Kitsch is not seeing something for what it is, but what you think it should be.

David Yoon

Within the category of Kitsch we can thus distinguish between more and less successful paintings. Kitsch, too has its masterpieces.

Karsten Harries

High-class kitsch may well be “perfect” in its form and and composition: the academic painters were often masters of their craft.

Robert C. Solomon

The Super Bowl is Americana at its most kitsch and fun.

Sting

At its core, kitsch feels like something less than art; it panders to the middle and is flagrantly anti-art, though it often apes or references art.

Carrie Brownstein

Whenever a single political movement corners power, we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch. When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because a deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood); every doubt (because anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself); all irony (because in the realm of kitsch everything must be taken quite seriously); and the mother who abandons her family or the man who prefers men to women, thereby calling into question the holy decree “Be fruitful and multiply.”

Milan Kundera

Kitsch is a product of groups which do not possess their own cultural traditions and therefore adopt some stereotypes from other cultural traditions.

Jadwiga Jarnuszkiewczowa

The deceptive character of kitsch does not lie in whatever it may have in common with actual forgery but in its claim to supply its consumers with essentially the same kinds and qualities of beauty as those embodied in unique or rare and inaccessible originals. With something chanel.

Matei Călinescu

A natural object has no intentions behind it (metaphysical arguments aside), and therefore a natural sunset is never kitsch in the strict sense.

Ruth Lorand

Pin 20 Kitsch Quotes for Later

Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix. If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.

Werner Herzog

Surely, the most kitsch painting in the world is the Mona Lisa.

Jonathan Jones

The aim of kitsch is not to create new needs or expectations, but to satisfy existing ones. Kitsch thus does not work on individual idiosyncrasies. It breeds on universal images, the emotional charge of which appeals to everyone. Since the purpose of kitsch is to please the greatest possible number of people, it always plays on the most common denominators.

Tomáš Kulka

Art is a car, kitsch is a horse.

Odd Nerdrum

Kitsch is a symbol of the chain of generations, covering the raptures between past and present.

Thomas Elsaesser

One of the most inexplicable characteristics of the Germans is their love of kitsch.

Rory MacLean

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

Matei Călinescu

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

Milan Kundera

Whether it is a garden gnome, the sound of Bing Crosby launching into ‘White Christmas’, the blinking innocent eyes of Bambi or the words of Patience Strong, the kitsch phenomenon is there as strong and recognisable as your mother’s face.

Roger Scruton

Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations.

Harold Rosenberg

Kitsch should speak the most common language understandable to all. It shouldn’t venture into esoteric jargons (like cubism) or idiosyncratic dialects (as in Jackson Pollock’s biomorphic period). Kitsch artists never have to explain how their pictures should be looked at, what categories and concepts are relevant for their comprehension.

Tomáš Kulka

20 Quotes on Kitsch

Art or Kitsch?

Be Kitschig on Pinterest I Instagram I Bloglovin I Facebook I Twitter