Star-spangled Kitsch

Star-spangled Kitsch PDF Author: Curtis F. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Kitsch in home decoration - from the blue-blood mecca of a 19th-century Vanderbilt mansion to bogus Aztec living-room ensembles, "Instant Congo" furniture, and Santa Claus toilet paper. Kitsch in advertising - from an early Coco-Cola belt buckle depicting a naked nun to the near-sadistic depiction of water-logged caskets to engender guilt feelings in the bereaved. Architectural kitsch - from nonfunctional wooden church buttresses and Gilded Age palazzi to "the corniest building in America," "the world's tallest shanty," and a leaning Tower of Pizza. Kitsch in "art" - from an 1832 statue of George Washington looking like a Turkish bath patron to phony scrimshaw, Venus de Milo candles, do-it-yourself "primitive" plywood plaques, and Mona Lisa drawings-by-computer. Show-biz kitsch - world's fairs; dance marathons; the films of Griffith, DeMille, and Berkeley; the "music styles" of Lawrence Welk, LIberace, Jobriath, and Alice Cooper.

Star-spangled Kitsch

Star-spangled Kitsch PDF Author: Curtis F. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Kitsch in home decoration - from the blue-blood mecca of a 19th-century Vanderbilt mansion to bogus Aztec living-room ensembles, "Instant Congo" furniture, and Santa Claus toilet paper. Kitsch in advertising - from an early Coco-Cola belt buckle depicting a naked nun to the near-sadistic depiction of water-logged caskets to engender guilt feelings in the bereaved. Architectural kitsch - from nonfunctional wooden church buttresses and Gilded Age palazzi to "the corniest building in America," "the world's tallest shanty," and a leaning Tower of Pizza. Kitsch in "art" - from an 1832 statue of George Washington looking like a Turkish bath patron to phony scrimshaw, Venus de Milo candles, do-it-yourself "primitive" plywood plaques, and Mona Lisa drawings-by-computer. Show-biz kitsch - world's fairs; dance marathons; the films of Griffith, DeMille, and Berkeley; the "music styles" of Lawrence Welk, LIberace, Jobriath, and Alice Cooper.

Star-spangled Kitsch

Star-spangled Kitsch PDF Author: Curtis F. Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Kitsch in home decoration - from the blue-blood mecca of a 19th-century Vanderbilt mansion to bogus Aztec living-room ensembles, "Instant Congo" furniture, and Santa Claus toilet paper. Kitsch in advertising - from an early Coco-Cola belt buckle depicting a naked nun to the near-sadistic depiction of water-logged caskets to engender guilt feelings in the bereaved. Architectural kitsch - from nonfunctional wooden church buttresses and Gilded Age palazzi to "the corniest building in America," "the world's tallest shanty," and a leaning Tower of Pizza. Kitsch in "art" - from an 1832 statue of George Washington looking like a Turkish bath patron to phony scrimshaw, Venus de Milo candles, do-it-yourself "primitive" plywood plaques, and Mona Lisa drawings-by-computer. Show-biz kitsch - world's fairs; dance marathons; the films of Griffith, DeMille, and Berkeley; the "music styles" of Lawrence Welk, LIberace, Jobriath, and Alice Cooper.

Kitsch and Art

Kitsch and Art PDF Author: Thomas Kulka
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271074167
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
What is kitsch? What is behind its appeal? More important, what is wrong with kitsch? Though central to our modern and postmodern culture, kitsch has not been seriously and comprehensively analyzed; its aesthetic worthlessness has been generally assumed but seldom explained. Kitsch and Art seeks to give this phenomenon its due by exploring the basis of artistic evaluation and aesthetic value judgments. Tomas Kulka examines kitsch in the visual arts, literature, music, and architecture. To distinguish kitsch from art, Kulka proposes that kitsch depicts instantly identifiable, emotionally charged objects or themes, but that it does not substantially enrich our associations relating to the depicted objects or themes. He then addresses the deceptive nature of kitsch by examining the makeup of its artistic and aesthetic worthlessness. Ultimately Kulka argues that the mass appeal of kitsch cannot be regarded as aesthetic appeal, but that its analysis can illuminate the nature of art appreciation.

Camp

Camp PDF Author: Fabio Cleto
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472067220
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 542

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Book Description
The complete guide to c& an anthology of the best writing on its history and current theory in cultural studies and lesbian and gay studies

Star Struck

Star Struck PDF Author: Sam Riley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313358133
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture is neither a stern critic nor an apologist for celebrity infatuation, a phenomenon that sometimes supplants more weighty matters yet constitutes one of our nation's biggest exports. This encyclopedia covers American celebrity culture from 1950 to 2008, examining its various aspects—and its impact—through 86 entries by 30 expert contributors. Demonstrating that all celebrities are famous, but not all famous people are celebrities, the book cuts across the various entertainment medias and their legions of individual "stars." It looks at sports celebrities and examines the role of celebrity in more serious pursuits and institutions such as the news media, corporations, politics, the arts, medicine, and the law. Also included are entries devoted to such topics as paranoia and celebrity, one-name celebrities, celebrity nicknames, family unit celebrity, sidekick celebrities, and even criminal celebrities.

Five Faces of Modernity

Five Faces of Modernity PDF Author: Matei Călinescu
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822307679
Category : Avant-Garde (Aesthetics)
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Five Faces of Modernity is a series of semantic and cultural biographies of words that have taken on special significance in the last century and a half or so: modernity, avant-garde, decadence, kitsch, and postmodernism. The concept of modernity--the notion that we, the living, are different and somehow superior to our predecessors and that our civilization is likely to be succeeded by one even superior to ours--is a relatively recent Western invention and one whose time may already have passed, if we believe its postmodern challengers. Calinescu documents the rise of cultural modernity and, in tracing the shifting senses of the five terms under scrutiny, illustrates the intricate value judgments, conflicting orientations, and intellectual paradoxes to which it has given rise. Five Faces of Modernity attempts to do for the foundations of the modernist critical lexicon what earlier terminological studies have done for such complex categories as classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, or symbolism and thereby fill a gap in literary scholarship. On another, more ambitious level, Calinescu deals at length with the larger issues, dilemmas, ideological tensions, and perplexities brought about by the assertion of modernity.

No Respect

No Respect PDF Author: Andrew Ross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135200491
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The intellectual and the popular: Irving Howe and John Waters, Susan Sontag and Ethel Rosenberg, Dwight MacDonald and Bill Cosby, Amiri Baraka and Mick Jagger, Andrea Dworkin and Grace Jones, Andy Warhol and Lenny Bruce. All feature in Andrew Ross's lively history and critique of modern American culture. Andrew Ross examines how and why the cultural authority of modern intellectuals is bound up with the changing face of popular taste in America. He argues that the making of "taste" is hardly an aesthetic activity, but rather an exercise in cultural power, policing and carefully redefining social relations between classes.

Players All

Players All PDF Author: Robert E. Rinehart
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253212238
Category : Performance art
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
"Players All is a stunning accomplishment, an agenda-setting work; it opens the space for a bold, and innovative, critical, performance-based discourse on mass sport, sport as entertainment, and spectatorship in the global, postmodern society." --Norman K. Denzin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In a book that is both scholarly and engagingly personal, Robert E. Rinehart takes us into the world of contemporary sport performances, from the Olympic Games to "The eXtreme Games," the Super Bowl to "The American Gladiators." He introduces us to sports tourism and the highly commercialized world of global sport. Rinehart analyzes the emergence of such "sports" as paint ball (and its associations with the Vietnam War) and indoor rock climbing (and its links to environmentalism and self-mastery). He shows how sports have become theatrical events and paints a revealing portrait of the new postmodern culture of sports.

Black Velvet Art

Black Velvet Art PDF Author: Eric A. Eliason
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604737956
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Jesus, matadors, panthers, bandits, Native Americans, movie stars, waifs, and, of course, Elvis are recognized icons of the oft-despised, uber-kitsch art form of black velvet painting. In Black Velvet Art author Eric A. Eliason and photographer Scott Squire present a comprehensive overview of this covertly loved and overtly reviled tradition. In cooperation with a network of artists, collectors, importers, and gallery owners in Tijuana, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Calgary, this book draws from the largest survey of velvet painting ever undertaken. The book traces velvet's historical development as a folk art shaped by both Indigenous traditions as well as Western consumer expectations in such markets as the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and particularly the US-Mexico border and the black velvet capital of Tijuana. In black velvet, class and taste challenge art as a consumer phenomenon, democratic spirit faces down elitism, reproduction questions originality, and sexuality seduces and provokes religiosity. What is most significant about black velvet art to many Americans is its signaling of the nadir of bad taste. Black velvet is the “anti-art” in many ways. Eliason seeks to explore how and why black velvet serves this function and to examine ways it deserves a glowing redemption.

Representing Popular Sovereignty

Representing Popular Sovereignty PDF Author: Daniel Lessard Levin
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791441053
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Using the events of the Constitution's Bicentennial from 1987 to 1991 as a case study, Representing Popular Sovereignty explores the contradiction between the Constitution's importance as a political document and its weakness as a symbol in American popular culture.