Some Opening Remarks on Tomas Kulka

I have some very mixed feelings about Tomas Kulka. Some days I love him, some days he really annoys me, and other days he bores the life out of me. I call Kitsch and Art "my bible", but its less like a bible and somewhere between "the ring" (a Lord of the Rings reference), a crying baby, and a crossword puzzle.  He's probably within the top three people I'd have a conversation with, because I have so many questions to ask him about this work.

Though part of my goal  in my work is to broaden the definition of kitsch further than the one that Kulka provides, I have a great appreciation for the reason that he limits the category of kitsch. I primarily think he did this to make the whole ordeal of defining kitsch easier on himself. Ok. OK, that might sound a bit critical, but its not intended to be. I mean in the vernacular kitsch is thrown around and used to cover so many different things. So I don't find huge faults in this other than the fact that if we are talking about kitsch in the visual arts then we must recognize the wide range of non-representational kitsch that surrounds us.

Another thing that is a bit problematic with Kulka is that he claims that his three necessary and sufficient conditions are classificatory and that we can thereby identify kitsch without making an evaluation.

Kulka's conditions:

1. kitsch depicts objects or themes that are highly charged with stock emotions.
2. the objects or themes depicted by kitsch are instantly and effortlessly identifiable.
3. kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations relating to the depicted objects or themes.

Well it seems that the third condition actually is directly linked to some evaluation of the work in question. His definition does not seem to precede the identification and evaluation kitsch. So his definition could be a bit circular? -- I am borrowing this critique from Denis Dutton.

Finally, I definitely think that Kulka's work underestimates the social role of kitsch. For me, if we are to find value in kitsch it is likely to be in the social realm... possibly in the aesthetic realm, but certainly not in the artistic.