I talked about kitsch with Professor Jerzy Jarzębski, a lecturer at the Jagiellonian University, a critic and historian of literature, an outstanding expert on the works of Witold Gombrowicz, Stanisław Lem and Bruno Schulz. He is the author of the text “Gombrowicz’s love affair with kitsch (kitsch is in us).” Here are excerpts from that conversation:
About living among kitsch feelings and the importance of kitsch.
With kitsch it‟s strange. Someone who thinks to himself that kitsch is an easy quality to define or to determine is mistaken. Of course everyone knows that a roaring deer mounted on a wall, a Leda with a swan statue or garden gnomes are considered kitsch, and such kitsch could be called standby kitsch. On the other hand, in fact, when we when we use the word “kitsch” we are speaking about a wildly diverse concept or category. As kitsch can include both clumsy, amateur art, and very skilled or high art – but of the type that has already become tiresome or tame, of which we already know inside out and have had enough of.
Kitsch can also be a word or concept that is used by one social group to try and distinguish itself through its tastes as superior from another. For example the elite may say “we consider kitsch something that is enjoyed by those of a lower social strata”. Here we can see that we are already talking about two completely different things. In the first case, we are talking about something that has a workshop like character, something that simply results from an inept performance, or that lacks skill or refinement.
In the second case, we are talking about some judgement or perception that comes from within in the audience or viewer themself. For the reason that it is the viewer themself who at some point begins to see something as kitsch. At this point in their eyes a certain literary or artistic work becomes seen as something that is already easy, that no longer arouses any deeper thought, that is simply swallowed easily without requiring any intellectual investment, that is admired, because it should be admired, but that no longer has any actual effect on the psyche and on the human
intellect. In these cases something which has originated as high art, comes to be perceived as kitsch. For example one can begin to perceive the Mona Lisa, or even opera arias or well-known literary works that move an audience to tears as kitsch. These are all examples of how a work that was at one time created as a form of high literature, painting or music, can stray under thatched roofs, and begin to be perceived in a simplistic and somehow instrumental way, i.e. they serve to squeeze out tears, to arouse very simple emotions, or one could even say kitschy emotions.
In this case, it’s the emotions that are kitsch, not the songs or works of art in question that are being received. Therefore, when we talk about kitsch, we are very often talking about things of different kinds. The nature of kitsch is that it simultaneously exists both outside as a quality of a particular literary or artistic work, but also as the sense of kitsch that arises inside a recipient. We can speak about kitsch reception, because it’s a fact
that even the most advanced art can be received in an incredibly simplistic way, for example, “Hamlet” can be considered a story about the love between Ophelia and Hamlet. There are very many such instances of kitsch perception. Is it possible then to reject kitsch because of this connection and consider it as something unimportant? Nothing of the sort! Kitsch is important because we often live in kitsch, we live among sensations that are simple and uncomplicated, and it is precisely such sensations that we need. Even the most sophisticated critics and viewers of high literature sometimes admit that a simple film squeezes tears from their eyes and that somewhere they cry – in secret, of course! And all this is because we need such emotional experiences, i.e. we not only need very complicated feelings, but also simple feelings. It’s not that only one type of receptionor complexity of feeling is privileged or better, simple feelings are just as necessary for us. WE LIVE AMONG KITSCH FEELINGS.
About whether kitsch has existed as long as the world and whether the cosmos is kitsch?
I don‟t know if kitsch arose with the creation of the world. This is where Stanislav Lem would certainly join in and ask if, by any chance, the cosmos is kitsch. There is a passage in Lem’s work where someone from the Great Constructors says that the cosmos is ridiculous, that the cosmos is kitsch, and that it is badly and ineptly made. So, if you begin to think about the cosmos in this way, you can start to think the same way about everything that concerns culture. It is very often the case that works that are initially created as very difficult and skilful and intended for an elite audience, over time move towards this mass reception, with more and more people watching, reading or listening to them. With this massification of reception comes a transformation – this reception becomes more and more schematic, simplified, more emotional than intellectual. This is the fate of very many masterpieces, which through this process at some point in their existence they become kitsch.
About whether one can dwell on the values of licentious art?
Of course there is such a possibility, except that most often it is associated with going to the meta level, i.e. then one talks, for example, about public sentiment, about how a simple person thinks based on what he watches, what he likes. And these considerations can then even be very advanced and scientific, with lots of footnotes. One can deal with kitsch in a very serious way.
On how Gombrowicz disarmed the rules of kitsch.
Gombrowicz loved to use kitsch. He was an expert and connoisseur of kitsch. In his works he referred simultaneously to both high and low literature, on the one hand to Dostoevsky, on the other to crime novels of the lowest order, on the one hand to literature of the 18th centuries, classical, sentimental period, and on the other to very naive novels about adolescent girls. In each of Gombrowicz‟s works one can find such a duality of references.
The characters he creates are always alloyed with the characteristics of a high character, a Shakespearean character, and on the other hand with a farcical character. This is how Yvonne, the heroine of the drama “Yvonne Princess of Burgundy” is made. In Gombrowicz‟s work, the characters are always suspended between “high and low” feelings; they are inconsistent, made as if from two halves that do not quite fit together.
This mismatch is interesting, it is fascinating. It sets the characters in motion, causes them to constantly compromise themselves. Self-compromise is one of the constantly recurring themes in Gombrowicz writing. The compromised character eventually cracks and something real comes out of them, something that perhaps wouldn‟t come out if they were instead carved from a single block, like a marble monument. Gombrowicz‟s characters are never such perfect marble monuments. They always have an unofficial shameful bottom, a back side.
About kitsch objects. About a certain log mask that the professor brought back for himself from his travels.
I, for one, have a variety of items in my home that I don‟t know how to categorize. Is it kitsch or is it not kitsch? I import them from far away. I brought a certain mask from Bali this year, which is a mask that is somehow related to their traditional cults, it‟s probably a Barong mask, which is such a mythical monster, a good monster, but at the same time it‟s a little bit of such folk art there. What I have at home is probably not the highest form of Balinese art, it‟s just the sort of thing that gets produced for tourists. It is kitsch. And the monstrous look of this mask is also a bit kitsch.
I think that in general Asian art has such an unheard of sense of kitsch and a lot of things I bring back from my travels have two aspects: and on the one hand they are steeped in tradition, dignified, mythological, but on the other hand they are kitsch. One example of this is images and depictions of the Indian god Ganeshi. This is such a sympathetic Indian god, who has the head of an elephant. He is a good god, the protector of the home fires and family finances, but at the same time he is depicted in India in so many ways, modelled in so many different plastics, and so you can certainly say that he is a god and also a hero of Indian kitsch.
About whether kitsch is “the primal cry of homo sapiens”?
Homo Sapiens before he was sapiens, was an animal emerging from the wilderness. Kitsch of course has the quality of a primordial cry, that is to say that it is something inarticulate, but it should also be understood that we usually do not refer to that which is primordial as kitsch. For kitsch requires a certain refinement in culture. We have to go beyond kitsch to be able to recognise kitsch, to dissolve kitsch in its kitschiness. Kitsch is not
something objectively existing. Kitsch is always relativized in relation to nonkitsch. Therefore, what we consider non-kitsch at a given moment may be kitsch for us when we change our minds.
On attempts to define kitsch.
That’s why kitsch is so fascinating, it’s impossible to create a definition of it. I think it’s not just on the fly. There is a huge book, already very old, by Andrew Banach “On kitsch”. This is a powerful volume. The author tries all the time to capture the essence of kitsch and actually fails. It is impossible to do so. Kitsch is something shimmering and evanescent – in this its attractiveness.
On whether mountains can be kitsch and on Marilyn Monroe.
Can something that is not a work of art be kitsch? I was once walking along the Strążyska Valley. It was a very beautiful winter day, everything was covered with snow, the sun was shining… a colleague walking next to me, a literary critic wryly said: “I don’t like mountains, they are so kitsch.” Can mountains be kitsch? Can a person be kitsch? I see here on the wall a beautiful photo of Marilyn Monroe. Was Marilyn Monroe kitsch? Well, it is not that simple at all. She was simply a person, a woman, an individual, she was not a work of art, she was a living individual.
But at the same time, the persona of Marilyn Monroe was created by the American celebrity production industry. Such an industry works in profound ways, changing not only the exterior of a star, but also creates changes in their way of being, in Marilyn Monroe‟s case to training her in a certain way to fulfil the American dream or ideal of what is beautiful. Of course, Marilyn Monroe was a media personality, and she was an unexceptional
woman, but much of what was seen in her was imposed on her by the media system. Undoubtedly, she was perceived in a kitsch way, so it can be that a person, even when they try to maintain some individuality and authenticity, is perceived in a kitsch way. This gap between her authentic self and kitsch reception was one of the dramas that led to the actress‟ death.
Can mountains be kitsch? Yes they can be kitsch if we perceive/receive them in a kitsch way! That is, if in addition to the actual view of the mountains, that we also see views of mountains painted or photographed in a stereotypical way, and then learn to see images of the mountains in a simplified and schematic way. At this point we are not seeing what is really there, but instead what is in us, which is a stereotypical view of the mountains. This is rather twisted, but this is really the case with kitsch.