Aesthetic Assessment of Kitsch: A Reading on Bad Taste in Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment

Abstract

Kitsch, devised as a term of modern aesthetics after the 19th century, indicates an aesthetic value judgment that is identified as ‘bad taste’. It is acknowledged that the issues of aesthetic judgment and taste were systematically addressed for the first time by Immanuel Kant in his “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” in the 18th century. This study attempts to reevaluate the notion of kitsch as an aesthetic value judgment through a reading of Kant’s arguments over the concepts of aesthetic judgment, taste, and bad taste as presented in his work “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. Tracing the notion of kitsch as bad taste in the writings of Kant would demonstrate possible convergences or discrepancies there may be and would be significant for providing an understanding about the philosophical roots of the term. With such an attempt, this study conducts a discursive analysis, and respectively examines the notion of kitsch as an aesthetic judgment of taste; the notions of aesthetic judgment and taste in Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”; and the notion of ‘bad taste’ thereof in order to make a comparison with the notion of kitsch. The examination that looks for the definition of bad taste in the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” reveals that the conditions of ‘bad taste’, as portrayed by Kant through the role of charm and emotion in aesthetic judgment, overlap with the characteristics of kitsch on the basis of sentimentality and desire for attention. Consequently, as a result of the reading on bad taste in Kant’s arguments, this study argues that over the traits of sentimentality or the pretentious use of charms and emotions, the philosophical roots of the term kitsch as an aesthetic value judgment existed long before its name has been coined.