The 20th-century pop culture is abundant in ideas that were hardly known or developed in previous eras, and one such concept is kitsch. Coming from a German word that literally means “trash,” the term was first used to designate the low-brow mass-produced works of popular culture in the Europe of the 1920s. With the passing of time, it maintained its pejorative connotations but expanded to designate any manifestation of commercially oriented mass culture. While every age has its examples of good and bad taste, kitsch is a characteristic feature of the 20th century because it is both mass-produced and used as a reference point by other artistic movements.
One way in which kitsch is a fruit of 20th-century popular culture specifically is the fact that it refers to works mass-produced on an industrial scale. For most of human history, purchasing works of art was reserved for the relatively limited circle of well-to-do art patrons. However, industrialization and the gradual improvement in the standard of living created both the means to produce artworks on a large scale and the mass market for them. As Lindauer rightfully notes, such works – from “assembly line” paintings to Hollywood paintings – tend to be simplistic and formulaic, which is necessitated by the need to produce them in great numbers. As a result, the defining features of kitsch as works of popular culture are its easy digestibility and the lack of meaning beyond the immediate satisfaction of basic emotional urges. The range of expressive means employed in such works is also limited – for example, a kitsch sculpture may base its impact on monumentality alone. All these characteristics were made possible by the 20th century, which, for the first time in history, made art not only commercial but also mass-oriented.
Another aspect of kitsch that makes it a 20th-century phenomenon specifically is that it became a reference point for other artistic movements of the period. The 19th century also had its fair share of rebellious artists, but they emerged out of opposition to the traditions of academic art, such as neo-classicism. However, the avant-garde movements of the 20th century openly identified themselves through their opposition to the mass culture best exemplified by kitsch. In fact, when the term first emerged in the German arts literature of the 1920s, it was already used to designate commercially oriented works of the mass culture, as opposed to the avant-garde. Once again, it was the sign of a tectonic shift in the nature of arts and culture that happened in the 20th century. Not only did art become mass-produced and distributed on a grand scale, but its commercial orientation on mass consumption was now also notable enough to spark opposition of its own. This is yet another reason why kitsch is a landmark phenomenon of 20th-century culture specifically.
As one can see, kitsch is an essential phenomenon for understanding the history of popular culture in the 20th century because it exemplifies many of its crucial features. On the one hand, the commercial orientation and mass production of cultural products designated as kitsch indicate the emergence of the mass market for culture, which was largely absent in the previous ages. On the other hand, kitsch also demonstrated a shift in priorities in the cultural avant-garde – from struggling against the high-brow academic culture to opposing low-brow works intended for mass consumption.
Bibliography
Castillo, Mauricio A. “Dreamworlds of the Avant-Garde in 1920s Peru: Narratives of Modernity and Community in the Andes.” Utopian Studies 31, no. 3 (2020): 532-552.
Kennicott, Philip. “Mount Rushmore Is Colossal Kitsch, Perfect for a Populist Spectacle.” Washington Post, Web.
Lindauer, Martin S. “An Everyday Aesthetics, Inexpensive Paintings, and the Study of Art.” Visual Arts Research 47, no. 2 (2021): 79-88.
Ortlieb, Stefan A, and Claus-Christian Carbon. “A Functional Model of Kitsch and Art: Linking Aesthetic Appreciation to the Dynamics of Social Motivation.” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2019), 1-17.