Kitsch

Modern aesthetics is the product of a process of segregation. Works of art are something necessarily distinct from that which merely »finds the dubious acclaim of the crowd« (Schiller). All the way up to Adorno and beyond, this postulate asserted itself successfully. Any blurring of the boundaries between art and kitsch was pilloried as sacrilegious, as if art were a locus of something akin to theology. For that precise reason post-modernism has displayed provocative zest in dismantling such a categorization. Kitsch is the frank and unashamed expression of a need for emotional appeal and immediately appreciable meaning and significance. As such it cannot but represent a major provocation for an aesthetic modernism that has pinned all its allegiances to the ubiquity of absurdity, meaninglessness, loss, mourning, and melancholy.