Customer Reviews

Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste

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This long-out-of-print book will open your eyes to the avalanche of junk that makes up popular culture. Just one look at the titles in this eye-popping collection of essays, photos, and illustrations, published in 1968, indicates, really, that bad taste knows no bounds. "Death," "Christian kitsch," "Tourism and nature," "Politics," and "Pornokitsch and morals" are just a few of the topics surveyed by then-contemporary writers and critics. Also included is Clement Greenberg's essay "The Avant-Garde and Kitsch," published originally in 1939, tracing the rise of art in the service of totalitarian regimes.

The book was first published in Italy and many of the photographs and illustrations are from European sources, but anyone who thinks of The Lone Ranger when listening to "The William Tell Overture" has been influenced by kitsch. Some of the academic essays have not aged well, even if the gently tortured Italian-into-English translation has its own charm: "And obviously before long (and even now in fact) we will witness the anti-family kitsch, the kitsch of hippies and long-haired youths, the kitsch of addicts and beatniks" -- foretelling Nirvana's cover version of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" by a good 20 years! Fascinating, funny, and full of hideously bad art, this book is a wonderland of the high-brow, the low-brow, and the no-brow of taste. In a pop-culture blender that makes no such distinctions, how else can you explain the success of "American Idol"? It's definitely time for a reprint.

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This is one of my favorite books of all time. It is a copiously illustrated collection of essays by multiple authors, including Aleksa Celebonovic, Clement Greenberg, Hermann Broch, Ludwig Giesz, John McHale, Karl Pawek, Lotte Eisner, Ugo Volli, Vittorio Gregotti, and Gillo Dorfles. Though the pictures are somewhat annoying, the essays are truly thought-provoking, especially the one by Hermann Broch.

In "Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste," Dorfles and the essayists probe into the psychological cravings for kitsch, and offer some disturbing conclusions. Film, tourism, art, religion, politics, and pornography are covered in the selections.

This is a book to which I turn, time and again, when I feel overwhelmed by the tasteless tides of popular culture.

This book is well worth trying to get a copy of. The lead essay is a meditation on the difference between kitsch and genuine art, by Hermann Broch. This essay alone is well worth the effort to find the book.

This is an interesting book. It's interesting also by the fact that it was published in the late 60's. Kind of before kitch became too cool. Gillo Dorfles has the interesting view point that kitch is actually a side effect of the industrialized mass production society. The book mentions that the notion of what kitch is changes from time to time. Many of the important rituals surrounding our lives, like wedding, christening, are, according to Gillo Dorfles, actually kitch events. Interesting is it also that totalitarian regimes, like Nazism or communism, most often prefers an artistic expression which is kitch. In modern times it's almost impossible to depict the human body in sculpture without it becomming kitch. Also historic films, especially the somewhat dated history, and historic films about famous persons, almost invariably, becomes kitch. I kind of like kitch, I find it a bit hard to distinguish between "Art" and "Kitch".

Endlessly entertaining for all the wrong reasons. Did the authors of these essays have any idea they were contributing the very phenomenon they deplore?

If you can slug your way through the often bloated academic text, this book will provide many insights into the nature and history of pseudo-art or "kitsch." Essays by various commentators expose bad taste across the gamut of popular culture: visual and performing arts, film, architecture, religion, advertising, even recreation.

The two essays wotrth reading in this book, Greenberg's and Broch's, are both seminal essays on the issue of kitsch and contemporary culture. All other texts, especially Dorfle's, are hopelessly out-date and hopelessly out of touch with the signifigance of the narrowing gap between high and low art. The basic premise of the book: High art is good, low art is bad, is dull and un-nuanced. Wothwhile as an example of the last dying gasps of modernism and a relic of 1960's anti-authority naivete, but that's all.

The two essays wotrth reading in this book, Greenberg's and Broch's, are both seminal essays on the issue of kitsch and contemporary culture. All other texts, especially Dorfle's, are hopelessly out-date and hopelessly out of touch with the signifigance of the narrowing gap between high and low art. The basic premise of the book: High art is good, low art is bad, is dull and un-nuanced. Wothwhile as an example of the last dying gasps of modernism and a relic of 1960's anti-authority naivete, but that's all.

The two essays wotrth reading in this book, Greenberg's and Broch's, are both seminal essays on the issue of kitsch and contemporary culture. All other texts, especially Dorfle's, are hopelessly out-date and hopelessly out of touch with the signifigance of the narrowing gap between high and low art. The basic premise of the book: High art is good, low art is bad, is dull and un-nuanced. Wothwhile as an example of the last dying gasps of modernism and a relic of 1960's anti-authority naivete, but that's all.