Editing Kitsch (section)

===Kitsch in art theory and aesthetics===
[[Modernism|Modernist]] writer [[Hermann Broch]] argues that the essence of kitsch is imitation: kitsch mimics its immediate predecessor with no regard to ethics—it aims to copy the beautiful, not the good.<ref>{{cite book|last=Broch|first=Hermann|title=Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. Six Essays by Hermann Broch| year=2002| publisher=Counterpoint| isbn=9781582431680|chapter=Evil in the Value System of Art|pages=13–40}}</ref> According to Walter Benjamin, kitsch, unlike art, is a utilitarian object lacking all critical distance between object and observer. According to critic Winfried Menninghaus, Benjamin's stance was that kitsch "offers instantaneous emotional gratification without intellectual effort, without the requirement of distance, without sublimation".<ref name="menninghaus"/> In a short essay from 1927, Benjamin observed that an artist who engages in kitschy reproductions of things and ideas from a bygone age deserved to be called a "furnished man"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Walter Benjamin: Dream Kitsch (trans. Edward Viesel) - - |url=https://www.edwardviesel.eu/0056.html |access-date=2022-12-20 |website=www.edwardviesel.eu}}</ref> (in the way that someone rents a "[[Apartment#Facilities|furnished apartment]]" where everything is already supplied).

Kitsch is less about the thing observed than about the observer.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Eaglestone|first1=Robert|title=The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature|date=25 May 2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0191084201|page=155}}</ref> According to [[Roger Scruton]], "Kitsch is fake art, expressing fake emotions, whose purpose is to deceive the consumer into thinking he feels something deep and serious."<ref name=Scruton>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30439633|title=A Point of View: The strangely enduring power of kitsch|work=BBC News|date=12 December 2014}}</ref>

Tomáš Kulka, in ''Kitsch and Art'', starts from two basic facts that kitsch "has an undeniable mass-appeal" and "considered (by the art-educated elite) bad", and then proposes three essential conditions: 
# Kitsch depicts a beautiful or highly emotionally charged subject; 
# The depicted subject is instantly and effortlessly identifiable;
# Kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations related to the depicted subject.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Kitsch and art|last=Tomas|first=Kulka|publisher=Pennsylvania State Univ. Press|year=1996|isbn=978-0271015941|oclc=837730812}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last=Higgins | first=Kathleen Marie | last2=Kulka | first2=Tomas | title=Kitsch and Art | journal=The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism | publisher=JSTOR | volume=56 | issue=4 | year=1998 | issn=0021-8529 | doi=10.2307/432137 | jstor=432137 | page=410}}</ref>