Download or read book Star spangled Kitsch written by Curtis F. Brown and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Star spangled Kitsch written by Curtis F. Brown and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Kitsch and Art written by Thomas Kulka and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Camp written by Fabio Cleto and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Star Struck written by Sam Riley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-12-09 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Five Faces of Modernity written by Matei Călinescu and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book No Respect written by Andrew Ross and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Players All written by Robert E. Rinehart and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Download or read book Black Velvet Art written by Eric A. Eliason and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-01-19 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Representing Popular Sovereignty written by Daniel Lessard Levin and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Colossus of Roads written by Karal Ann Marling and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where can one find the world's largest prairie chicken, a restaurant shaped like a fish, a massive Paul Bunyan, or an enormous ear of corn? Roadside sculpture is a uniquely American phenomenon and these strange and wonderful figures can be found scattered along highways and standing in small-town squares, particularly in the Midwest. These odd and oversized attractions have become destinations for travelers. Whether it serves art, commerce, or local pride, the colossus is always a place in itself, a stopping place where the everyday rules of reality are suspended and the observer can gain insight into the way these communities imagine themselves. Karal Ann Marling visits dozens of these roadside attractions, viewing them analytically, intellectually, and enthusiastically, tracing each one through folklore and literature. Heavily illustrated, this book takes the reader on the road to examine these treasures and all that they represent.
Download or read book My Silver Planet written by Daniel Tiffany and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the hidden origins of kitsch in poetry from the eighteenth century. Taking its title from John Keats, My Silver Planet contends that the problem of elite poetry’s relation to popular culture bears the indelible mark of its turbulent incorporation of vernacular poetry—a legacy shaped by nostalgia, contempt, and fraudulence. Daniel Tiffany reactivates and fundamentally redefines the concept of kitsch, freeing it from modernist misapprehension and ridicule, by tracing its origin to poetry’s alienation from the emergent category of literature. Tiffany excavates the forgotten history of poetry’s relation to kitsch, beginning with the exuberant revival of archaic (and often spurious) ballads in Britain in the early eighteenth century. In these controversial events of poetic imposture, Tiffany identifies a submerged pact—in opposition to the bourgeois values of literature—between elite and vernacular poetries. Tiffany argues that the ballad revival—the earliest explicit formation of what we now call popular culture—sparked a perilous but seemingly irresistible flirtation (among elite audiences) with poetic forgery that endures today in the ambiguity of the kitsch artifact: Is it real or fake, art or kitsch? He goes on to trace the genealogy of kitsch in texts ranging from nursery rhymes and poetic melodrama to the lyric commodities of Baudelaire. He scrutinizes the fascist “paradise” inscribed in Ezra Pound’s Cantos as well as the avant-garde poetry of the New York School and its debt to pop and “plastic” art. By exposing and elaborating the historical poetics of kitsch, My Silver Planet transforms our sense of kitsch as a category of material culture.
Download or read book Sincerity How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars Modern Art Hipster Chic and the Curious Notion that We All Have Something to Say no Matter how Dull written by R Jay Magill and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the history, religion, art, and politics behind the history of sincerity, spanning a timeline dotted with Protestant theology, paintings by the insane, French satire, and the anti-hipster movement.
Download or read book Selling the Lady written by Kathy Jo Evertz and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Destination Culture written by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-09-05 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the question, "What does it mean to show?", the author explores the agency of display in museums and tourist attractions. She looks at how objects are made to perform their meaning by being collected and how techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey a powerful message.
Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by Copyright Office, Library of Congress. This book was released on 1977 with total page 1624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan written by Carl Abrahamsson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: • Includes never-before-published material from LaVey, including transcripts from his never-released “Hail Satan!” video • Shares in-depth interviews with intimate friends and collaborators, including LaVey’s partner Blanche Barton, his son Xerxes LaVey, and current heads of the Church of Satan Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia • Provides inside accounts of the Church of Satan and activities at the Black House, personal stories and anecdotes from the very colorful life of the Black Pope, and firsthand explanations of key principles of LaVey’s philosophy With his creation of the infamous Church of Satan in 1966 and his bestselling book The Satanic Bible in 1969, Anton Szandor LaVey (1930-1997) became a controversial celebrity who basked in the attention and even made a successful career out of it. But who was Anton LaVey behind the public persona that so easily provoked Christians and others intolerant of his views? One of privileged few who spent time with the “Black Pope” in the last decade of his life, Carl Abrahamsson met Anton LaVey in 1989, sparking an “infernally” empowering friendship. In this book Abrahamsson explores what LaVey was really about, where he came from, and how he shaped the esoteric landscape of the 1960s. The author shares in-depth interviews with the notorious Satanist’s intimate friends and collaborators, including LaVey’s partner Blanche Barton; his son, Xerxes LaVey; current heads of the Church of Satan, Peter Gilmore and Peggy Nadramia; occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger; LaVey’s personal secretary Margie Bauer; film collector Jack Stevenson; and film historian Jim Morton. Abrahamsson also shares never-before-published material from LaVey himself, including discussions between LaVey and Genesis P-Orridge and transcribed excerpts from LaVey’s never-released “Hail Satan!” video. Providing inside accounts of the Church of Satan and activities at the Black House, this intimate exploration of Anton LaVey reveals his ongoing role in the history of culture and magic.
