I have been sitting down to write about AI, taste, class and education. I recently looked again at an Andrea Fraser essay and was also directed to Karsten Harries when revisiting James Elkins’ What Photography Is. The following are abbreviated notes which have been helpfully summarised by Anthropic’s Claude. Following is a small selection of AI generations prompted with a combination of words, related thoughts and discussions from Flusser’s Into the Universe of Technical Images (2011/1985) and other material related to technology. These were made for a collaborative research/project I’m exploring with Maria Ahmed. They may end up partially included as collage, or else simply as generated in any final manifestation.
It is important to say that I am looking at the idea of kitsch from multiple positions and my explorations are not a condemnation of so-called kitsch. However, I aim to explore the relationship between sociology, taste, knowledge and aesthetics described best in the following from a discussion with an LLM about entanglement: “knowledge is not a passive reflection of an objective reality but an active and ongoing process of intra-action between the observer and the observed. In other words, the way we perceive and understand the world is shaped by our ethical, epistemological, and ontological assumptions, which are in turn influenced by our aesthetic sensibilities and cultural values.”
Karsten Harries, The Meaning of Modern Art, Chpt 7, Kitsch 1979, Imprint: Northwestern University Press
- The term “kitsch” originated in the late 19th century, probably in Munich, and was first applied to sentimental genre paintings catering to bourgeois tastes. It soon acquired a negative, moralistic meaning referring to art that lacks integrity and panders to sentimentality.
- Harries questions whether it is legitimate to judge art on moral grounds, but argues that to understand kitsch requires relating art to standards of truth and morality. Kitsch involves a lack of “psychical distance” that separates subject from object, making genuine encounter impossible. It is essentially monological self-enjoyment. However, much of modern art is related to kitsch although it is lighter, freer and more playful.
- Kitsch arises from boredom and lack of genuine emotion. It uses objects merely to stimulate desired moods and sensations, without real engagement. It is more reflective than simple enjoyment, manipulating the illusion it creates while lacking distance to see it as an illusion.
- Modern art is tempted by kitsch when it escapes into self-enjoyment rather than discovering meaning in the world. Abstract art has developed its own clichés and kitsch. To avoid kitsch, art must practice self-irony rather than taking itself too seriously. Yet kitsch could be seen as saving modern man from despair by providing enjoyment and distraction from life’s absurdity. But this enjoyment remains illusory and self-deceptive.
I am interested in the term monological self-enjoyment in Harries’ chapter. Can be tied to Will Self’s claim ‘there is no other’ in contemporary life (See previous notes). Kitsch is masturbation when life makes real enjoyment impossible.
I am also interested in Harries’ comments on object/subject – is he suggesting that to experience meaningful enjoyment, there must be a distance between the subject and object? How doe this relate to (my interest) in monism? In a world in which boundaries are dissolving, reconfiguring- where does distance fit? Is it desirable or possible?
“Monism results in relocating difference outside the dialectical scheme, as a complex process of differing which is framed by both internal and external forces and is based on the centrality of the relation to multiple others.” Braidotti, 2013
And is it even reasonable to expect people to avoid imposing morality on media? Media has on the other hand always been related to ethics and morality. (My internal conflict between holding humans accountable rather than their media and understanding the medium is the message persists)
Shock is another concept in Harries’ which Elkins explores in more depth: something to look at. – “viewers are trapped in the kitsch economy of perpetual inflation: each shock has to be stronger than the one before,” sounds about right for Now.
Andrea Fraser, Why Fred Sanbach makes me cry? Pages 38-39 From Source: Grey Room, No. 22 (Winter, 2006), pp. 30-47
- Fraser argues against the idea that some people are inherently born with a greater capacity for aesthetic experience or sensitivity to art. She sees this as an “essentialist ideology” used by the privileged to justify their entitlement.
- Instead, following Bourdieu, Fraser believes the capacity for aesthetic experience is socially determined through exposure and education. Access to art institutions and developing relevant competencies depends on one’s socioeconomic status.
- Similarly, the perception and appreciation of particular art forms develops alongside the capacity to produce those same forms. Modern art demands the viewer reproduce the artist’s creative perception. As art became more conceptual (“deskilling”), aesthetic production and perception aligned.
- For Frazer and Bourdieu, art sociologically requires insertion into institutional discourses and practices that recognize objects as art. Art cannot exist outside this field of institutions – e.g. the museum materializes aesthetic perception. Even outsider art or popular culture only becomes art once entering the artistic field of recognition.
- Thus, the institution of art constitutes and empowers hierarchies of cultural competence and appreciation embodied in privileged social groups. It is a social domain dominated by an elite habitus. Expanding art institutions serves more to reinforce than challenge this.
- In summary, Frazer criticizes essentialist views of aesthetic capacity and argues art is thoroughly institutional, socializing perception and experience to match modern forms in ways that reinforce elite culture. Please let me know if you need any clarification or have additional questions!
Frasers paragraph might be seen as an updated version of Greenberg’s, now much criticised, essay on Kitsch. (See John Latham’s response to Greenberg.) However, she acknowledges the awkward difficulty around privilege, education, levels of ‘snobbiness’, and art. She also expresses the deep sense of conflict and knowledge of social violence that leads to these divisions.
In relation to some of these thoughts, it is worth visiting the following Instagram accounts. Both are going beyond the more common quotidian ‘Donald Trump as Donald Duck’ like prompts and playing with that shock I highlighted above in interesting ways. In Harries’ parlance they might be ‘sour kitsch’ rather than the sweet kind of romanticism. However, perhaps they are saved from such condemnation by the presence of irony and play. “Play against the background of despair -what honest alternative is there in an absurd world” Harries, 1979: pp.82
https://www.instagram.com/adiosfromeverywhere/
and
https://www.instagram.com/kentskooking/
Refs:
Elkins, James. What Photography Is. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Flusser, Vilém. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Electronic Mediations, v. 32. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Fraser, Andrea. ‘Why Does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry?’ Grey Room, no. 22 (2006): 30–47.
Harries, Karsten. Meaning of Modern Art, 1979. https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810105935/meaning-of-modern-art.
Sketch Book 