ABSTRACT

In particular, it is concerned with the characterization of kitsch as that which is consumed with ease, operating, as T. J. Clark puts it, through the avoidance of difficulty'. Writing on the visual arts, Tomas Kulka likewise insists on the necessary accessibility and legibility of kitsch: The deciphering of the picture must be as effortless as possible. Kitsch should speak the most common language understandable to all. Making few demands on its theoretically unlimited audience, kitsch makes an absolute virtue of easiness. Indeed, Rancire's definition of kitsch l'art incorpor dans la vie de n'importe qui' is precisely critical to the fantasy of future art that emerges in Zola's subsequent utopian fiction. The irony attached to the kitsch artefact in Lourdes derived, in many ways, from the incongruous hawking of spirituality in the marketplace. The brotherhood of men on earth', writes Milan Kundera, will be possible only on a basis of kitsch'.