I sincerely believe that the concept of «kitsch» in Greenberg’s 1939 article, «Avant-garde and Kitsch,» is so powerful that the status quo quickly had to curtail and redirect it to strip it of its substance. I believe it simply designates the average of everything around us devoid of content—that is, the majority of everything. According to the bibliographic review of Pedro de Llano’s article, which I just summarized, the bulk of the subsequent debate did not revolve around the concept of kitsch, nor the profile of the «peasant» that Greenberg describes, nor even around the interaction between culture and «that garbage it exudes,» but rather around what characterizes the avant-garde and, specifically, its self-referential nature.

In this post, the process will be reversed. I will begin by discussing the subject of kitsch, the peasant that I am, extracting the fundamental characteristics of kitsch from Greenberg’s article and letters, with examples drawn from my own experience. Finally, and following all of this and what I feel compelled to do, I will infer that fragmentation, abstraction, loss of context, collage, etc., belong to the same category of phenomena as kitsch. They are not formal decisions, they are not something external, nor do they belong to the level of artistic practice: they respond to vital needs, they are living and passionate expressions of fragmentation and emptiness, they are that emptiness confronted, and they belong to kitsch as much as kitsch itself.

APPENDIX. VISUAL EXAMPLES AND TEXTS

This is me: kitsch

This is me, kitsch. I depict the dotted selection lines and anchor points because they naturally emerge, they’re beautifully drawn, and they represent what I see—my familiar world, like a painter painting clouds. For the same reason, I leave the pixels as they are, because they’re what I have. Let’s just say that right now I don’t have anything to fill the space with that’s MINE; I could steal it from the web, but then I’d be doing a different kind of work.

The pixels, however, are mine. They were born with me and follow me, they surprise me, I appreciate their irregularities, and they don’t simply obey me.

Also, like those kitsch paintings that await us at the Prado’s entrance as silent witnesses with which (I am sure!) they want to legitimize the unbridgeable abyss described by Greenberg (Greenberg, 1939, III), I have painted a self-portrait with a dog’s head and even further, as an ass. This has been a different kind of self-portrait, and I have mixed text with images not because I am insisting on the flat format of my canvas, but because what I wanted to express required the vital assistance of language. I have pasted the pieces of Rubens’s woman that I cut out poorly, without them aligning, because this carelessness is contemptuous, it is due to haste, and because the image fulfills its purpose whether cut well or badly. Or even more: even badly cut, it is indicative of my lack of ambition, of my voluntary segregation, that I speak but I am neither calm nor content with being where I am or with the person I am conversing with.

This is my kitsch interior

This is the text on which I based my kitsch knight

This is the kitsch text I associate with my horsemanship

In this video, indignation is expressed only through words that are red, black, or broken. The speaker is fed up with being undervalued. She’s a woman and she can’t bear the way she’s treated. She loses her patience. Kindness is never weakness or foolishness; kindness is rapprochement, and what facilitates unity doesn’t exalt oneself but elevates oneself, which is different. Palabras clave: #feminismo #kindness #undervalued #fed up #patient

This was my main trainer, in a kitsch photo

This is the drawing I made about ignorance.

Here’s a summary: I’ve made a kitsch album in light colors.

The distilled quintessence of neokitsch

Softness in colors, temperance, discretion, recessed lighting, moderation, affordability, personalization, the same but different, thinness far removed from the tendency towards indigestion and greasy foods that disfigured the lower classes of yesteryear, watery color, cleanliness, clarity, being well-informed, exclusivity for all, the beige style, polish, shine, neon, straight lines, gold and Stradivarius as always, chromatic variety, pastel colors, I am me and I exist without bothering others and above all, no one steps on me, the offering, the Bischofberger_Valdes_Ursula_PEC2_DOSSIERpower to acquire, the pleasure of having the option to interact, neokitsch.

Multicultural Breakfast

My multicultural breakfast is the third one in the third column. It’s made with kefir from Berglandmilch eGen in Austria, blueberries from the light forests of Portugal, a squashed Canary Island banana, Argentinian peanuts, Vietnamese cashews, American almonds, South African walnuts, and Turkish hazelnuts. It’s in the album, but I’m expanding it.

My Hands

My hands are in the fourth position of the third and fourth columns. Those hands HAVE WORKED. I’ve often heard the phrase about hands that have never worked. In my circle, it was this, and never a lack of knowledge, taste, or «culture,» that was considered undesirable. The hands of the priest, which have never worked. The hands of the intellectual. The hands of those who have never had to use them because they had others to do it for them.

My hands are stained with dirt and swollen: they aren’t white and immaculate like the hands of the priesthood my mother told me they should be—the hands she didn’t want for me at all, the hands of the religious priesthood, the intellectual priesthood, the priesthood of the artist transformed into Duchamp in a fur coat. I no longer want to be a priestess of art. I prefer to be something else. In any case, I don’t have much time left to live; I’m approaching the threshold of that moment for which no amount of kitsch will suffice, although I will ask that my urn be one of those I saw for forty-five euros that are like Easter eggs.

This is the urn I’m ordering.

It has 196 user reviews, all rating it as excellent. Since I couldn’t approach living excellence, at least in death I want to have this user experience and, at the same time, pay homage to my homeland, a Central European nation the size of Costa Rica, Moldova, or Armenia, specializing in two cultures: on one hand, cacao, chocolate, calendars, and garden gnomes;  and on the other, Dadaism, Surrealism, chance, and irreverence, like my own with my own corpse because the condemned man refuses to submit to the mainstream and refuses to become even slightly neo-kitsch.

My Kindness

I forgot to label my kindness; here it is. It’s good, even though it’s a little damaged.

I am that tight knight emerging from the thatch.
In my lonely night,
I feel a stitch and sketch a flight, looking for the light.
I light a match, finding the light
as it can be sight seen by me.
I might hightlight highlight that I fetch the kitsch when I need delight…

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I want to thank Quelic Berga Carreras for making the Folio available to me, something that has helped me to BE. It can be summed up simply like this: Quelic, through the Folio, has helped me to BE. Thank you very much.