Culture Kiosque: Two-minute Art: The New Kitsch
“The New Kitsch is not sentimental. It is self-knowingly cool; but coolness, like sentimentality, is about showing off at the expense of perception and engagement. The cool man at the bar is a poseur, making minimal contact, doing his best not to be noticed enjoying how much he is being noticed. Cool art is rather the same: art that dares the viewer to admire and envy the artist’s sophistication, art that presumes to stand a cut above all except those in the know, smirking down upon those who don’t get it or can’t deal with it. All kitsch uses the human spirit as a mirror to reflect the spotlight upon the artist and patron, rather than the other way around. Like the Old Kitsch, New Kitsch requires only a short reach by the artist for an easy score, the difference being that New Kitsch replaces sentimentality with shock and mockery. What further unites Old Kitsch and the new is its obviousness. To be kitsch, a work must lack nuance and subtlety—those qualities that draw you back to it, making you see it with fresh eyes and perhaps finding new meaning whenever you return.”
(Via 3quarksdaily.)
