression from such an interior is always provocative, regardless of the goal pursued by the decorator.

The countless paths that style has taken from the 19th century to the present day have given rise to a diversity that now allows kitsch to be divided into three categories:

• Pseudo-luxury style. Brief description- everything, at once and more. The interior is characterized by the presence of a huge number of luxury items related to different eras. Heavy ornate armchairs sit next to Chinese tables, and an avant-garde chandelier illuminates massive carpets and velvet curtains.
• Lumpen kitsch. The main idea is to imitate poverty. The walls are carelessly painted or papered, the light bulbs do not have shades. The furniture, shabby and deliberately tasteless, is assembled from different sets. All materials are cheap or imitate them.
• Designer. The main message is irony. Famous art creators do not hesitate to have a couple of impressive works in their portfolio. The emphasis is on the overabundance of popular items of mass culture, stamped “souvenirs” from supposedly distant countries. The two previous categories of kitsch can be played out simultaneously or separately.

Architecture

Accented nihilism affected architecture as a tribute to fashion. Exterior decoration is like a random temporary mixture within the same house. The building is in style or unexpectedly complemented by elements. Bright metal arches border stucco moldings and columns, while classic arched windows adorn the asymmetrical storey blocks.

The highlight of the style in urban planning is buildings in the form of edible products and household items. Huge teapots, pineapples, picnic baskets and cakes attract with their originality.

The purpose of construction is to attract attention, nothing more.

Interior

The interior decoration of houses and apartments is associated with soup prepared by a small child. All ingredients are selected based on brightness, mixed without technology, and often inedible.

Style Features

1. Fake. Everything is imitated - expensive materials, paintings, figurines. Defective products are deliberately used, emphasizing the lack of an aesthetic component.
2. Excessive decor. Every square centimeter is decorated with rugs, pictures, postcards. On each table there is a set of assorted meaningless figures.
3. Eclecticism. Elements different styles, opposite in spirit and significance, are deliberately mixed in a chaotic manner. The British of the Victorian era considered a sense of taste, contemporaries of kitsch deliberately create disorder in the name of bad taste.

Color range

The color scheme is deliberately random. The interior of one room combines red, purple, yellow tones of the most incredible shades with gentle pastoral motifs.

Brightness is the specialty of kitsch, the combination of incompatible colors is a dogma that must be adhered to.

Materials

Instead of wood, chipboard and fibreboard, instead of velvet and leather - textiles and leatherette. The materials are as varied as they are artificial. Iron is upholstered in velor, plastic chairs are buried in terry carpets. All artificially created materials known to mankind are used in the interior; their shape and quantity depend only on the imagination of the author.

Floors and walls

The floor may not have any covering at all. This heritage of lumpen kitsch appeals to many designers. In other cases, the flooring can be linoleum, tiles, laminate, or carpet. The wood is painted with cheap bright paints or sanded until it looks extremely aged. The shades and patterns are completely arbitrary.

In contrast, each wall is made in its own special style. There are fabric wallpaper, upholstery panels, and smooth patterned carpeting. Cartoon images and portraits of popular Western stars are applied on top of the unplastered masonry. Monochrome is a rare exception.

Windows and doors

Window openings are created according to the principle “it will do.” The shape of the openings is broken and irregular. A good solution is windows made in one of the pompous styles of past centuries. The interior of such a house, on the contrary, is avant-garde, flashy, highlighting the absurdity of archaic elements.

The design of doorways is similarly chaotic. The doors are simple and cheap, covered in graffiti or stenciled portraits.

Decor and accessories: paintings and paintings

The paintings on the walls are reproductions from the brushes of modern authors, pastoral pictures with innocent maidens, drawings from comics and cartoons. A hint of the presence of works from the time of da Vinci or Picasso is unacceptable, it will spoil the effect of negating the style. From painting there are only reconstructions with characteristic elements of pop art.

Accessories for the most varied suits. Fabric boxes, plastic flowers, faded vases and Chinese “hotei” coexist on the same shelf. One can see the effect of greed with which a villager, unfamiliar with the cultures of other countries, scoops up the first souvenirs he comes across.

No less interesting is the decorative filling in the style of an “ugly woman in love.” Naive romantic postcards stand, hang and lie everywhere, the room is filled with roses, hearts and images of couples in love. Next to the playful floor lamp lies a couple of volumes of a pulp novel.

Conclusions

Kitsch is the most controversial style of all known. At once relevant and wretched, deliberately or accidentally highlighting a lack of taste, it accompanies modern man everywhere. It has become impossible to get rid of kitsch since the widespread advent of technological progress. This culture, this lifestyle is a given that should be taken wisely.

Other interior styles are also full of bright images, although they are not as criticized by the public. These styles include, which is famous for its absurdity of forms, and, combining catchy colors with cold steel and natural materials.

Kitsch, aka “kitsch”. Many people have heard this definition more than once, which is mainly applicable to interior style or pieces of furniture. I propose to understand what is hidden behind kitsch, how to distinguish it and how to use it, and how simple hackwork differs from the common design style.

Nowadays, kitsch can be found anywhere: on stage, podium, in films and even on the streets of the city. Remember Lady Gaga and her style. Glamor, sparkles, eye-catching incompatibility of colors and objects, flashy, tacky outfits, and even makeup - nothing more than kitsch. High fashion also does not shy away from turning to bad taste. For example, John Galliano uses kitsch in his shows, demonstrating the highest aerobatics of the use of vulgarity in fashion.

From mass bad taste to fashion trends

It is generally accepted that the word comes from the German “kitsch”, which means vulgarity, bad taste, hackwork. Accordingly, vulgar and non-functional objects of mass culture that had status significance and were mass-produced can be classified as kitsch. But at the same time, they are attractive examples of design and are admired by a large number of people.

Kitsch became most widespread in the 1950s. Then they began to produce “junk” plastic products that copied samples of “high” design that were inaccessible to the average consumer. Among other things, the popularity of kitsch could be explained by the lack of personal taste of some people. It is easy to hide an undeveloped aesthetic sense behind kitsch, filling the house with things, each of which is colorful and insistently demands attention.

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  Kitsch as a phenomenon is opposed to high, aristocratic, expensive art. In Clement Greenberg's book “Avant-garde and Kitsch,” this concept expanded greatly and began to include advertising, “cheap” literature, music, and films. He wrote: “...simultaneously with the emergence of the avant-garde in the industrial West, a second cultural phenomenon arose, the same one to which the Germans gave the wonderful name “kitsch”: commercial art and literature aimed at the masses, with their inherent colorism, magazine covers, illustrations, advertising, reading material, comics, pop music, dancing to recordings, Hollywood films, etc. etc.”

  Along with the development of postmodernism, kitsch takes on the form of a creative movement. He is exalted for his openness, and he finds a field for realization within the avant-garde. Kitsch items began to be used in interiors to give a special effect precisely because of their bad taste. Outrageousness, imaginary luxury and denial of authority are the main trump cards of kitsch.

  Style Features

  

  1. Detachment, separation of objects from their natural environment.

  2. Vulgarity. Bombast. Banality. Falsity. If, looking at an object, you want to express yourself in such words, then most likely you are looking at kitsch.

  3. Crude and deliberate mixing of different styles.

  4. Loud color mixing.

  5. Excessive decor.

  5. Often a fake or simple imitation of works of art.

  Objects are not born “kitsch”, but become

  

  Many objects in the process of evolution of culture and society have become kitsch. An example is the Juicy Salif citrus press from Philip Starck. Created in 1990, it has become a design classic. The aluminum tripod gained popularity so quickly that it was found in every fashion establishment and every article about interior style. But few people actually used it for its intended purpose, and if they did, it was no more than twice. Being an impractical item, Juicy Salif became a mere decoration for the kitchen countertop and acquired the status of kitsch.

  Commerce tool

  Today, kitsch has become a good commercial tool in the media, art and design, turning into an original phenomenon and attracting everyone's attention. That is, he does not copy samples of past years and does not trivialize them, but creates something new.

  

  Kitsch is self-irony and a vivid example of how the phenomenon of mass distribution of cheap copies has become an example of skillful design, emphasizing the status of consumers themselves.

  And so that you can better distinguish kitsch from other designs, here are some examples of its manifestation in different areas:

What is kitsch?

After detailed comments on the results of the content analysis, we will try to construct (on their own basis) our own definition of kitsch as a phenomenon that is extremely relevant in modern culture. "Classical" kitsch (in Western European and American understanding as a derivative of popular culture) is the result of communication of authentic work of art, fresh, highly valued by the “elite” culture, and by the consumer - a representative of the “mass” culture. This communication occurs in a developed art market through an intermediary: a kitsch producer or the media as a replication authority. Before the occurrence modern version The media role of the latter could be performed, for example, by an artist-copier or a craftsman, a manufacturer of “consumer goods”.

The above concerns the subject area of ​​kitsch, but there is also literary, musical, television, cinematic11 and other kitsch. Taking advantage of the ancient system of dividing the arts according to the principle of temporal or spatial localization into “musical” and “plastic”, we will distinguish two subgroups of kitsch: let’s call them “entertainment kitsch” and “design kitsch”. The first occupies an entertainment-compensatory niche, which partly coincides with the functions of art in the sphere of “high” culture. This applies to short-term works that require attention and “living” from the consumer, interest in the plot and leisure. The second is associated, as the name of the subgroup suggests, with static works - paintings, sculptures, souvenirs, jewelry, items of clothing and design, etc. Both types of kitsch have the same characteristics; the difference can only be in their accentuation: for example, entertainment kitsch in to a greater extent is inherent in the plot, and design kitsch is characterized by long-term existence in a certain environment and the associated iconicity.

Let's take a closer look at the semantic aspect of kitsch. Its main difference from art is that kitsch, while not being aesthetically valuable in the elite sense, replaces beauty with its sign. Finding itself in a certain context - in a house, if it is a design item, in an ensemble of clothes, if it is decoration, etc. - kitsch becomes a sign of beauty. Thanks to its deliberateness12 and vivid plan of expression, it easily performs the function of a sign if there is a need to prove social, intellectual, aesthetic or even gender usefulness.

It is noteworthy that kitsch in general, as a rule, exists in context: without it, reproduction famous painting can be seen as, for example, an achievement of modern copying technology or as an option didactic material for schoolchildren and students. In such a situation, makeup disintegrates into meaningless colors, and the paper icon serves as a real sacred object for people who are true believers, but are not able to acquire a valuable thing.

The combination of a bright plane of expression and low market value makes kitsch popular and widespread. But in some borderline social situations, on the contrary, the inflated cost of the work and “exclusivity” are preferred, which makes the purchase a sign of financial prosperity. For example, in the situation of the nouveau riche, whose upbringing and education do not have access to high culture, but possessing large funds and forced to assert themselves in other ways. Strictly speaking, luxury as a social sign has existed as long as culture has existed - “any act of ostentatious, effect-driven consumption is a demonstration of power. Any squandering is unthinkable without an audience to impress.” But if in traditional cultures this was given ritual significance (Indian potlatch ritual), then in the modern situation social change added to this is the real need to mark personal and social boundaries.

Another example of the birth of kitsch in the border zone is the junction of subcultures, urban and rural. Then the external attributes of another are superimposed on the traditions and habits of one group and a discrepancy between the plane of expression and the plane of content arises, and as a result - “half-breed” kitsch, created in accordance with the aesthetic ideas of some, but the forms of others, alien, in essence, to those and others. Hence - all these six-month “chemicals” that were fashionable at one time, the source of which was the Western fashion for a la afro hairstyles, bright and inappropriate rural cosmetics for a city dweller, etc. The last example is well suited to describe the semantic function of kitsch: an ineptly made-up visitor, from the point of view of a professional make-up artist rural club(which among elitist critics has become a favorite metaphor for provincial kitsch) means in this way feminine beauty, as if saying to those present: now I am a beauty because I am living my leisure time. It is clear that in a work situation such an environment is not only inappropriate, but also dangerous. An illustration can be a scene from the film “Hello and Farewell,” in which the heroine comes to a city store and demands lipstick “with which they paint their lips.” Having painted her lips with purchased lipstick in broad daylight, she finds herself in a delicate situation and is forced to frantically erase traces of the crime. A similar plot can be found in the earlier film " Simple story", where the heroine N. Mordyukova tries to hide makeup applied at the wrong time.

The examples can be continued: in the modern province we often find interesting options word usage. Thus, for example, "hall" (feminine, indicating its French origin from the time of social salons) means a living room, and the word "eat", also used in gallant society of the 19th century, is used in everyday speech instead of the word "eat". An example from another area is the use of the phrase “haute couture”, which from a direct translation from French haut couture (high fashion) went on to designate a thing “haute couture”, i.e. “from fashion” (“from a fashion designer”, etc.).

As a matter of fact, the salon culture of the 19th century was actually replicated in contemporary, but distant from the capital social life circles, and this can be illustrated not only by scientific research13, but also by abundant examples from classical Russian literature - images of N. Gogol, A. Chekhov and other writers. All attempts to recreate fashion and manners of social communication in local circles, as a rule, turned into an occasion for irony and parody by representatives of the “high”.

Kitsch

♦ Gurdjieff is philosophical kitsch, said M. Meilakh. Perhaps this can be said about all so-called philosophical poetry?

Encyclopedic Dictionary

Kitsch

(kitsch) (German: Kitsch), cheap, tasteless mass production, designed for external effect. In the art industry, 2nd floor. 19 - beginning 20th centuries kitsch spread as an industrial imitation of unique products. In the 1960-1980s. Kitsch objects have become a widespread phenomenon of mass culture.

Culturology. Dictionary-reference book

Kitsch

(kitsch) a phenomenon of mass culture, synonymous with pseudo-art, in which the main attention is paid to the extravagance of appearance and the loudness of its elements. Kitsch is an element of mass culture, a point of maximum departure from elementary aesthetic values, one of the most aggressive tendencies of primitivization in popular art.

Cinema: Encyclopedic Dictionary (ed. 1987)

KITSCH

KITCH, kitsch (German Kitsch - cheap, bad taste), the principle of aesthetic formation. object in the sphere of “mass culture”, including cinema. The word “K.”, which first spread in the cultural usage of Germany in the 19th century, later became an international word. a term meaning targeted processing of aesthetics. material in accordance with the needs of mass taste and mass fashion. K. is an exaggerated imitation of forms associated in the mass consciousness with prestigious cultural values, and above all the fabrication of primitive, sensually pleasant external beauty, emanating from samples that are legitimized in the field of high art or at the level of aesthetics. consumption of the privileged layers of the bourgeoisie. society. K. as a principle can be embodied in both rough, pedaled forms (in many high-society and exotic film melodramas), and in moderate, softened forms.

◘ Kartseva E., Kich, or the Triumph of vulgarity, M., 1977.

Encyclopedia of fashion and clothing

Kitsch

(German) - cheap, sentimental, tasteless products designed for an external, often shocking effect. The concept arose in German and originally meant “cheap item,” namely repainted old furniture passed off as new. In the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. kitsch spread as industrial imitation of original products. Over time, the concept has entered many languages ​​to denote unaesthetic objects or people with poor taste. In the 60-70s of the 20th century. kitsch became commonplace in so-called “bourgeois mass culture.” Main role in the spread of kitsch, it is given to the stage, shows, stars, etc. Shocking costumes, often in a diffuse style (for example, a tacky antique brooch on a leather jacket), original makeup, tattoos (in particular, stickers), and all kinds of accessories are picked up by the public as a new fashion.

(Encyclopedia of fashion. Andreeva R., 1997)

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language of the 21st century

Kitsch

, A, m.

Pseudo-art, devoid of artistic and aesthetic value; a work designed for external effect, usually distinguished by a bright, catchy form and primitive content.

* In hot Avignon, amid thoughtful theatrical exercises, this theatrical joke by Bartabas seemed kitsch. But here, where kitsch - real, aggressive, completely devoid of both wit and irony - is enough even without Bartabas, his light performance, radiating positive energy, turned out to be some kind of outlet. (Izv. 05/28/09). The hit of the winter season is fur in all forms: dyed, sheared, in the form of appliques, edges, tiny details and whole things. A checkered jacket, striped trousers and a colorful shirt - what was once considered kitsch is now at the peak of world fashion. (AiF-SZ 06/13/10). *

Є German Kitsch letters"trash, bad taste"; English kitsch.

Lem's World - Dictionary and Guide

Kitsch

cheap, tasteless mass products designed for external effect; in the art industry of the second half of the century before last, the beginning of the last century, it spread as an industrial imitation of unique products; in the second half of the last century it became a phenomenon of mass culture. “Above the door there is a gilded portal, on the sides are palm trees in tubs, a path leading to the toilet is tiled with Chinese characters, and the ceiling is blue with stars...”; kitsch comes into fashion when old designs good manners get boring, and new aesthetics not formed; occurs with excessive wealth and satiety or, conversely, with blatant, challenging poverty; at the end of the last century, kitsch began to be “digested” by high art, a cultivated, less provocative kitsch appeared, for example, costume jewelry was legitimized by high fashion; in hindsight, as usually happens, some began to classify Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rembrandt as kitsch and argue that “tears in the eyes of listeners or spectators are one of the main proofs of the kitsch nature of an artifact,” that kitsch is indicated by “an open, trusting face, sensual leather, golden sunsets, dreams of the eternal":

* “To understand why everything was exactly the way it was,” says Aspernicus, we must turn to the second caryatid of Nazism after the ethics of evil - kitsch.” Provocation *

(from Polish Sus - craft). A term that was in use in the 1960s and 1970s. and has now gone out of fashion, as it was replaced by the more weighty concept of postmodernism. In essence, K. is the origin and one of the varieties of postmodernism. K. is mass art for the elite. A work belonging to K. must be made at a high artistic level, it must have a fascinating plot. But this is not a real work of art in the highest sense, but a skillful fake of it. There may be deep psychological conflicts in K., but there are no genuine artistic discoveries there. K.'s master was the Polish director Jerzy Hoffman. Let us outline K.'s poetics using the example of one of his films - "The Witch Doctor". A brilliant surgeon, a professor, coming home after a difficult operation, discovers that his wife has left him, taking her little daughter with her. Shocked, he wanders the streets, enters some tavern, where he drinks himself into unconsciousness. They take away his wallet and all his documents and dress him in rags. He wakes up in a ditch, a tramp with no memory. Neither your name nor social status he doesn’t remember - complete amnesia. He wanders the world. He is arrested several times. Finally, in some police station, he manages to steal other people's documents. He gets a new name. Settles in the village. His owner's son breaks his leg, which the local surgeon fixes incorrectly. The hero feels healing abilities within himself. He performs a second operation on the boy, making primitive instruments. The boy is recovering. The hero becomes a healer. Here, in the village, a young girl lives, and between her and the hero sympathy and some strange mystical connection arises. The hero tries to remember something, but cannot. Meanwhile, the village surgeon, since the healer took away his practice, sues the hero. The hero's former assistant, who occupies his professorial position, is invited to the trial. He recognizes his brilliant teacher in the bearded village healer. The hero regains his memory and realizes that the village girl is his daughter, whose mother has died. This is melodrama. The film is made excessively well, too elegant for an ordinary melodrama, on the verge of a subtle parody of melodrama. A simpler viewer might take the film at face value. The intellectual viewer enjoys “how it’s done.” This, in essence, is very close to postmodernism - targeting fundamentally different audiences. One of the most popular films of the 1990s is constructed in the same way. - Quentin Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction", the content of which makes no sense to tell, since everyone has seen it. In the 1970s they would call it K. It uses and plays with the genre outline of the gangster detective and thriller, and at the same time is made so skillfully, with such a huge amount allusions that, again, any viewer can watch it. And another masterpiece of K. - postmodernism - Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose". This is also K. A parody of a detective story and a Borges novel at the same time. The action takes place in the 14th century, at the end of the Middle Ages, when glasses had not yet become fashionable and caused purely semiotic surprise. The hero of the film, William of Baskerville - the medieval Sherlock Holmes - is a Franciscan monk, and his disciple Adson (Watson) in his old age conveys the story of bloody murders taking place in a Benedictine monastery due to the fact that curious monks cannot find a fascinating book, an unwritten, “virtual” second part of Aristotle's Poetics, where the concept of comedy is interpreted. She is hidden by the old monk Jorge (an allusion to Borges and his story “The Search for Averroes”). And again a mass-elite turn. However, unlike previous examples, “The Name of the Rose” is already inscribed in the canon of a new paradigm, postmodern.

Dictionary of 20th century culture. V.P.Rudnev.

(German: Kitsch - from the verkitschen, kitschen - to reduce the price) An ideological and stylistic component of mass culture. The term "K." arose in the second half of the 19th century. Although the phenomenon itself existed long before its definition, it received true development only with the advent of mass communication. Goethe also wrote that technology, combined with vulgarity, is the most terrible enemy of art, which was clearly demonstrated by K. His seizure of various areas of culture occurred gradually. First of all, he invaded literature, giving rise to the kind of reading that is commonly called tabloid. Today these are almost all “ladies' novels”, the works of Jacqueline Susan, Harold Robbins, Anna and Serge Golon and many many others. In con. XIX century K. claimed the rights to the stage and applied arts . The refined amusements of the aristocracy were replaced by the rudeness and flatness of bourgeois spectacles. Their programs were subject to the taste of the nouveau riche (This, only adjusted for politics, is perfectly shown in Bob Fosse’s famous American musical “Cabaret”, 1972). The taste of the same lovers of postcards with cupids fluttering over a kissing couple, with full-breasted ladies showing deep cleavage and garters with pink bows, loyal fans of kitschy romance. With the advent of cinema, television, and video, this taste spread to them. K. has become a commodity with constant wide sales. Its differences were life-likeness in small details, imaginary significance, and deceptive relevance. In an aesthetic sense, this is a leveling of the plot, reducing the ambiguity of meaning to the triviality of everyday rules, replacing a complex emotional series with the simplest psychophysiological acts, erotic excitement, short-term nervous shock, stimulation of aggressiveness. This is also a distortion of literary classics for the sake of mass taste (films: “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”, 1952, “The Killers”, 1964, “Manon-70”, “The Magic Mountain”, 1983, etc.). Reducing the biography of great people to the presentation of piquant details of their personal lives (“Henry and June”, 1990, “Beloved Pagan”, 1959, “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga”, 1993, etc.) Passion for mysticism and horror (“The Exorcist”, 1973, “Dracula”, 1992, “The Crystal Slipper and Rose”, 1976, etc.) A. Mol in the book “Kitsch, the Art of Happiness” rightly argued that K. is not only a style in literature and art, but also an attitude towards him consumers. Keachman craves descriptions of the “sweet” life of those who are not constrained by means: aristocrats, ladies of the demimonde, financial magnates, film, television and pop stars and the like, which allows him to give descriptions of luxurious apartments and entertainment venues, a complete register of high-society entertainment, “sublime “passions and dialogues, a decent dose of eroticism or frank sex, that is, everything that unfortunate Nastya was reading from Gorky’s play “At the Lower Depths.” The relationship between the modern consumer and the neo-Chi is built on a different basis. If old K. strove for beauty, as it seemed to the undeveloped taste of the nouveau riche, that is, for vulgar beauty, then K. today deliberately introduced fashion for the ugly. The consumer often understands that a thing is ugly and non-functional (for example, a teapot in the shape of a cat or a house in the shape of a shoe) and that is why he buys it in order to keep up with the times and not look behind the times. Old K. did not know such a close connection between aesthetics and prestige. The current customer and consumer K. belongs to that segment of the population that is characterized by sufficient material security, contentment with oneself and life, and a desire to constantly decorate it with more and more new things and entertainment. Plunging into the illusory world of K., its consumer discovers the similarity of his aspirations, his ideas about morality, ethics, standards of success with the aspirations and ideas of the heroes of books, films and television programs. For him, only one condition is important: what is shown or written must have all the external signs of life-likeness. K. appeals to instincts; Researchers find a theoretical basis for this in Z. Freud, since K. often relies on speculation in sexuality and cruelty. Manipulation of the consciousness of recipients, an accurate account of the psychology of perception, combined with the progress of the technical capabilities of distributing K. products - the basis of both K. and neo-Kich. One of the varieties of neokich is camp. According to S. Sontag, the essence of camp is an addiction to everything unnatural, artificial, and excessive. The most exciting spectacles are those films that are included in the list of ten worst films compiled annually by critics. An old Italian kitsch series of paintings featuring the phenomenal strongman Maciste is beginning to enjoy new success. Campman delights in the most gaudy kitsch decorations. Postmodernism often ironically plays with camp, turning it into an element of artistic freestyle.

Lit.: Kartseva E. Kich, or the Triumph of vulgarity. M., 1977;

Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste. Ed. G.Dorfles. N.Y., 1969;

Moles A. Le Kitsch, L "art du bonheur. Paris, 1971;

Stemberg J. Le Kitsch. P., 1971.

E. Kartseva

Lexicon of nonclassics. Artistic and aesthetic culture of the 20th century.. V.V.Bychkov. 2003.

The etymology of this word has several versions:

1) from German early musical jargon XX century – in the meaning of “hackwork”;

2) from German make cheaper;

3) from English– “for the kitchen”, refers to items of poor taste, unworthy of better use.

Kitsch is a specific phenomenon that belongs to the lowest strata of mass culture; a synonym for pseudo-art, devoid of artistic and aesthetic value and overloaded with primitive details designed for external effect.

Big explanatory dictionary in cultural studies.. Kononenko B.I. . 2003.

Synonyms:

See what “KICH” is in other dictionaries:

Keach, Stacy Stacy Keach English. Stacy Keach Birth Name: Walter Stacy Keach, Jr ... Wikipedia

See KITCH. Dictionary of foreign words. Komlev N.G., 2006. KITCH, KITCH [German. Kitsch hack, bad taste] tasteless, cheap work (for example, a painting, a novel, a film). The term originated at the beginning of the 20th century. in the circles of Munich artists. Dictionary of foreign... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

kichage- Kichә bulgan, kichә eshlәngәn. heap. Үtkәn chordagy, elekke zamandagy… Tatar telen anlatmaly suzlege

Kitsch, and kitsch, and... Russian word stress

M.; = kitsch Efremova's Explanatory Dictionary. T. F. Efremova. 2000... Modern explanatory dictionary of the Russian language by Efremova

Noun, number of synonyms: 14 bad taste (12) vampuka (10) cheap (21) ... Dictionary of synonyms

English kitch; German Kitsch. A creative product that claims to have artistic value, but does not possess it. K is generally characterized by superficiality, sentimentality, sweetness, and a desire for effect. Antinazi. Encyclopedia... ... Encyclopedia of Sociology