I suppose a very few things open your eyes like university. Spending only about 6 weeks there, I feel like I am gaining new insight, and learning to look at things in a different way. But university, or any other type of education, for that matter, can only mold you so much, and while some of our opinions will undergo revisions, some will gain new ground and remain unchanged, or even stronger,
So, I will be discussing kitsch this time. Although I could grab a dictionary and give you the precise definition of kitsch according to the oxford scholars, I prefer to do it my way. Of course, there are many different types of kitsch. The one I dislike the most is the ‘taste’ displayed by the rich Arab sheiks. There is nothing wrong with marble and gold, but please, everything has its borders. Fitting your penthouse in a glass skyscraper with baroque-style furniture, golden toilet seats and tons of marble is kitsch, even if it is not mass-produced, shoddy, plastic piece of decoration. The point is, these gentlemen, have so much money they might as well buy a chateau somewhere in France with original Louis XV furniture.
S o why don’t they? I suppose you’ll have to ask them, because I have no clue. The point I am trying to make is: everything has its own context. You cannot take something out of context, place it into a completely different time and environment and actually expect that people will applaud your taste. You cannot build a new Versailles in China. That is kitsch. It has no soul. It doesn’t belong there. The real Versailles is a masterpiece to commemorate human vanity. An exact copy would just take that further into bad, unoriginal taste. Just as much, you cannot build another Forbidden City in France (not that they want that). You should not have replicas of baroque furniture made to put them into your penthouse. Because no matter how expensive, it will still be kitsch.
That is why I admire modernism much more than post-modernism. The worst thing you can do with modernism is to create something ugly and impractical. With post modernism, the worst thing you’ll be left with is kitsch. I seem to prefer ugliness to the soulless ‘beauty’, so my views on this are settled. I never really liked kitsch, or as I would call it now, an out-of-context-reproduction-of-art. Isn’t it much more interesting and infinitely more satisfying to come up with something new, something original and something that is yours? If all the money that the sheiks and Chinese developers spend on kitsch, then more artists, architects and engineers would have challenging, creative and exciting work and we would all live in a more pleasant, increasingly unique and (hopefully) more sustainable environment.
Peter
