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TOWA RDS A POLITICAL ANALYSIS OFDESIGN AESTHETICS

>This issue of Home Cultures is dedicated to examinikitsch from a variety of perspectives. It is the cu lminationof a project that started with a suggestion that I write abook on kitsch. My first reaction was rather guarded. The subjecseemed too much like fun , and too funny to be serious. It seemedhowever, like an obvious next step in consolidating a long-standinginterest in popular taste (e.g. Attfieid 1995: 185-201), in thedomestic interior (Attfieid and Kirkham 1995), and in the materiaculture of everyday life (Attfieid 1996, 1997, 2000). But aparfrom running the risk that might label all my writing as so muchkitsch, what was there left to say about it that had not alreadybeen said by art critics like Gillo Dorfles (Dorfles 1968).^ At firssight kitsch might seem a flimsy subject with no substance. Buwhat makes kitsch fascinating and first drew me to tackle it asa subject worthy of serious study and attention was because ibelongs to the genre of "wild things" (Attfieid 2000) that eludecategorization under conventional definitions. Kitsch belongs to abroad category of objects that inhabit the contemporary materiaworld that defy the normal definitions of fine a rt and design. Therefore, kitsch presents a particularly intriguing group of physica

objects w ith which to explore how people make sense of the worldthrough artifacts. Moreover it seemed possible that kitsch as agenre might hold the key to help explain popular taste. Althoughkitsch is found in all manifestations of visual culture, from highart, to cheap seaside souvenirs, it is most commonly a form oornamental non-functional object associated with the domesticinterior and as such, representative of popular tas te. Kitsch cannobe reduced to a single stylistic genre and can only be recognizedfrom within a consciously critical context that has something tosay about taste. In the search to explain meanings embedded inpopular taste kitsch is an extreme version that has a lot to telabout changing attitudes to aesthetic value. So here, with the helpof the contributors found in this volume who have also found ifascinating, kitsch is examined in several different ways accordingto a variety of perspectives and contexts, as well as from variousspecific fields of study from design and architectural history to^ anthropology.

D To consider ust a few ofthe meanings kitsch has enjoyedkitscg has been used to peddle ideology by fascist demagogues and bee^ made the subject of serious critique by art historians. It has beenS used as a strategy to elevate its own status to allow its integrationX into serious academic discourse as in the case of Gillo Dorfles's

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view" (Danto 1977). At the other end of possible definit ions, thereis the case of Victor Margolin's ironical reference to kitsch in hisessay "Culture is Everywhere" in which he actually avoids the termaltogether (Margolin 2002). In what can only be taken as a spoof"Museum of Corn-temporary Art,"^ a small display of his personalcollection of souvenir tat, Margolin questions the hierarchical posi-t ion of art gal ler ies and museums who consider themselves thearbiters of taste, asserting that culture can found everywhere. Inhis efforts to reassess kitsch and distance his collection of objetsd'art (which he defines as "a popular art" that mostly comprises"inexpensive multiples") from a demeaning classification, he usesthe tongue-in-cheek term"corn-temporary art."

But how can it be useful to redefine k itsc h, to u npack it from itsstereotypical m eaning of bad tas te and jokey ironical garden gnom estha t we encounter in Londos's visual article here and the flying duckstha t have joined the array of 19 50 s cute m emo rabil ia collectablesso highly desirable among the connoisseurs of camp? (Burns andDiBonis 19 88 ). The aim of this introduction is primarily to init iate aredefinit ion of kitsch by contextualizing it within a esth etics, populartas te , and contemporary culture studies and to sugg est how such aredefinition might contribute to the fields of Art and Design History,from where my own studies derive, and from there to other fieldssuch as anthropology, material culture studies, and ethnology asrepresented in this issue. By decontextualizing kitsch from any ofthe custom ary slo ts where it is usually found it is possible to attendto a category of mass design that continues to be absent frommost academic fields, particularly those associated with art. Thisintroduction is an attempt to position it as a more general aspectof material culture that refuses to judge it according to aestheticcategorizations and thus to provide a conceptual platform fromwhich to examine it within a broader cross-disciplinary context.

In categorizing kitsch as the paradigmatic postmodern style, it isimpos sible for it to be sidelined or to escape its presence as part ofthe material culture of everyday life. So, although it does not fit intoconventional aesthetics as a valid subject, kitsch is, nevertheless,a visual style and could be reclassified from the typology set outby Gillo Dorfles, into a recognizable category that would make moresens e today. That is n ot, however, my project, except to argue th at asa visual form kitsch does offer a genuine aesthe tic experience. As Eugene Goodhe art said in a sympos ium on kitsch in 1 95 8: "there mu st be som ething in all of us tha t wants kitsch , tha t needs kitsch . . . [ i t ] is an appeti te which everybody shares"(see Kulka 1996:22) . So if kitsch is posited as a style and a ta ste , and sociological analysis tel ls us that taste is socially determined, then it has to

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In attempting to tame kitsch sufficientiy and subject it to academic analysis, it is necessary to break quite a few rules. First onemust deal with what has to be acknowledged is a funny, somemight say, superficial subject. Just to give one of many availableexamples, take the "Kitsch inflatable sumo wrestling suit" withwhich a man can gain weight instantly and effortlessly by donninga "superbly daft and fun costume ... which at a flick of a buttonwill inflate you to impressive proportions" for a mere 39.99 plus4 x 4 double-A batteries. Then there are the Motown washing-upgloves with decorative fun-fur cuffs from the Taste by Mail catalogat 14.99. The fact that kitsch is a bit of a laugh is part of whamakes it intriguing. It is often the antithesis of serious, but it onlyconforms in part with what Allon White wrote in "The Dismal SacredWord" that "In the separation of high and low, 'high' is defined asserious and difficult while 'low' is usually defined as comic andeasy" (White n.d.)." But, as anyone who has attempted to writeabout this subject will know, it is far from easy.

One of the most difficult tasks has been to produce even aworking definition of kitsch. There are countless definitions opoor or bad taste but definitions of kitsch are rare. Because ofmy initial doubts in committing myself to a whole issue on kitschmy first proposal to the publisher was a general study of theaesthetics of popular taste. But she insisted the title had to be"Kitsch" and suggested I visit Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme parktown in Tennessee. The publisher also insisted I remove the word"Aesthetics" from my proposed subtitle"Kitsch: The Aestheticsof Popular Taste"suggesting the term made it sound stuffy andboring. And by the time I had investigated aesthetics to see what icould elucidate about kitsch I had to agree, finding that Aesthetics(with a capital "A")the philosophy of arthas indeed "neglected"kitsch, as Tomas Kulka says in his book on Kitsch and Art (199617). Furthermore, associating kitsch with art relegates it to a minormarginal position beyond the pale so that the d iscussion becomescircular, and yesboring.And as Emory Elliot writes in his Introduction to Aesthetics in Multicultural Age:

many feel that the recent theoretical revolution has made^ the term "aes thetic" and the cluster of ideas it containsD outmoded and irrelevant. For those who believe tha t artg itself is an elitist notion that only serves to sustain false^ hierarchies of expression, aesthetics is a divisive notion thatS does more harm than good. As long as people review andX evaluate cultural expression and make choices about what

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of the disciplines that address the desire for beauty and art;rather, it must be how to redefine the parameters of "art" andformulate new questions for evaluating cultural expression inways that are fair and just to all (Elliot et al. 2002: 9).

My project to attempt a redefinition of kitsch is a smaller projectthan a redefinition of art, but the object is the same to "evaluatingcultural expression in ways that are fair and just to all." First, it isnecessary to consider how kitsch is normally defined. It only seemsto exist within a normative contextin everyday speech where itpops up all over the place as evident in the examples given above.There is a common-sense meaning with which we are all familiarand can recognize without difficulty. However, once the intellectualanalytical process is put to work it becomes surprisingly problematicto pin down. This is not helped by art critics like Gillo Dorfles andothers who rely on their own common-sense definition and haveexplained it away by using the term interchangeably with "bad taste "without actually defining its formal characteristics, assuming that itcan be recognized by the cognoscenti. In the History of Design, asin Sociology, kitsch has been used as a kind of shorthand for badtaste, in the dual opposition of good design/bad design (Walker1989: 191). There seems to be a universal agreement that tasteis socially determined (Gronow 19 97 : x), which again does not helpin defining it. The characteristics that define kitsch, according toDorfles and others since are: parasitical poor imitations of fine artor classical designs, non-functional miniaturizations, cheap copies,degraded designs, sentimental subjects that require no thought tointerpret them and appeal to the lowest common denominator forpurposes of profit or the dissemination of political ideology. Theseare all familiar critical characteristics identified by cultural criticsfrom Adorno (1994: 202 -3) to Kulka, who in his book Kitsch and Art(1996) only includes one illustration and description of an actualwork of kitsch artthe Lady Playing the Violin (by an unnamed artis t)reproduced self-referentially from the jacket cover of Dorfles.Kitsch can be said to be a modern term insofar as its originslie in the age of industrial production, the particular feature thatBenjamin (1969: 217-51) brought to our attention in his essayon mechanical reproduction. He was one of two generations ofcritical theo rists who understood the political implications of mass culture, particularly in relation to fascism (see, for example, Dorfles 1968 ; Sontag 19 83 [19 72 ]; the Frankfurt School in Strinati 1995). One of the earliest and still relevant cultural critiques to attack the pretensions of middle-brow taste was Thorstein Veblen's (1934[1899]) seminal workThe Theory of the Leisure Classm

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the hierarchical framework of fine art, in other words, a "falsificat ion" of art, a form of inauthentic art. Such a definition dependon a given understanding that art is about an ultimate definitioof beauty. The rather cynical argument is that in an age of masproduction/consumption, where ordinary things have pretensionto aesthetic form, that there has been a degradation of taste madto appeal to the uneducated masses for base purposes of politicor to stimulate consumerism.While earlier critics have been concerned with the incursion oart into politics and propaganda through aestheticization, and havused kitsch to rubbish popular taste, current academic interest ikitsch beyond the disciplinary boundaries of art, emanates from

wider debates concerning the mounting escalation ofth e artifactuaworld and the material culture that it engenders (Binkley 2002131-52). However, the focus of this investigation of kitsch seekto analyze it as an aesthetic manifestation of cultural significancwithin the context of popular taste that needs to be addressed innew and more subtle ways.If we put kitsch in the frame of aesthetics in the lowercase, outsthe fine art frame, it takes on a more general meaningaesthetias a style, that delivers pleasure from the direct visceral experiencof immediate recognition of a familiar form, the kind of encounte

with the "real" that gives a sensation of being in direct contacwith authenticity. Aesthetics, as in the quotation from Emory Ellioabove, is usually associated with the elite definition that assumean educated intellect and sensibility that can contemplate anrecognize a certain type of beauty, and a critical understanding anan awareness of what is considered beautiful and therefore gooin terms of taste; that, therefore, would not include kitsch withiits remit. Traditionally, too, the aesthetic experience is supposed tbe unadulterated by any interest outside itself (that is to saynodependent on considerations of morality, utility, personal advantagor sensory gratification) as in the concept of "art for art's sake." Ithe light of these observations it would seem that what is callefor is a redefinition of kitsch outside conventional aesthetics thawould not work towards reinforcing the poor image of kitsch irelation to its elitist connotations. But can we have an aestheticof popular taste that is not a contradiction in terms? That is on12 possible when kitsch is posited as an aspect of popular taste an contemporary culture. Thus, the concept of aesthetics is adoptey in terms of a much more visceral experience like that describeo by Bourdieu. In Distinction he associates popular taste with thS working class and characterizes it as a direct response rather tha

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is that kitsch is not necessari ly a working-class taste but respondsto a much wider need for an engagement with authenticity.

In contextual iz ing ki tsch as an aspect of "popular taste" theintention is to position it in a positive context. In this case populartaste does not imply "dumbing down" or the degrading of art tomake it easy to assimilate. Nor is it meant to imply that kitschis admired by those who know no better, in other wordsthosewith no taste. I want to argue that kitsch is a valid category ofpopular taste, that i t conveys a pleasurable, aesthet ic genuineexperience, that it applies to many types of object not necessari lythos e normally categorised a s art; but can also apply to design andeveryday things and that as such, it has polit ical implications inma king culture acce ssible. Positioning kitsch within a social contextof popular taste recognizes popular culture as a more inclusive fieldof inquiry, it acknowledges the aestheticization of everyday life as apositive aspect of culture and allows the consideration of taste aspart of the habitus, the material culture of everyday life.

Metaphorically spea king, kitsch design can be all ied to the term"gold plating" used to denote overdoing it for the sake of makingan impression, wildly exaggerated, over the top.^ Thus, kitsch canbe considered an ideal form for making a personal statement thatexpresses a sense of identity. One of many ways that this approachdiffers from the classic crit ique of kitsch is that it recognizes theirony of kitsch. Irony is a knowing send up and has become partofthe language of postmodernism. Kitsch works well as a styl isticmedium for expressing irony and is often used knowingly in thisway to refer to art and taste, often inflating the importance of atrivial object for its symbolic potency. Recent crit ics of aestheticelit ism l ike Walker and Chaplin (1997), who have included popularform s of art, such as g raffi t i , photography, and graphic design underthe more inclusive heading of Visual Culture, have crit icized thedefinit ion of kitsch as a "low" vulgar form of culture or en tertainm entasso ciated with comm ercial producers and consu mp tion by passive,undiscriminating masses, as crude. According to them, this type ofperspective "do es not do justic e to the complexity of contem porarysociety" in which "some members of one class can and do shareor appreciate the culture of other classes. For instance kitsch isenjoyed by those with a camp sensibil i ty even though they know itis in bad ta ste ." However, th is type of sop histic ate d reference to Jkitsch for its expres sive propen sity is only one use of it and doe s not clarify its mea ningfulness as part of the material culture in the everyday lives of many of its con sum ers and use rs.

My own project in attem pting to redefine kitsch is intended as a contribution towards a polit ical analysis of design aesthetics is

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taste and characterized as kitsch on the part of the general public as well as the serious attention currently accorded it by historians, theoreticians, critics, and artists of all media. So far, myconclusion is that taste is no longer a matter of polite etiquettebut a much wider manifestation of consumer society in whichpeople form their identity through their unconscious attitudes tothings, as well as through their consciously chosen lifestyles andthe accoutrements that go with it. It has not proved productive tobe confined to theories of aesthetics based on classical philosophof art that label kitsch as bad taste. The question that remainto be addressed is why do people love bad taste? I suspect thait is something to do with how kitsch operates, indiscriminatelstealing and appropriating references from every cultural genre andreworking them into familiar accessible forms and inserting theminto everyday life, so that they become imbedded in contemporarmaterial culture. Kitsch is more than a single style; it is an aestheticthat establishes a rapport with a vast audience used to decipheringthe mass media with a strategic knowingness about self-identitythrough taste choices. It is no longer acceptable 1;o confine it tothe crude elitist critique that categorizes kitsch as bad taste anda cynical manifestation of consumerism. Kitsch is part of oucontemporary culture that refuses to be overawed by art. it canwork for some who refuse to take art too seriously and at the sametime be appropriated to respond to personal needs for sentimentKitsch can use humor to be subversive and make powerful politicastatements by exaggerating artificiality and making light of seriousconcerns. It can stand in for the need for beauty and somehowform a bypass to the real, providing an encounter with authenticitin a world full of commercial artificiality.

A GROUP OF INTERPRETATIONSJust as kitsch adapts itself to a variety of aesthetic styles andmaterial manifestations, it is also amenable to a variety of interpretations as this collection of articles very readily shows. Thesubjects are all related to domestic culture In somo way while theactual material objects range from Hawaiian grass huts and gardengnomes to dancing Father Christmases and other items generallyconsidered tasteless. The aim is not necessarily to elevate thei

g value but to attempt an explanation of their popularity within the 3 domestic context and an interpretation of their meaning as ang aspect of identity. There are accounts of peoples' engagemen^ with kitsch from the perspective of architects and tastemakers, tos consumers who use objects that they do not think of as kitsch, toX construct a personalized world within their home.

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contemporary Adolf Loos. He examines the concept of Gschnasand it relation to kitsch as used by Loos to disparage his ideaof bad taste. Gsc/inas derived from a carnival ball celebrated inVienna and was used to refer to frippery and fancy dress. Mainlyknown as one of the pioneers of modern design, the Austrianarchitect Josef Frank who later emigrated to Sweden inspired the"Swedish modern" furnishing style which became internationallypopular. His softer interpretation drew criticism from the morehard-line designers who labeled his work "modernist kitsch." It issurprising to find that he believed that "every great work o f art mustborder on kitsch" which he considered a "genuine sentiment" andtherefore "a legitimate feeling." According to Overy, Frank appliedhis interpretation of kitsch as a positive feature by combining hisminimalist architecture with decorative interiors filled with vibrantand clashing textiles. Frank contended that the working class'semotional need for "a plethora of ornament" for the well-beingand comfort in their homes, derived from the lack of satisfactionafforded by their work. It can be inferred that Frank was a precursorto later designers who felt there was something to be learnt fromthe art of the everyday in all its confusion, excesses, and whathe called "its brilliant variety and sentimentality." His interest inkitsch seemed to derive from his belief that in all its wildness andunrepressed profusion kitsch and tasteless design held the key togenuine sentiment.

Daniel Miller's article also engages with the type of feelingkitsch elicits, in particular sentimentality, but from the perspectiveof a consumer of kitsch. He is careful to explain that the typesof objects he discusses are not kitsch in as much as that theywould not be recognized as such by their user, the case study ofhis article. But there is little doubt that they would be consideredkitsch by taste makers and the style conscious. Miller's standpointis that to "think in terms of kitsch is simply to condescend" andthus to fa il to engage with the materiality of the population to whichhe is specifically referring. To give force to his view he suggeststhe transposition of items normally considered as very tastefulart works and craft as holding nothing but the "emptiness andshallowness that we may associate with kitsch." He interprets hissubject Marcia's pieces, as the opposite of kitsch because they are"saturated with humanity, with the transcendence of the divine"and as a bricolage of artifacts and arrangements of objects thatspeak of her homeland in the Caribbean even though they are notdirect representations of the Caribbean.

The things that "bright up the place" for Marcia populate herdomestic interior with a multitude of objects such as "a litter of

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His interpretation can be used to explain how that which is considered kitsch by some cultural groups can also represent entirelother meanings associated with genuine feelings and sentimentsThe latter, which Miller defines as a "very different kind of aestheticis very far away from the irony and jokey definitions that circulataround kitsch adopted by other cultural groups to indicate a knowinkind of superiority of taste that looks down on kitsch as amusing.Kaori O'Connor's article focuses on quite a different type oconcern, in a bid to reevaluate the Hawaiian grass hut from thkitsch connotations that have become attached to it. O'Connor'use of the grass hut as a case study shows how the domestidomain represents the most elemental aspect of cu lture. Her casstudy, tracing the changing features of its materiality, representthe transformation of the grass hut through various stages of ithistorical and cultural development, presenting it as a symbol ochanging Hawaiian-ness rather than as an opposition betweeauthenticity and inauthentic kitsch.

O'Connor's study suggests that there is much to be gained fromthe investigation of kitsch and popular art as two sides of one coinabout cultural change and transition through the consideration othe history of objects not so much in movement but from lookinat them "at home."Miller, Overy, and O'Connor have all in their own ways redefineand reinterpreted kitsch by investigating specific case studiewhere it is more helpful to look at types of objects that might brecognized as kitsch but that talk of different types of aestheticand have things to say about shifting cultural values. Cieraad'article, however, uses the category of kitsch for its given generameaning indicating poor taste. Her study is an insight into a specific historiography of advice about taste using publications of thetime and two studies made fifty years apart showing changinattitudes to taste by several generations of Dutch critics. Sh

does not claim to present a historically or theoretically watertightreatment on kitsch, nor does she use comparative historicareferences or attempt to provide a fixed definition of kitsch. Thepoint of comparison is between the two studies that each refleca specific different attitude to kitsch and tastethe Porte studof 2006, which considered domestic ornamental objects, and the2 Zeldenrust-Noordanus study of furniture published in 1956 . Cieraa uses Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgemeg laste (1984) as the critical backbone to her article .^ Cieraad shows how taste education lost its credibility in thS 1960s and kitsch started to be seen with different eyes, not aX a serious taste misdemeanor, but as an amusing aspect of the

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by gender, sexual orienta tion, age, and so o n. This was part of whatCieraad cal ls an "omnivorous" taste, which accepted a broaderrange of popular taste. She poses the intriguing question "Who'safraid of kitsch?" and suggests a variety of answers, including thehighbrow view, all of which are careful to formulate their particularversion of correct and incorrect kitsch.

So although no one definitive definition is arrived at, what thisgroup of perspectives has shown is the nuanced and mea ningfulnessof the material culture of domestic interior space and the objectsthat inhabit it, and most significantly the way specific objects andtheir aesthetics embody matters of identity. It shows the rewards ofinvestigating objects "at home" within the domestic environment,in many languages of aesthet ic and taste categories, variousand different historical periods, as well as among varying socialgroupings. Ki tsch rem ains an open term , ful l of possibi l i t ies ofmeanings with which to attempt to understand how people usepopular taste to be in touch with the freer aspects of identity andexpression.ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI would like to acknowledge and thank the Leverhulme Trust for theirgenerous support in putting this issue of Home Cultures together.NOTES1 . Part of this introduction is derived from a paper first given at

the Annual Design History Society Conference, Septem ber 9 - 1 12 0 0 4 , at the University of Ulster.

2 . Jo Turney's book review (this issue) shows that this now classicwork takes on a different complexion when looked at from apresent day perspective.

3. The terms "corn" and "corny" in adjective form are Americanslang for tr i te, bana l, stereotypical, sentim ental , etc.

4 . My thanks to Brandon Taylor for bringing this article to myattent ion.5. The term "gold plating" has been used to denote the repres-

entation by Brit ish civi l servants of EU directives by over-compl icat ing them.

REFERENCESAdorno, T 1 9 94 . "On Popular M usic." In John Storey (ed.) Cultural

Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, pp . 202 -3 . Heme lHem pstead: Harvester W heatsheaf.

Attf ield, J. 1 9 9 5. "The Real Thing: Tufted Carpet's Entry into theVernacular." In M. Shoeser and C.Boydell (eds) Disentangling

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. 1 99 7. "A Case for the Study of the Coffee Table: Design asa Practice of Modernity." Journal of Material Culture 2(3 ) : 2678 9 .

. 2 0 0 0 . Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday UfeOxford Berg. . and P Kirkham (eds). 19 95 . A V iew From the Interior: Womenand Design. London: The Women's Press.

Benjamin, W. 1969. "The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicaReproduction." In H. Arendt (ed.) Iliuminations: Walter BenjaminEssays and Reflection, pp. 2 1 7 - 5 1 . New York: Schocken Boo ks

Binkley, S. 2000. "Kitsch as a Repetit ive System: A Problem fothe Theory of Taste Hierarchy." Journal of Material Culture 5(2)1 3 1 - 5 2 .

Bourdieu, P 1 9 8 4 . Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement oTaste. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Burns , M. and L . D iBon is . 1988 . Fifties Homestyle; PopulaOrnament of the USA. Foreword by Peter Dormer. LondonThames & Hudson, 1988.

Danto, A. 1977. After the End of Art: C ontemporary Art an d the Paleof History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Dorf les, G. 1968. Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste. London: StudioVista.

Elliot, E., L. F. Caton and J. Rhyne (eds). 2002. Aesthetics in aMulticultural Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Gronow, J. 1997. The Sociology of Taste. London and New York

Routledge.Kulka, J. 1 9 9 6 . Kitsch and Art. Philadelphia, PA: The Pennsylvania

State University Press.Margol in, V. 2002. Culture is Everywhere: The Museum of Corn

temporary Art. London, New York, Munich , Berl in: Preste.Sontag, S. 198 3 [1972 ] . Unde r the S ign of Saturn. London and New

York: Readers and Writers.Str inat i , D. 1995. An Introduction to Theories of Popular C ultureLondon and New York, Routledge.Veblen, I 1934 [1899 ] . The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York

The Modern Library.Walker, J.A. 19 8 9 . Design History and the H istory of Design. London

Pluto.. and S. Chapl in. 19 97 . Visual Culture. Manchester: Mancheste

University Press.White , A. n.d. " 'The Dismal Sacred Word:' Academic Language

and the Social Reproduction of Seriousness," p.10. Sourceunknown.

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