Part 1: What Is Kitsch? A Question Every Artist Should Ask
During one of my many journeys through Italy, I spent a few days in Treviso. The city lies only a short distance from Venice and is often overshadowed by its famous neighbour. Unfairly, I think. Treviso possesses the kind of quiet elegance found in many northern Italian towns: arcades, canals, small squares, centuries-old facades and the calm confidence of a place that no longer feels the need to impress anyone.
Above the bed in my hotel room hung a print. Not a landscape, not a hunting scene, not a bouquet of flowers. It was Raphael’s famous angels from the Sistine Madonna. Those two angels may well be more famous today than the painting they originally belonged to. They appear on postcards, calendars, coffee mugs, greeting cards, notebooks and countless decorative prints. Millions of people know them, even if they have never set foot inside an art museum.
As I lay on the bed looking at them, a strange thought crossed my mind. Somehow, they felt kitsch. Not terribly kitsch. Not ridiculous. Not offensive. Just slightly kitsch.
The thought immediately felt wrong.
Raphael? Kitsch?
Simply placing those two words in the same sentence felt almost like art historical blasphemy. After all, we are talking about one of the greatest painters in European history. The Sistine Madonna is a masterpiece of the High Renaissance. Entire libraries have been written about it. Clearly, the problem was not Raphael. So where did that feeling come from?
What fascinated me was how quickly the word appeared in my mind. I did not need to search for it. The judgement arrived instantly. Some part of my brain seemed absolutely convinced that it knew what kitsch was. Yet the moment I tried to define it, that certainty began to dissolve. Perhaps you should try it yourself. What exactly is kitsch? Not instinctively. Not emotionally. As a definition.
The question is surprisingly difficult. Is kitsch simply bad taste? Is it sentimentality? Mass-produced art? The opposite of art? Or is it not a property of the object at all, but a reaction within the viewer?
The more I explored the question, the more I realised that I was not the first person to struggle with it. Quite the opposite. Some of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century devoted considerable attention to kitsch. What surprised me most was how profoundly they disagreed.
Even the origin of the word remains uncertain. Most scholars trace it to nineteenth-century Munich, where art dealers used it to describe inexpensive pictures produced for easy sale. From the beginning, the term carried a sense of contempt. When we call something kitsch, we rarely make a neutral observation. We judge. And usually we judge harshly.
At least two accusations are hidden inside the word. The first is aesthetic: this is in bad taste. The second is moral: this is somehow dishonest. That is where the subject becomes truly interesting, because beauty alone cannot be enough to create kitsch. If it were, much of art history would have to be thrown away.
The Austrian writer Hermann Broch offered one of the most influential theories. For him, kitsch was not primarily an aesthetic failure but a moral one. Art seeks truth. Kitsch seeks effect. Art risks something. Kitsch wants approval. According to Broch, the central question of art is: “Is this true?” The central question of kitsch is: “What must I do to make people feel something?”
It is a provocative distinction, and a dangerous one.
Imagine an artist painting a sunset because he genuinely loves sunsets. Is that art? Now imagine the same artist painting the same sunset because he knows sunsets sell. The image has not changed. Perhaps only the intention has. Yet intention is invisible. We cannot see it in the finished work. The distinction may therefore be far more difficult than Broch’s elegant theory suggests.
The American critic Clement Greenberg approached the issue differently. For him, kitsch offers ready-made emotions. The viewer does not need to discover anything, interpret anything or struggle with anything. The emotional response is already packaged and delivered. Romance, nostalgia, patriotism and sentiment are presented in a form that requires almost no effort. Art, by contrast, demands participation. It leaves questions unanswered. It creates uncertainty. It challenges rather than reassures.
At first glance, the argument seems convincing. Until we begin asking difficult questions.
Is a love poem automatically inferior because it speaks about love? Is a rose inherently kitsch? Is a sunset? At what point does beauty become suspicious?
The novelist Milan Kundera offered perhaps the most famous definition of all. Kitsch, he wrote, is “the absolute denial of shit.” The phrase sounds humorous, but his point was serious. Kundera believed that kitsch excludes everything unpleasant about existence. Suffering. Contradiction. Failure. Mortality. Complexity.
Kitsch shows us the rose, but not the thorns. Love, but not heartbreak. Family, but not conflict. A perfect world stripped of everything that might disturb us.
It is a powerful idea. Yet even Kundera’s definition raises uncomfortable questions. Must art always show the thorns? Can beauty not simply be beautiful? Why do we often treat happiness with suspicion while automatically granting seriousness to suffering? The deeper I looked into the subject, the stranger it became.
Consider a museum gift shop. Klimt on scarves. Van Gogh on socks. Monet on umbrellas. Munch on coffee mugs. Somewhere online, quite possibly, Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper printed on underwear.
Nobody doubts that these works are masterpieces. The question is not whether they are great art. The question is what happens when art becomes merchandise.
Does Klimt become kitsch when The Kiss appears on a scarf? Does Leonardo become kitsch when his masterpiece appears on boxer shorts? Does Raphael become kitsch because his angels decorate hotel rooms? Obviously not. The artist remains the same. The work remains the same. Yet many people experience a certain discomfort. Why?
Perhaps art does not become kitsch through reproduction. Perhaps kitsch emerges when the original meaning of a work is entirely replaced by a new function. The angels no longer speak of Renaissance painting or Christian theology. They become decoration. Klimt’s lovers become a fashion accessory. Leonardo’s apostles become a joke. The image remains unchanged, but the context has shifted completely.
That distinction may be more important than we realise.
At this point another question emerges. Why do we experience certain things as kitsch in the first place? Where does that reflex come from?
Nobody ever taught me that Raphael’s angels were kitsch. Yet the word appeared immediately. Somewhere along the way – through education, culture, criticism and habit – we seem to have learned that certain subjects deserve suspicion. Angels. Roses. Sunsets. Romance. Beauty itself.
Who taught us that? And why? Perhaps an even more uncomfortable question should be asked. Who gets to decide what kitsch is? The critic? The curator? The academic? The collector? The viewer?
The accusation of kitsch often contains a subtle claim of superiority. To say “This is kitsch” is also to say “I recognise kitsch when I see it.” The judgement therefore reveals something not only about the object, but about the person making the judgement.
When someone dismisses a garden gnome as kitsch, they are describing more than the garden gnome. They are also describing themselves. Perhaps kitsch is not merely an aesthetic category. Perhaps it is a social one.
An interesting example comes from the famous roaring stag. In German-speaking countries it has become almost synonymous with kitsch. Entire generations associate it with grandparents’ bedrooms, hunting lodges, rustic restaurants and sentimental decoration. Yet outside the German-speaking world the example often loses its power. Many Italians, Spaniards or Americans simply see a deer in a landscape. They do not immediately understand why it should represent bad taste.
That alone should make us pause. If kitsch were an objective property of the image, shouldn’t everyone react the same way? Perhaps the image is not the whole story. Perhaps culture is part of the story as well.
As a photographer, I cannot entirely avoid these questions myself. One of my recent series revolves around roses. Few symbols have been used more frequently throughout the history of art. Love. Beauty. Desire. Mortality. Longing. Artists have returned to the rose for centuries. Which raises an uncomfortable question. Can a rose still be photographed today without becoming a cliché?
Can beauty still be approached without immediately attracting suspicion? If a deer can become a cliché through repetition, what does that mean for roses, sunsets or the human body? Perhaps the answer lies not in the subject itself. Perhaps it lies in whether the image merely confirms what we already expect, or forces us to see something differently. At this point Jeff Koons enters the conversation.
His work is celebrated by some and ridiculed by others. To certain critics he is a brilliant commentator on consumer culture and desire. To others he produces little more than luxury garden ornaments for billionaires.
What fascinates me most is not the criticism itself but Koons’s response to it. He rarely asks: “Why is this art?” Instead he asks: “Why are people ashamed of pleasure?” It is a deeply uncomfortable question.
Because perhaps our suspicion of kitsch is not entirely about aesthetics. Perhaps it is also about embarrassment. The fear of liking something that educated people tell us we should not like.
The history of art offers another puzzle. The Renaissance celebrated beauty. The Baroque celebrated beauty. Symbolism celebrated beauty. Art Nouveau celebrated beauty. For centuries beauty was considered one of the highest ambitions of art.
Only relatively recently did beauty itself begin to appear suspicious. When exactly did that happen? When did beauty become something that required justification? Why do the same subjects repeatedly fall under suspicion? Roses. Angels. Love. Sunsets. The human body.
Perhaps this is not accidental. Perhaps these subjects bring us to a boundary we no longer feel entirely comfortable crossing. The boundary between beauty and meaning.
When I lay in that hotel room in Treviso looking at Raphael’s angels, I thought I was thinking about kitsch.
Today, I am no longer certain.
Perhaps I was thinking about repetition. About familiarity. About what happens when great art becomes a postcard, a souvenir, a scarf, a coffee mug or a decoration above a hotel bed. Perhaps I was thinking about beauty. Or our growing distrust of it. The more I read, the less certain the answers became.
Hermann Broch saw kitsch as a moral problem. Clement Greenberg saw it as pre-packaged emotion. Milan Kundera saw it as the denial of life’s contradictions. Jeff Koons asks why we are so embarrassed by pleasure.
Who is right? Perhaps all of them. Perhaps none of them. One thing seems certain. Few words are used more frequently in discussions of art than the word “kitsch”, and few words are examined less carefully. We use it with remarkable confidence. Often a single glance is enough. Kitsch. Case closed.
Yet the moment we try to explain what the word actually means, certainty begins to crumble. Perhaps that is no coincidence. Perhaps a judgement of kitsch reveals as much about the viewer as it does about the work itself.
In the next part of this series, we will leave definitions behind and ask a different question. Does universal kitsch even exist? Or might a Viennese viewer, a Roman, a Madrileño and a Japanese observer see the same image in profoundly different ways?
The answer may be far more surprising than we imagine.