An analysis of kitsch

‘Kitsch is the corpse that is left when anger leaves art.’

– Terence Conran*

So much the worse for kitsch that thinks it is art; the problem is that a great deal of kitsch thinks it is design. However, we might have good reason to keep emotional shittiness out of the living spaces of daily life, as opposed to our ideological spaces, where to welcome anger is probably healthful, producing an avant-garde.

Kitsch objects are for many people soothing; they can be understood as an attempt to 'spoil' oneself in the anthropological sense Peter Sloterdijk uses the term: for Sloterdijk the human domain of language, machines, protracted immaturity, artificial shelter and climate control is a 'space where you get spoiled' fortuitously. Culture spoils the ape and produces the human.

The response to objects that alienate us can go two ways: to imaginary or real solutions. It is better to ask of the disturbing material, ‘What is deficient in its materials and form?’ rather than: ‘What imaginary scenes can I plaster over it?’ To see the shower curtain itself as a design problem would be more constructive, ie, to examine the actual purpose, materials and form of the shower curtain and by redesigning it make it intrinsically more homely, rather than to plaster it with decals and impose an imaginary solution to our discomfort.

Award-winning interior design for Royal Childrens Hospital, Melbourne

Syringes proposed to ‘revolutionise the child-syringe experience’ (designer’s brief)

Finally, a question in my mind lingers over the proper design of the properly nightmarish, ie, the extent to which any amount of kitsch can domesticate kinds of object or building that are inherently alienating. Some examples are hospitals, prisons, syringes, scalpels and x-ray equipment. Will children in the grip of physical illness and injury be soothed by the use of colourful plant and animal motifs on medical equipment? Kitsch is always a lie, but what if it is, in effect, a betrayal? Butterflies ought not sting like bees; any that do belong in a nightmare.

One reasonable conclusion to draw from the examples above is that the presence of the kitsch façade in object design should always be by informed consent of the user or owner.

*The Conran Shop is full of kitsch objects.