Kitsch'in Estetik Değerlendirmesi: Kant'ın “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi” Adlı Eseri Üzerinden Kötü Beğeni Hakkında Bir Okuma

19. yüzyıldan sonra bir modern estetik terimi olarak ortaya çıkan kitsch kavramı, “kötü beğeni” olarak tanımlanan estetik bir değer yargısına işaret eder. Estetik yargı ve beğeni konularının sistematik olarak ilk kez 18. yüzyılda Immanuel Kant tarafından “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi” adlı eserinde ele alındığı kabul edilmektedir. Bu çalışma, Kant'ın, “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi” adlı eserinde sunduğu estetik yargı, beğeni ve kötü beğeni kavramlarına ilişkin argümanlarını okuyarak, bir estetik değer yargısı olan kitsch kavramını yeniden değerlendirmeye çalışmaktadır. Kitsch kavramının kötü beğeni olarak Kant'ın yazılarında izini sürmek, olabilecek kesişim veya çelişkileri ortaya koyacak ve terimin felsefi kökleri hakkında bir kavrayış sağlamak açısından önemli olacaktır. Çalışma, bu amaç doğrultusunda söylemsel bir analiz gerçekleştirmekte ve sırasıyla, bir estetik beğeni yargısı olarak kitsch kavramını; Kant'ın “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi” eserinde ortaya koyduğu şekliyle estetik yargı ve beğeni kavramlarını; ve kitsch kavramıyla bir karşılaştırma yapmak amacıyla aynı eserde ortaya koyulan şekliyle “kötü beğeni” kavramını incelemektedir. “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi”nde kötü beğeninin tanımını arayan inceleme, Kant'ın estetik yargıda albeni ve duygunun rolü üzerinden tasvir ettiği “kötü beğeni” koşullarının, duygusallık ve dikkat çekme arzusu temelinde kitsch'in özellikleriyle örtüştüğünü göstermektedir. Sonuç olarak, Kant'ın “Estetik Yargının Eleştirisi” adlı eseri üzerinden kötü beğeni hakkında yapılan bu okuma, duygusallık vurgusu, veya albeni ve duyguların gösterişli kullanımı bakımından, estetik bir değer yargısı olan kitsch teriminin felsefi köklerinin, terimin ortaya çıkışından çok önce var olduğunu ortaya koymaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler:

Kitsch, Immanuel Kant, Estetik yargı, Beğeni, Kötü beğeni

Aesthetic Assessment of Kitsch: A Reading on Bad Taste in Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”

Kitsch, devised as a term of modern aesthetics after the 19th century, indicates an aesthetic value judgment that is identified as ‘bad taste’. It is acknowledged that the issues of aesthetic judgment and taste were systematically addressed for the first time by Immanuel Kant in his “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” in the 18th century. This study attempts to reevaluate the notion of kitsch as an aesthetic value judgment through a reading of Kant’s arguments over the concepts of aesthetic judgment, taste, and bad taste as presented in his work “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”. Tracing the notion of kitsch as bad taste in the writings of Kant would demonstrate possible convergences or discrepancies there may be and would be significant for providing an understanding about the philosophical roots of the term. With such an attempt, this study conducts a discursive analysis, and respectively examines the notion of kitsch as an aesthetic judgment of taste; the notions of aesthetic judgment and taste in Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”; and the notion of ‘bad taste’ thereof in order to make a comparison with the notion of kitsch. The examination that looks for the definition of bad taste in the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” reveals that the conditions of ‘bad taste’, as portrayed by Kant through the role of charm and emotion in aesthetic judgment, overlap with the characteristics of kitsch on the basis of sentimentality and desire for attention. Consequently, as a result of the reading on bad taste in Kant’s arguments, this study argues that over the traits of sentimentality or the pretentious use of charms and emotions, the philosophical roots of the term kitsch as an aesthetic value judgment existed long before its name has been coined.

Keywords:

Kitsch, Immanuel Kant, Aesthetic Judgment, Taste, Bad Taste,

PDF

___

Aesthetics. (2006). In Oxford English dictionary, ed. by Catherine Soanes with Sara Hawker and Julia Elliott, New York: Oxford University Press.
Artun, A. (2010), “Kitsch, Pop ve Eleştirinin Anlamsizlaşmasi”, Çağdaş Sanatın Örgütlenmesi – Estetik Modernizmin Tasfiyesi. İstanbul: İletişim/Sanat Hayat, s.27-54.
Benjamin W. (2002). The Arcades Project (1st Harvard University Press pbk.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Binkley, S. (2000). Kitsch as a Repetitive System: A Problem for the Theory of Taste Hierarchy. Journal of Material Culture, 5(2), 131–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/135918350000500201
Broch, H. (1969). “Notes on the Problem of Kitsch”. Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste. Gillo Dorfles ed., London: Studio Vista Limited.
Calinescu, M. (1986). Five Faces of Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Cheetham, M. A. (2001). "Clement Greenberg’s Strategic Formalism", in Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline, Cambridge University Press.
Dorfles, G. (1969). Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste. London: Studio Vista Limited.
Dutton, D. (2003). "Kitsch", Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.t046768, retrieved 09 December 2022.
Eco, U. (1989). “The Structure of Bad Taste”. The Open Work. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Friedlander, E. (1997). Some Thoughts on Kitsch. History and Memory, 9(1/2), 376–392. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25681012
Gadamer, H-G. (1986). “The Relevance of the Beautiful”. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, D. J. and Mallgrave, H. F. (2011). An Introduction to Architectural Theory: 1968 to the Present. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Greenberg, C. (1939). “Avant-garde and kitsch”, Partisan Review 6, 34–49.
Gregotti, V. (1969). “Kitsch and Architecture”, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, Gillo Dorfles, Studio Vista Limited, London.
Guyer, P. (2005). Values of beauty: Historical essays in aesthetics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hanquinet, L., Roose, H., and Savage, M. (2014). The eyes of the beholder: aesthetic preferences and the remaking of culture capital. Sociology 48, 111–132. doi: 10.1177/0038038513477935
Hofstadter, A. (Ed.). (2009). Philosophies of Art and Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger (Paperback ed. 1976, [Nachdr.]). Univ. of Chicago Pr.
Kant, I. ([1790]1973). “Part 1: Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”, Critique of Judgment, Translated by J. C. Meredith, London: Oxford University Press.
Kant, I. ([1790]1987). “Part 1: Critique of Aesthetic Judgment”, Critique of Judgment, Translated by Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., p. 41-230.
“Kitsch”. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster dictionary. Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kitsch.
Kılıçkıran, D. (1996). Kitsch and Architecture: The Production of Kitsch in the Architecture of Turkey in 1980’s and 1990’s. Unpublished M.Arch Thesis, ODTU, Ankara.
Kulka, T. (1988). “Kitsch”, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 28, Issue 1, Winter 1988, pp. 18–27, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/28.1.18
Kulka, T. (1996). Kitsch and Art. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Universityç
Menninghaus, W. (2009). "On the Vital Significance of 'Kitsch': Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'Bad Taste'", in Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity, Andrew Benjamin and Charles Rice (ed.s), Re.press. pp. 39–58. Retrieved December 9 2022 from https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=515790.
Ortlieb, S. A., & Carbon, C. C. (2019). A Functional Model of Kitsch and Art: Linking Aesthetic Appreciation to the Dynamics of Social Motivation. Frontiers in psychology, 9, 2437. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02437
Palmer, S. E., and Griscom, W. S. (2013). Accounting for taste: individual differences in preference for harmony. Psychon Bull Rev. 20, 453–461. doi:10.3758/s13423-012-0355-2
Poggioli, R. (1968). “Fashion, Taste and the Public”. The Theory of the Avant-Garde. Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 79-85.
Reber, R., Schwarz, N., and Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: is beauty in the perceiver’s processing experience? Pers. Soc. Psychol.Rev. 8, 364–382. doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr0804-3
Ryynänen, M. (2018). "Contemporary Kitsch: The Death of Pseudo Art and the Birth of Everyday Cheesiness (A Postcolonial Inquiry)", Terra Aestheticae 1 (1), pp. 70–86.
Scruton, R. (1999). “Kitsch and the Modern Predicament”, City Journal, Winter 1999, The Social Order Arts and Culture, https://www.city-journal.org/html/kitsch-and-modern-predicament-11726.html
Scruton, R. (2009). Beauty, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Scruton, R. (21 February 2014). "A fine line between art and kitsch". Forbes. Retrieved 09 December 2022.
Scruton, R. and Munro, Thomas (2020, November 6). “Aesthetics”. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/aesthetics
Shelley, J. (2022). "The Concept of the Aesthetic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aesthetic-concept/>.
Solomon, R. (1991). "On Kitsch and Sentimentality”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49, Winter 1991, pp. 1-14.
Stecker, R. (1987). “Free Beauty, Dependent Beauty, and Art”, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 89-99.
Uysal Ürey, Zeynep Çiğdem. (2013). “The Use of Orientalist Stereotypes and the Production of Kitsch: Tourism Architecture in Turkey in the Face of Social Change”, International Journal of Science Culture and Sport, 1(4), 108-118.