Wow. That's some piece of work! One of its ironies is that as a simultaneous
commentary and meta-commentary, the work's aesthetic content remains beyond
the natural lifecycle of its subject's career. I doubt that the original
purchaser bought it simply on account of being Jackson fan, though who
knows? 

The ghastly smiles shared between monkey and Michael, rendered in a medium
with decided enlightenment/evolutionary associations (Josiah Wedgwood being
grandfather of Charles Darwin) invite the pointed question, did we evolve
for THIS? (Answers on the usual postcard.)

P

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Mark Weiss
> Sent: 28 October 2007 00:05
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: sentimentality & 'classism' Re: New at Sharp Sand
> 
> Somebody somewhere is living with a lifesize painted ceramic of
> Michael Jackson and his dog, for which privilege said someone paid
> over $5.5 million a few years ago at auction. Check it out:
> http://server1.fandm.edu/departments/English/d_steward/koons.jpg
> Jackson's sun having set that's a lot of low-cost porcelain now. One
> has to have been incredibly stupid.
> 
> I'll confess to a deep affection for select garden gnomes. Among the
> more harmless creatures. Not that I live with any.
> 
> Otherwise I pretty much agree, except that you've left out a
> category, kitsch that's deliberately produced as kitsch, without
> irony, to appeal to its primary audience, people who collect kitsch
> without irony (for whom kitsch is not kitsch?).
> 
> Mark
> 
> At 02:16 PM 10/27/2007, you wrote:
> >(Apologies if you receive this more than once: the original went AWOL
some
> >hours back. CW)
> >
> ><snip>
> >I don't think it's any truer that kitsch is the commodification of
> >high culture.  [MW]
> ><snip>
> >
> >Perhaps _dominant_ would have been better, with less sense of
consecration:
> >kitsch as the impression of democracy without the underlying reality,
> >sneered at from the sidelines. I wouldn't underrate its dangers BTW.
> >
> >During what were (perhaps) its 19th C origins somewhere in Germany you
> >bought (having made a little money) the trappings of advancement off the
> >peg; but what you actually got were very bad paintings, almost a sort of
> >Giffen good, because you couldn't afford the good ones or couldn't tell
the
> >difference. And then, of course, all those miniatures of the Eiffel
Tower,
> >those fake furs, faux wood, all those cocktail cabinets...
> >
> >The sneer that's often used for kitsch was also used for fish knives
> >incidentally; Cf Betjeman. Here the point was, presumably, that fish
knives
> >were owned only by someone who had also 'bought his own furniture'.
> >
> >But I have left out garden gnomes. Though that's maybe not their loss. Or
> >indeed yours necessarily.
> >
> ><snip>
> >Jeff Koons achieves kitsch, for instance, equally by appropriating
already
> >kitsch children's toys and greek sculpture. [MW]
> ><snip>
> >
> >Just as *irony* and *sentimentality* come to blows over feigned emotion,
> >over who is swindling whom exactly, so *kitsch* and *camp* are a sort of
> >argument over subjectivity. On the one hand, the _creation_ of kitsch is
> >objectifying, commodifying and all those boo! hiss! things. Whereas, on
the
> >other, the _recognition_ of kitsch is (at least potentially) a form of
camp,
> >a sort of emperor's clothes moment which returns the subject back to the
> >thick of things, where it belongs.
> >
> >Koons (whom I also abhor) is certainly making use of *camp*, as indeed
you
> >go on to suggest.  However, the stuff used by the great commodity broker
> >isn't employed to promote some sort of helpful break but to
_anaesthetise_
> >instead. Thus the gap between *kitsch* and *camp* becomes so narrow that
> >they almost coalesce. (The analogy might be with Warhol's *Marilyns*,
where
> >the gap between the set comprising these works and some notional set of
> >monetary tokens likewise reduces to zero.)
> >
> >CW
> >_______________________________________________
> >
> >'The possibility now arises that art will no longer find time to
> >  adapt somehow to technological processes.'
> >(Walter Benjamin)