Abstract
The relationship between kitsch and architecture had a great impact on modernity. This study takes a historical-critical perspective to attempt to identify the crucial stages leading to the moment when kitsch transformed into postmodern style and found legitimacy as an independent aesthetic category. By reformulating the morphologies of kitsch, postmodern architecture has flipped the fundamentals of modernist design, replacing the idea of design-as-work with that of design-as-text. From Las Vegas to Tianducheng (the Chinese city that is a replica of Paris), this aesthetic design, which had found its operating dimension in pastiche, quotations and hybridization, proves to be one of the principles of contemporaneity. Now, the urban landscape is an uninterrupted horizon of kitsch, a handbook of stylistic contradiction. Having achieved emancipation, the surrogate has become an archetype and so architecture is seen both as an “anthological” and as a “metalinguistic” practice.
Translated from the Italian by Karen Whittle
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Notes
- 1.
Charles Baudelaire, “The Salon of 1846,” in The Mirror of Art. Critical Studies, ed. Jonathan Mayne (New York: Doubleday, 1956), 98.
- 2.
Charles Baudelaire, Belgium Stripped Bare, ed. Rainer J. Hanshe (New York: Contra Mundum, 2018), 20.
- 3.
Baudelaire, Belgium Stripped Bare, 157.
- 4.
Baudelaire, Belgium Stripped Bare, 162.
- 5.
Gottfried Semper, “Science, Industry and Art,” in The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, ed. Harry Francis and Wolfgang Herrmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 130, 135.
- 6.
Abraham Moles, Pyschologie du Kitsch. L’art du bonheur (Paris: Maison Mame, 1971).
- 7.
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 17–18.
- 8.
Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, trans. William Weaver (San Diego-New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 40.
- 9.
Heinrich Klotz, The History of Postmodern Architecture, trans. Radka Donnell (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), 421.
- 10.
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 80.
- 11.
Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 87.
- 12.
Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 103.
- 13.
Charles Jencks, The Story of Post-Modernism. Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2011), 9.
- 14.
C. Jencks, The Story of Post-Modernism, 44.
- 15.
Louis Marin, Utopics: Spatial Play, trans. Robert A. Vollrath (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984), 239–257.
- 16.
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 308–314.
- 17.
Jeff Koons, The Jeff Koons Handbook (London: Thames & Hudson, 1992), 32.
- 18.
In the film Casino (1995) by Martin Scorsese, it is no coincidence that the Italian restaurant is called “The Leaning Tower.” Gaspare “Jasper” Speciale, originally from New York, a bookmaker and loan shark from the local mafia, had reinvented himself as a restauranteur, investing in a legal activity, the Tower of Pizza restaurant. In front of the restaurant, which does not exist anymore, was an enormous sign, designed by Ben Mitchem, reproducing the tower of Pisa. A night-time image of the neon sign also appears in Learning from Las Vegas (Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 63).
Bibliography
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Salon of 1846”. In The Mirror of Art. Critical Studies, edited by Jonathan Mayne, 38–130. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
Baudelaire, Charles. Belgium Stripped Bare. Edited by Rainer J. Hanshe. New York: Contra Mundum, 2018.
Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Translated by William Weaver. San Diego-New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
Jencks, Charles. The Story of Post-Modernism. Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture. Chichester: Wiley, 2011.
Klotz, Heinrich. The History of Postmodern Architecture. Translated by Radka Donnell. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
Koons, Jeff. The Jeff Koons Handbook. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.
Marin, Louis. Utopics: Spatial Play. Translated by Robert A. Vollrath. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1984.
Moles, Abraham. Pyschologie du Kitsch, L’art du bonheur. Paris: Maison Mame, 1971.
Semper, Gottfried. “Science, Industry and Art”. In The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, edited by Harry Francis and Wolfgang Herrmann, 130–167. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.
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Mecacci, A. (2023). Kitsch and Architecture. In: Ryynänen, M., Barragán, P. (eds) The Changing Meaning of Kitsch. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16632-7_6
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