Kitsch (/ˈkɪtʃ/; loanword from German) is a low-brow style of mass-produced art or design using popular or cultural icons. Kitsch generally includes unsubstantial or gaudy works or decoration, or works that are calculated to have popular appeal.
The concept of kitsch is applied to artwork that was a response to the 19th-century art with aesthetics that convey exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama. Hence, kitsch art is closely associated with sentimental art. Kitsch is also related to the concept of camp, because of its humorous, ironic nature.
Kitsch is usually used to reference decoration; for example "the living room was decorated in cheap 1950s style monster movie kitsch."
Origin and background
As a descriptive term, kitsch originated in the art markets of Munich in the 1860s and the 1870s, describing cheap, popular, and marketable pictures and sketches. In Das Buch vom Kitsch (The Book of Kitsch), Hans Reimann defines it as a professional expression “born in a painter's studio”.
Characteristics
Hermann Broch argues that the essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics—it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good. According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch is, unlike art, a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer; it "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation".
Study and background
The study of kitsch was done almost exclusively in German until the 1970s, with Walter Benjamin being an important scholar in the field.
The Kitsch Movement
The Kitsch Movement is an international movement of classical painters, founded in 1998 upon a philosophy proposed by Odd Nerdrum and later clarified in his book On Kitsch in cooperation with Jan-Ove Tuv and others, incorporating the techniques of the Old Masters with narrative, romanticism, and emotionally charged imagery.
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A Tchotchke (CHOCH-ka) is a small bauble or miscellaneous item. The word has long been used by Jewish-Americans and in the regional speech of New York City and elsewhere. Tchotchkes are often given at Chanukkah as part of a game.
The word may also refer to free promotional items dispensed at trade shows, conventions, and similar large events. They can also be sold as cheap souvenirs in tourist areas, which are sometimes called "tchotchke shops".
Spelling
A wide variety of spellings exist for the English usage of the term, e.g. tshotshke, tshatshke, tchachke, tchotchka, tchatchka, chachke, tsotchke, chotski, or chochke; the standard Yiddish transliteration is tsatske or tshatshke. In Israeli Hebrew it is often spelled צאצקע, [ˈtsats.ke], with a tsade instead of teth-shin, as in Yiddish.
Alternate meanings and context
Depending on context, the term has a connotation of worthlessness or disposability as well as tackiness.
A common confusion is between the terms tchotchke and tsatske or rather tsatskele, with the diminutive ending -le. Both terms have the same Slavic root, but the tch- version stems from Russian, while the ts- originates in Polish. Tchotchke usually references trinkets, while tsatskele is more likely to mean a young girl or woman who uses her charms in order to reach her goals. Being Yiddish, the meaning can change by the use of gestures and a change in tone, so that tsatskele can become the favorite child.
Leo Rosten, author of The Joys of Yiddish, combines the two main meanings and gives an alternate sense of tchotchke as meaning a desirable young girl, a "pretty young thing". Less flatteringly, the term could be construed as a more dismissive synonym for "bimbo", or "slut".
Etymology
The word "tchotchke" derives from a Slavic word for "a trinket" (Ukrainian: цяцька, tsiats'ka, [ˈtsjɑts.kɑ]; Polish: Sg. cacko /Pl.cacka, [ˈtsats.ka]; Slovak: čačka, [ˈtʃatʃ.ka] CHACH-ka, Russian: цацки, tsatski, [ˈt͡sat͡s.ki])—adapted to Yiddish Sg. טשאַטשקע, tshatshke, "trinket".
