Kitsch

What is kitsch?

• noun
  art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: the lava lamp is a bizarre example of sixties kitsch
  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/kitsch

• Kitsch (/ˈkɪtʃ/; loanword from German) is a low-brow style of mass-produced art or design using popular or cultural icons. Also referred to as “tacky”,[1] the term “kitsch” is generally reserved for unsubstantial or gaudy works or decoration, or works that are calculated to have popular appeal.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch

• 1. As an art movement, lifestyle, or literature and film genre, kitsch is pleasingly distasteful. It’s melodramatic, overdone, gaudy and tacky or sentimental and folksy. It’s so bad that it’s cool. Your cat might attack it, but it’s hot.
  2. Sentimentally charming, tacky and fun all rolled up in one. One catch with kitch is that you’re never quite sure if it’s supposed to be serious or not. It’s that uncertainty that is amusing.
  3. Art, decorative objects or design considered by many people to be ugly, lacking in style, or false but enjoyed by other people, often because they are funny.
  4. Whilst orignially used to describe an art movement of distaste, now most commonly used to describe items or individuals attempting to be ‘vintage’ and ‘popular’ thus making them pretentious. Used most frequently by hipsters.
  5. Collectible, nostalgia inducing products, artworks or people. At some point mass produced and at a later point rising in value and sentimentality. Souvenirs, paraphernalia and memorabilia. Written off as junk by the untrained eye. Appreciated as naive and beautiful by those with a discerning eye and a refined sense of aesthetic.
  6. Quite simply, kitsch is the junk sold on the street to American tourists at or near famous landmarks. Elements of proper kitsch include the overuse of bright paints and shiny metals, “clever” american slang incorporated into the design, and workmanship quality of the lowest order.
  7. Something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality
  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kitsch

• Kitsch, originally 19th century German slang for ‘gaudy’ or ‘trash’ (dialectal kitschen “to smear), is defined by the OED as ‘Art or objets d’art characterized by worthless pretentiousness’. Until the 1960s, ‘kitsch’ was just vulgar bad taste. By the ‘70s, it was amusingly ironic, relying for its effect on a sense of knowing superiority which is quite difficult to distinguish from simple condescension.
  http://qi.com/infocloud/kitsch