Kitsch Quotes

• The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.

  Clement Greenberg

  Art, Views, Avant Garde

  Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.19, Beacon Press

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• Kitsch may be conveniently defined as a specifically aesthetic form of lying.

  Matei Calinescu

  Lying, May, Form

  Matei Călinescu (1987). “Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism”, p.229, Duke University Press

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• Art teaches us to see into things. Folk art and kitsch allow us to see outward from within things.

  Walter Benjamin

  Art, Teach, Folks

  Walter Benjamin, Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty (2008). “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media”, p.209, Harvard University Press

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• Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

  Milan Kundera

  Forgotten, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Oblivion

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• Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Artist

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• Art and irony would disintegrate the personality, kitsch makes it whole.

  Mike Curran

  Art, Personality, Irony

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• Kitsch makes things that are pretty as representations, but ugly as art, modern artists made things that are ugly as representations but beautiful as art.

  Mike Curran

  Beautiful, Art, Ugly

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• The essence of kitsch is the confusion of ethical and esthetic categories; kitsch wants to produce not the "good" but the "beautiful."

  Hermann Broch

  Beautiful, Essence, Confusion

  Hermann Broch (2002). “Geist and Zeitgeist: Six Essays by Hermann Broch”, Counterpoint LLC

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• No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

  Milan Kundera

  Matter, Human Condition, Scorn

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• Kitschis one of the major categories of the modern object. Knick-knacks, rustic odds-and-ends, souvenirs, lampshades, and African masks: the kitsch-object is collectively this whole plethora of "trashy," sham or faked objects, this whole museum of junk which proliferates everywhere.... Kitsch is the equivalent to the "cliché" in discourse.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Museums, Odds, Junk

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• One of the characteristics of kitsch is precisely the neutralization of 'extreme situations', particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll.

  Saul Friedlander

  Sentimental, Characteristics, Situation

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• Kitsch is the most pernicious of all prisons. The bars are covered with the gold of simplistic, unreal feelings, so that you take them for the pillars of a palace.

  Pascal Mercier

  Feelings, Gold, Bars

  Pascal Mercier (2008). “Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel”, p.332, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• One function of art is to de-kitschify kitsch.

  John Bayley

  Art, Function, Art Is

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• Kitsch is more dangerous than it looks when taken to the extreme.

  John Cusack

  Taken, Looks, Dangerous

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• Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical

  Hermann Broch

  Ethical, Aesthetic, Shortcomings

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• Kitsch is Mechanical and operates by formulas.

  Clement Greenberg

  Formulas

  Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.10, Beacon Press

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• Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

  Milan Kundera

  Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Existence, Humans

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim, (Part Six: The Grand March), 1984.

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• The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.

  Hermann Broch

  Art, Evil, Negative

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• Ultimately Warhol's private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Catholic, Church, Moral

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• Kitsch is deceptive. It has many different levels, and some of them are high enough to be dangerous to the naive seeker of true light.

  Clement Greenberg

  Light, Different, Levels

  Clement Greenberg (1971). “Art and Culture: Critical Essays”, p.11, Beacon Press

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• The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.

  Robert C. Solomon

  Should, Suspicious, Sentimentality

  Robert C. Solomon (2004). “In Defense of Sentimentality”, p.253, Oxford University Press

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• In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn't about Sept. 11. It's about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies - or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers - and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.

  Manohla Dargis

  Baby, Loneliness, Sadness

  "A Youngster With a Key, a Word and a Quest" by Manohla Dargis, www.nytimes.com. December 22, 2011.

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• A real Rembrandt hung in a millionaire's home elevator would undoubtedly make for kitsch.

  Matei Calinescu

  Real, Home, Elevators

  Matei Călinescu (1987). “Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism”, p.236, Duke University Press

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• A good old rodeo never hurt anyone.

  Taylor Kitsch

  Hurt, Rodeo

  "Taylor Made for Texas". Interview with Logan Hill, www.gq.com. March 7, 2012.

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• All of us alive today are or can be its prey, most of all the person who believes he is creating works of art when he is in fact creating mere kitsch objects.

  Gillo Dorfles

  Art, Believe, Creating

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