Kitsch

 
Kitsch

Definition "kitsch-interior" has appeared rather recently and it means a modern category of interiors. The basic idea of kitsch is the sneer at history and art traditions, tastes and styles. It some kind of nihilism in the architecture, denying all its previous achievements. When frank bad taste becomes a choice principle, and arresting attention incongruity of colors and a home decoration - its basic distinctive feature. For example, the over gilded stucco molding on eaves, on an is bright-dark blue ceiling - large brilliant stars, at walls symmetrically stand tubs with palm trees, and the floor is laid out by a ceramic tile with east motives.

As a rule, people who surround itself with a kitsch, at all don't suspect about it. If they also heard somewhere this word its value isn't known to them. Meanwhile, not bad know that the kitsch (in other sounding - kitch) is translated from German as bad taste and cheap stuff. And hardly inhabitants kitch's interiors would be delighted, if have understood, than their style actually is.

At the heart of a kitsch the aspiration of the person to "show off, seem lies more richly and more solidly, than it is actually. If earlier, before occurrence of mass stamped manufacture, it was difficult enough to carry out it on a boundary of 19-20 centuries such possibility has appeared. On the market the weight of cheap fakes under expensive respectable things with which help naive consumers have rushed to construct at home« rich apartments »was splashed out. The idea has appeared is so simple and effective that fans of outer effects with pleasure use kitsch methods to this day.

Professional designers too sometimes address to style a kitsch - more often, that poveselit public. As a result at design exhibitions there are subjects-parodies - such, for example, as the huge chandelier collected from glass shelves on which there are plafonds in the form of the crystal vases, witty named its founder Philippe Starck «luxury Scars».

Things in style a kitsch become fashionable, when old samples of a good form become boring and cause melancholy, and the new esthetics wasn't generated yet. Historically it usually coincides with any crises: social or economic when conditions become stable, and the society waits for changes. And consequently the fashion on a thing in such style is short-term enough.

But always there is a certain quantity of people at which character there is a certain nihilism by nature, they like to put associates in bewilderment, to deny authorities. Such people during any epoch, to put it mildly, in an original way put on and so in an original way arrange the habitation. So a kitsch as style, is present constantly.
As a rule, the kitsch is born from excessive riches and a satiety or, on the contrary, from scandalous, a throwing down challenge of poverty. But anyway is an aspiration epatirovat, thus, having shown the eccentricity.
The kitsch from riches is born also as reaction of architects to necessity to follow tastes of some customers having specific idea about style and beauty. When all attempts of the professional-designer to convince such customer in, say, riskiness of an embodiment in life of its wishes break about firm confidence of that of the correctness and own exclusive taste.

Here an example of such interior when the customer, by a principle "anybody to me not the decree", insists on an embodiment in the habitation fallen in love to it since the childhood of interiors of antique Greece. Then there are in typical city apartments pseudo-antique columns, porticoes and caryatids, and in the most unexpected places, for example, in a doorway. Sometimes, it is possible on irony of the architect, aplenty both caryatids have also portrait similarity to owners of dwelling.

In general, as a rule, a favorite theme of style a kitsch are the pseudo-historical architecture and interiors. Peaked towers and turrets of country cottages in an abundance "decorating" such products, narrow Gothic windows in a combination to a modern jalousie and rolled shutters, and corresponding internal furniture: the huge "knightly" drawing room is decorated by an electric fireplace. All is a typical kitsch, but not ironic, but serious. When the owner not that doesn't notice fakes, he is assured that they make impression of originals.
Such kitsch arising from inept imitation to noble samples, leaves the roots in the remote past. It is style of the provincial pre-revolutionary hotels, aspiring to resemble not differently, as on "Astoria" in Petersburg. And then a velvet replace with the plush, the over gilded baguettes - on the thick modeled frames covered with a bronze paint "under gold", and "pictures" order in the market master, with indispensable preservation of a plot. Marble bas-reliefs of walls and columns can be drawn, than to be spent for the present noble stone. And here having done all it, it is possible to enjoy the copied beauty and to be proud of own "riches". So Russian analog of a word a kitsch existed for a long time and that the most interesting, precisely enough reflected sense of concept.

Besides a kitsch arising as a fake under "nobleness" quite seriously, is, as we already spoke, a kitsch as style in art. Its essence in the realized aspiration to creation of things-negations and products-sneers. It just that feeling by which known masters-designers are guided even, with humor creating sometimes masterpieces-parodies.
Well, and in usual life intentionally supported style of a kitsch - is enough unusual occurrence which, as a rule, testifies to original sense of humor of the master of the house. Collecting subjects with kitchevoj attributes (hearts concern it and inscriptions «I love», asterisks, bows and roses, kittens, Mikki Mouse and other characters of animated cartoons), the fan of pop culture in a shower chuckles at the collection and perceives it as a version kunstkamery. With each new acquisition he doesn't cease to be surprised: really be gone nasty taste it can to appear deeper?!

What is the kitsch and how he is born?
At the heart of a kitsch the aspiration of the person to "show off, seem lies more richly and more solidly, than it is actually. If earlier, before occurrence of mass stamped manufacture, it was difficult enough to carry out it on a boundary of 19-20 centuries such possibility has appeared. On the market the weight of cheap fakes under expensive respectable things with which help naive consumers have rushed to construct at home« rich apartments »was splashed out. The idea has appeared is so simple and effective that fans of outer effects with pleasure use kitsch methods to this day.

Classics of a genre: a kitsch from poverty
In our country the kitsch had to worry hard years: the Soviet sociologists have written down it in the category of "bourgeois mass culture» and strictly reproached with bad taste and narrow-mindedness. The old generation remembers merciless struggle with elephants on a dresser, attacks of satirists to rugs «with swans» and plaster coin boxes in the form of sitting kitties. Meanwhile the kitsch, despite all attacks from the state, has stood! The people have obediently thrown out on a dustbin elefants and swans, but began to decorate in large quantities dwelling crystal - both present, and counterfeit (in the form of the well-known chandeliers "Cascade"). And carpets - so it there was in general a question of the social status: if you have a carpet (and it is better two-three) - you dear person.

Presently carpets the urgency, however the general tendency to decorate own habitation by a principle «at me have obviously lost all is beautiful and rich» has remained in the best possible way. The blessing, now possibilities for the device of house branch of the Ekaterina's palace (from improvised materials) became much more. At interior registration to a course there is all successively: draperies from a lining fabric, crystal chandeliers (now from the Czech glass), floor flowerpots with the plastic roses which have faded on the sun, arcades and the antique columns which are propping up a ceiling 2,50, foam plastic "stucco molding" with "gilding", house fountains with figures of gnomes, pictures in frames «under bronze», "marbled" window sills, cases with carved curls «under a tree» and other attributes of beautiful life ... All this surroundings, according to owners, urged to create atmosphere of the prosperous house.
«From a dirt in knjazi», or a kitsch from natural materials

Meanwhile, the kitsch is the phenomenon which has no material cost. Riches and original value of things - at all a guarantee of that a kitsch won't lodge in your house. If, arranging an interior, you pursue all the same aim - to amaze imagination of others with the financial possibilities - rather possibly that this aspiration will result you ... in a kitsch. Also it will be absolutely unimportant that you have given a fantastic sum for Gothic windows and towers of the country house that your fireplace in an English drawing room cost to you of the whole condition - after your wife will veil these windows curtains «a velvet on a tulle» with "gold" holding straps, and over a fireplace will attach a poster of the Madonna. Even the most magnificent pseudo-historical house will never look noble and worthy if owners did it with one only the purpose - to brag of own riches.

Kitsch as art
Certainly, for long history of existence of a kitsch there were people who have finished this phenomenon to the point of irrationality. Now critics attribute it and «nihilism in architecture», and «a sneer at history and art taste», and «mockery at traditions and styles». Such nihilist, for example, was the well-known Andy Uorholl who has intentionally created style from an esthetics of labels from canned food and then has become famous as the ancestor of pop art. After it the kitsch was issued as a separate direction in art and design.

Style of a kitsch of youth which has created its special, hi-tech variant was especially fell in love: "wall-paper" from beer labels or brilliant disks, photo wall-paper with aggressive plots from comics, posters of favorite bands, curtains from polyethylene and even "street" graffiti on walls. However, quite often the basic advantage of such style is its young enthusiasm and humor, and at all taste. It is not necessary to be upset about it: the youth kitsch, as a rule, is short-lived. Fortunately, founders of such interiors grow from them the same as from become close "grinders".

All of us want to live among things which to us are pleasant, correspond to our relation to the surrounding. Our taste is a special perception of the validity in which memoirs are mixed, education, and another's desires, material possibilities that bears to us an information stream from the outside. There is no absence of taste - there is only individual perception. It prompts us decisions which we accept, forming the interior, creating an image which will interest someone, and someone, probably, will force to frown.

Many-sided kitsch

In interior formation our financial possibilities have great value. But if at the apartment or house device the aim is pursued: to amaze someone's imagination with it, that, it is rather probable that such aspiration will result ... in kitsch. What is the kitsch: a new direction in culture, the special approach or pseudo-art?

«Luxury scars» - so named the product: a crystal chandelier in the form of shelves and the vases standing on it, known designer Philippe Starck, sneering at those who like to show the riches any way: in clothes, ornaments, interior registration, otherwise, kitsch. The kitsch (kich) occurs from German word Kitsch that means - "cheap stuff", the mass consumer goods calculated on an outer effect. The kitsch is an application simplified, and sometimes and trite fakes under known art and architectural products when the form resembles the original, and the material, color, illumination and another are changed, styles are randomly mixed, not connected among themselves. People who surround itself with a kitsch in the house, frequently at all don't suspect about it. Many sincerely believe that the rooms decorated with fakes make impression of original works of art.

Definition "kitsch-interior" has appeared rather recently though existed for a long time: for example, when provincial hotels aspired to resemble on capital, but, thus, the velvet was substituted pljushem, the pictures representing a known plot, were carried out by a local journeyman and so on. All this "magnificence" should create visibility of prosperity and riches.

More often a kitsch in an interior - a sign, probably, unconscious aspiration to magnificent life, aspirations to show to associates the material possibilities. So there are the pseudo-columns located in the most improper places, the ornamented marbled walls, huge bathrooms with got lost among soft sofas of unknown appointment, mirrors, pictures and artificial palm trees sanitary engineers. A chaotic mix of styles and colors, a hint on eccentricity. Color registration of such interior corresponds to concept "too" more often: red, violet, poisonous-green and shades similar to them. Well and, certainly, gold. The combination of the incongruous urged to show the owner the man of means who "presumes".

The kitsch is not only aspiration to amaze with the material possibilities, it has also other person is a person of poverty. This kitsch looks absolutely in another way. It arises there where self-expression finds a way out in an ornament of the dwelling make-shifts for the lack of others. Such kitsch is aggressive: walls in the manner of street graffiti are decorated from aerosol cylinder by bright "acid" paints, furniture old, broken, curtains - the big polyethylene packages from under garbage. The interior underlines a sheer poverty generating depression, long in it to be difficult. But it is an extreme variant of a kitsch of a lack of money. More often the kitsch of material "lack" is shown in an ornament of the house by pictures and the figurines, concerning consumer goods: Figures from an artificial "African" tree, square "Chinese" coins, huge glass «the cat's eyes», the big toads with coins in a mouth, a Buddhist symbol of a prosperity - Hotej, zodiac signs, a figure of the Indian tsar of monkeys - Hanumana, numerous clay hand bells, masks, sculpture spirits, "a monetary" tree and another. All these things, called to involve in the house happiness and a prosperity gathered, will create discomfort and irritation more likely. Sometimes the interior decor is created at the expense of the presented things - unexpected figurines of a strange kind what it is a lot of on market counters.

Sometimes the kitsch is meaningly chosen direction. It is chosen by the people, aspiring to prove to associates that they don't want to go «in general I build» and to submit to rules, even whether it be rules of harmony or space construction. This interior is created, as the protest against standards and traditions when the founder of such dwelling was bothered with "good form". Often it happens is connected with a stable situation as in life of the concrete person and a society. As well as any a stable condition, such direction can't be to constants.

There is a kitsch as style-parody, style-smile. It is game in anti design for those who not too seriously concerns to that surrounds it. For example, a youth kitsch, something similar to an aggressive kitsch of poverty: "wall-paper" from beer labels, brilliant disks, the posters of favorite bands ornamented under "graffiti" of a wall, furniture, as though collected from diverse parts and painted different colors. But materials others, also such interior not from a lack of money is created. Fortunately, founders of such interiors grow from them quickly enough.
In registration of a stylish kitsch-interior bright and shouting colors usually are in the lead. Styles mix up: loft-apartment (the premises altered from factory shops, warehouses, attics), arranged with empire furniture. Or a combination of rural style to the city. Or: graffiti - with classical style. Any variants. At the heart of apartment registration in style a kitsch - love to original, interior creation by own rules. Frequently such style means a heap of a considerable quantity of things, to an excess. It is a mix of classical and modern furniture, prophetic ancient and modern, expensive and cheap, a premise in an interior of things improper. The main appointment of such interior - shouldn't be boring.

Kitsch - as style of registration it is serious. Creating such specific interior, it is necessary to be very attentive. After all from the interesting and original decision it is very easy to pass to a kitsch "ordinary". The unusual and eccentric interior will approach not all. Not everyone will dare at bright and bright style. It will seem too raising, strange. This direction will approach only to people unchained, not loving restriction both possessing internal freedom and independence of opinion of associates.

 


 


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