Sacred Trash

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Kitsch is an unavoidable topic in literature on the arts. Presented as the enemy of aesthetics, it typically receives the most derogatory terms an author can muster. Theodor Adorno, for instance, called it “sugary trash.” In contrast to the truly artistic, which possesses a sacred and transformative otherness, kitsch is dismissed as mechanical, superficial, and false. It sacrifices subtleties for watered-down textures, and avoids complex expression for one-dimensional emotionality. Its propagators are scorned as insincere profiteers, and its lack of nuance is condemned as borderline unethical.

Like most things in the experiential world of art, kitsch is more readily recognized than explained. What seems to define it is a combination of simplistic sentimentality and a concomitant reliance on clichés. These, the critics charge, are the ingredients of “poor taste.” However, in practice, candidates for the ignoble label are not cut and dried. The clearest examples are those that embrace their own kitschiness, like garden gnomes and the untold assortment of Hello Kitty products. There are also playful debasements of high culture, like the cottage industry of Shakespeare kitsch, and excessively agreeable religious art, like Precious Moments illustrations.

Things get hazier when artistic displays straddle the invisible line between authenticity and mass appeal. Classical music critics habitually look down on composers with populist tendencies, sometimes resorting to the “k” word. Their targets include such luminaries as Puccini, Meyerbeer, Telemann, Vivaldi, and even Tchaikovsky. In each case, the supposed kitsch quality stems from a perceived lack of depth: the music is passively received, easily digested, and built upon stereotyped emotions. In other words, it is penalized for its popularity. The extreme of this view is found in Clement Greenberg’s 1939 essay, “Avant-garde and Kitsch,” which declared that figurative painting had outgrown its expressive potential, and was doomed to repeat phony sentiments and hackneyed messages.

Whatever merit there is to Greenberg’s assessment, one thing is clear: a wide chasm exists between the cultural critic and the average person. In the decades since his essay, not only has figurative art retained its attraction, but there is also a movement to synthesize highbrow and lowbrow art. Museums have exhibits of comic book drawings, world-class orchestras play concerts of movie scores, “artsy” directors make blockbuster films, and easy listening records from the 1950s and 60s have found new audiences.

These increasingly common occurrences are eroding the very concept of kitsch. The acceptance of “lesser” art into “legitimate” spheres signals a reevaluation not only of the works themselves, but also of the sentiments they evoke. An intense response to a saccharine love song or a generic landscape painting need not be trivialized or bemoaned. From a functionalist standpoint, where the value of an artwork belongs to the beholder, the evaluations of cultural critics rarely matter. Instead, the fact that their opinions often contradict general feelings is, in a practical sense, evidence that they are wrong. What they call “sugary trash” can be someone else’s sacred treasure.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Music of the Squares

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Humans are vertically symmetrical beings. The skeleton provides scaffolding for mirror images on either side of an invisible divide. In both body and face, the average person exhibits an essentially balanced figure: two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, and so on. And the more evenly proportioned, the better: cultures throughout the world view exceptionally symmetrical faces as the most beautiful. (This facial preference is also observed in some non-human animals, including various insects and birds.) Contrastingly, the more excessive the deviation, the more unattractive a face is thought to be. In global myths and popular culture, exaggerated asymmetry is a common feature of monstrous creatures.

Attraction to symmetry in conspecifics has a biological basis. Symmetry is an indicator of fitness: animals that are more properly developed have more symmetry in the body and face. A sound exterior is an indication of a sound interior. (Even the pheromones of highly symmetrical men are more attractive to women than those of less symmetrical men.) Intuitive detection of biological fitness underlies the more general association of symmetry with sturdiness, strength, and security.

In the wide world of art, symmetry is fundamental in works ranging from the sculptures of ancient Greece to the architecture of Imperial China to the poetry of Dr. Seuss. Musically, the desire for balance is most clearly represented in four-bar phrasing, which has dominated Western music since at least the Classical period.

Almost every folk, popular, and art melody consists of four-measure phrases grouped with other four-measure phrases (usually in eight- to sixteen-bar form). This is true of melodies as varied as “Yankee Doodle,” “Ode to Joy,” “Kalinka,” “Hava Nagila,” and “Wrecking Ball.” Virtually any song that springs to mind fits into this square structure. Indeed, four-bar patterns are so natural that, even when composers expand the phrasing with additional bars or extra beats between phrases, they typically even them out through repetition or tagged on measures.

The ubiquity of four-square melodies is not merely a product of collective cultural conditioning. Rather, it shares organic roots with the biological affinity for symmetry. Just as a balanced figure signals strength and reliability, so does a symmetrical tune evoke comfort and stability. The limited appeal of modernist music, which among other things rejects conventional phrasing, further emphasizes this point. Our ears are endlessly pleased by four-bar patterns. To update a Shakespearian phrase: “But hark, what music? . . . The music of the squares. . . Most heavenly music!”

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.

Art Made and Unmade

Jonathan L. Friedmann, Ph.D.

Basic to existentialist philosophy is the idea that people are what they make themselves to be. We are born as empty slates and spend a lifetime creating our personas. Who we are is the result of an ongoing series of undertakings and the various thoughts, actions and relationships that comprise those undertakings. We constantly define and redefine ourselves through our dealings in the world. Our nature is not fixed. Critics charge that this view is too harsh, uncertain or arbitrary to be of any positive use. But its proponents see it as the most optimistic of doctrines. It entails that our destinies are within ourselves. Everything we do matters.

The flip side is that unrealized thoughts and unfulfilled potentials are of little or no consequence. Actualizations are what counts. Jean-Paul Sartre put it thus: “A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.” This principle goes for all areas of engagement: there is no love but the love that is felt; there is no skill but the skill that is used; there is no conviction but the conviction that becomes deed.

Sartre gave the example of art. An artist’s genius is the sum of his or her work. There is no other way to assess it. We cannot discuss the merits of a sculpture that was never sculpted or a concerto that was never composed. “Nobody can tell what the painting of tomorrow will be,” wrote Sartre. “Painting can be judged only after it has a chance to be made.” There are no a priori aesthetic values: creation precedes evaluation.

This perspective exposes the pointlessness of asking speculative artistic questions. What if Shakespeare had written another play? What if Michelangelo had painted another chapel? What if Plath had not died so young? What if Schubert had finished his eighth symphony? Track records and intentions are not the same as results, and there is no practical use in imagining things that will never be.

Of course, none of this precludes the fact that the artist must begin with a plan. Creations need a conscious creator, and nothing exists prior to the vision or inspiration. Yet if the plan is confined to the vagaries of conception and does not progress beyond them, it will not become art and thus have no impact on the artist’s genius.

Existentialists consider this a liberating and motivating concept. Whether the activity is art or something else, it is our efforts that ultimately constitute our identities. We are born without essence and become ourselves through action. Life is what we make of it, and what we make in life is who we are.

Visit Jonathan’s website to keep up on his latest endeavors, browse his book and article archives, and listen to sample compositions.