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Introduction
To address the omnipresence of kitsch in our daily visual landscape, and the absence of such kitsch in art, three Syrian photographs and myself, curator of the exhibition, launched a project to organize an exhibit on the subject of Kitsch in Damas.
Kitsch being a complex notion, as aesthetic as it is philosophical, we decided to set up a workshop that would serve to develop the meaning of kitsch, its history and its place in contemporary art. At the end of one year of discussion and analysis, each of the three artists produced original and coherent works based on his own definition of kitsch.
Historical Note
Before describing and analyzing the tenor of this exposition (held in June 2007), it may be useful to define the concept of kitsch.
First used in Germany around 1860, the word « kitsch » signifies recycling, knickknack, chintz or even bad taste. More generally, kitsch works to prettify reality, negating death, suffering and imperfection. It is the art of happiness (Abraham Moles) (1), proposing an ideal based on an illusion. It can be an aesthetic, an image or an object, as well as an attitude or a discourse. In general, kitsch is the systematic avoidance of discord, based in relations based solely on consensus, and includes decorative reinventions of commonplace objects and cheap reproductions of works of art.
Compared to art, the aesthetic of kitsch is based in negation, that is the copy, and confuses the naiveté of childhood with the immature representation of reality (as in Mohamed Haj Kab’s imaginary and infantile human and animal figurines).
Anti-art because of its negation of aesthetic value, kitsch becomes art when it is self-consciously referred to in the work itself.
Kitsch: the Project
Turned from its function of embellishing reality, kitsch then becomes irony in the works of the selected artist Ayham Dib, as well as in the videos of Erfan Khalifa; Kitsch can discharge the illusion of an idealized reality.
In its grotesque manifestation, it creates a contradiction with tragic reality and exacerbates dramatic tension (the split between the kitsch of a blonde wig and artificial flowers on the one hand, and the nudity of a torso and a shaven face, a cavernous voice and despair, on the other, as we see for example, in Erfan Khalifa’s three videos).
As for how kitsch connects with the imagery of advertising, Ayham Dib’s practice is one good example to explore.
Ayham Dib takes on the power of kitsch and the prettifying effect of publicity messages in his kitscho-graphs, photos that are especially kitsch as they are false antiques, artificially aged by his treatment of the picture. The artist presents a work that denounces the marketing of art, where the object in question is a jar of marmalade. Dib’s kitscho-graph, or machine to produce kitsch, plays humorously with the concept of the useless and superfluous; his strength is to visualize the images presented in advertisements, these symbols of the illusion of happiness, of a promise of harmonious relations.
Using irony in this way, the artist denounces the emotional manipulation of images geared to seduce or reassure, which celebrate a form of happiness that is hopeless to realize.
Dib explores other facets of kitsch. He copies a work of art on one of the immobile images of his kitscho-graph: he represents the Mona Lisa in three layers, profaning the original with an explicit reference to the erotic magazine Playboy, all the while giving the work a quasi divine dimension, endowed with kitsch thanks to the light which, like a halo, surrounds Mona Lisa.
As for kitsch as an illusion of the ideal, the practice of Mohamed Haj Kab represents a good model for research.
Mohamed Haj Kab focuses on the idealization inherent to kitsch and revisits the universe of the Barbie doll, that perfect superhuman, that is inhuman, icon. It is moreover an asexual ideal which the artist proposes to us. The legs of the doll are fused into one sole limb, that of the tail of a mermaid.
In other works, Mohamed Haj Kab creates an imaginary world where roses are the size of trees and horses. This apparently natural universe is humanized by the presence of a rope, which shows that one cannot have a wild horse, as well as a barrier, symbol of ownership. This duality and this competition between the imaginary and the real are reinforced by the reversal of the image where its reflection seems clearer and more real than the original. Along these lines, the shadow of the horse appears to be reified reality, because of the clarity of the image compares favourably with the vagueness of the original model, another element of unreality.
In yet other works, the artist creates a world that is as natural as it is false, for example, with artificial unreal flowers, as if the representation of nature is the privileged site of our relationship with reality and its negation: the ideal.
The practice of Erfan Khalifa can be described as kitsch of eternity.
Khalifa’s work explores the opposition between skin and plastic flowers. In so doing, he exposes the relationship between the artificial, the authentic and the natural relevant to humanity and the mystery of creation. The false representation of nature is an artificial production, which ironically brings the human being back to a nearly divine creation. Behind this metaphysics of origins lies a social critique of the plastic universe, putting into question the industrialization of aesthetics and daily life. Kitsch inheres in this aesthetic and ethical mutation of nature, this morphing of the original into its copy, the illusory reflection of reality and the ideal of truth.
The work also touches on the economic stakes in reducing costs: the artificial flowers are an immortal copy of their original model, the original rendered imperfect because ephemeral. In this work, both Life and Beauty are missing. Existential falsification is an aesthetic failing in that the copy never achieves the grace of natural life, that which cannot be controlled by humans: no matter how much human will is involved, nature escapes the control of humans and survives after the latter disappears.
Disappearance is moreover the theme of Erfan Khalifa’s first video. Here the focus is on the absurdity of someone unconscious of his acts and his games of imitation: where life is a copy and the act of killing is imitated. Pretending to kill, he loses his pedals and then ultimately turns the weapon against himself.
Kitsch can also be a modest art.
It is a popular form: it is sometimes the beauty of the poor; when kitsch is art, it is similar to popular artisan crafts because of its capacity to inspire aesthetic emotion and to be transfigured by the infinite creativity of humans.
In this sense, kitsch which aims to be art is a modest art form which does not take itself seriously, and even mocks all gravity. It utilizes the grotesque, as in Erfan Khalifa’s second video, where a rather ridiculous love poem is recited in a very serious and dramatic tone, which contrasts with the kitsch and rather crazy appearance of the artist. Leaping to the next level with his third video, the artist appears entirely shaven, an inhuman and androgynous figure exacerbating the dramatic tension born from the split between kitsch absurdity and the despair which one hears in the spoken words.
Without always going to the ridiculous, kitsch reminds us that art is always inferior to life. Renouncing the transcendence of Beauty, either the elevation of the soul defined by classical aesthetics or the concept of art that since twentieth century avant garde movements uphold immanence. It is not that aesthetics is no longer worth anything or that any art piece is equal to another, but more the case that the profoundly political function of art (through its distancing effect, critical spirit, denunciation, irony) finally permits art to renounce its sacred if not religious vocation.
Conclusive Notes
As for our exhibit, the press recognized the originality and the novelty of this aesthetic and ethical quest. Responses were mixed, but overall, journalists celebrated the experimental approach. However, that which really made us happy was this comment which said it all: now that I have seen this exhibit, I know that Syrian television is kitsch.
But as far as television is concerned, one should underscore the fact that this is not, unfortunately, a uniquely Syrian phenomenon!
*Victoria Ambrosini (VAC) is a French political scientist, writer and curaotr based in Damascus, Syria; She has lived between Cairo, Damscus and several other Middle East cities in the past decade. She is regular contributor to Art Press. Her best known Curatorial projects are Tahjeen: hybridite (Cairo, Egypt 2003), and Kitsch (Damscus, Syria 2007).
Footnotes
1- Moles, Abraham, Psychologie du Kitsch, Paris, Denoël, 1977
Furhter Reading
- Gillilan, Lesley & Young, Dave; Kitsch Deluxe, 2003, ISBN-10: 1840007168, ISBN-13: 978-1840007169
- Moles, Abraham, Psychologie du Kitsch, Paris, Denoël, 1977
- Calinescu, Matei & Calinescu, Matei, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism, Duke University Press; 2 edition December 1987, ISBN-10: 0822307677, ISBN-13: 978-0822307679
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