Kitsch has long been dismissed as the opposite of sophistication — too emotional, too colorful, too much. Yet, within that “too much” lies a quiet revolution. The modern return to kitsch in original art and visual culture is not naïve; it is deliberate. To embrace kitsch today is to rebel against the sterile, intellectual elitism that has often dominated art.
In the era of irony and detachment, kitsch dares to feel.
The Origins of Kitsch
The word kitsch first appeared in 19th-century Munich to describe cheap, sentimental art produced for mass taste. Its sin was accessibility — art that appealed directly to emotion rather than intellect. Avant-garde critics rejected it as imitation, while the public adored it for its warmth and color.
Over time, this cultural divide — high versus low, refined versus vulgar — hardened into hierarchy. But those very qualities that made kitsch “bad taste” also made it immortal. It was never afraid to please.
From Sentimentality to Subversion
In contemporary culture, kitsch has been re-evaluated. It has become a tool of protest — a way to critique the systems that define “good taste.” When artists fill their work with glitter, hearts, saints, or neon, they are not just indulging in excess; they are reclaiming emotional truth from the grip of cynicism.
Kitsch says: art can be both sincere and absurd, sacred and ridiculous. It breaks the binary between seriousness and play.
The Beauty of Excess
Psychologically, excess fascinates us because it reveals what we repress — our appetite for intensity, decoration, and spectacle. In original paintings, exaggerated forms and bold palettes overwhelm the rational mind, allowing emotion to take over.
This sensory overload is not chaos; it’s rebellion. To layer color upon color, symbol upon symbol, is to resist minimalism’s silence. Kitsch celebrates the loud, the joyful, the vulgar — and in doing so, restores humanity to the aesthetic experience.
Camp, Irony, and the Power of Play
Susan Sontag once wrote that Camp is “the love of the unnatural, of artifice and exaggeration.” Kitsch and camp share the same bloodline: both expose art’s performative side. But where camp winks, kitsch believes — even when it knows it shouldn’t.
In contemporary original artwork, this duality becomes protest through sincerity. Artists use shiny surfaces, decorative patterns, and sentimental icons not to mock, but to reclaim feeling in a culture obsessed with detachment.
Kitsch as Cultural Memory
Kitsch also carries nostalgia. It preserves fragments of popular history — devotional prints, family souvenirs, folk embroidery, childhood cartoons. When reimagined through a contemporary lens, these elements become emotional archaeology.
Each glittering flower, each overly dramatic eye, recalls the moments when beauty wasn’t yet ironic. It’s not just style; it’s memory.
Rebellion Through Emotion
At its core, kitsch is the art of resistance through emotion. It challenges the cold logic of design and the market’s obsession with minimal perfection. To make kitsch is to say that beauty belongs to everyone — not only to the curated and the restrained.
The beauty of excess lies in its refusal to apologize. Kitsch turns decoration into declaration, turning what is often mocked into what is most human.
Kitsch, then, is not the death of art but its revival — a revolt against indifference. In a world that often demands restraint, kitsch paints with too much heart, and that is precisely its power.
