On the eve of the New York World's Fair in 1964, painter Margaret Keane's Tomorrow Forever, slated to be displayed at the exposition, was vetoed by organizers and never publicly shown. John Canaday, The New York Times's conservative art critic, went as far as calling it an affront to both art and taste.
In the latest Tim Burton film, Big Eyes, which opens on Christmas Day and recounts how Keane's 1950s paintings of sad waifs with oversized oglers became a global phenomenon, Canaday is played with snooty aplomb by Terence Stamp, who at one point derides her work as "an infinity of kitsch."
What struck me most when I heard that description was how far "kitsch" has come up in the world. These days, it is no longer a dirty word or concept (Burton has had a lot to do with this, of course, as has John Waters). Indeed, kitsch is embraced and celebrated, especially in, of all fields, fashion.
In their heyday, Keane's sentimental paintings of mournful, doe-eyed urchins were popular in part because they were widely available, sold as prints by the thousands in supermarkets, gas stations and hardware stores. Many of the era's Serious Art Critics dismissed the work because it pandered to middle- and lowbrow tastes, arguing that anything so cravenly populist couldn't possibly be good (the old "nothing is any good if too many people like it" argument, a cornerstone of elitism). History, however, has proven them wrong. The burgeoning kitsch that Keane represented – a precursor to Pop Art and to Andy Warhol's self copies – is now canonical.
"That fruit fly stole my act," Walter Keane, Margaret's husband and ultimately her antagonist (he tried to claim credit for her work), declares in the Burton film, referring to Warhol and his encroaching soup cans. These days, the Pop master and Factory figurehead could say the same of fashion designers such as Olympia Le-Tan (who made her name with hand-embroidered clutches of book jackets) or Jeremy Scott (now the creative director at Moschino).
Fashion's ever-growing taste for kitsch has already consumed the gaudy mainstream aesthetics of toy icons such as Gem and My Little Pony. Last year, the wardrobes of a slew of animated Disney princesses were reinterpreted by several tony design houses, from Valentino (a yellow gown à la Belle from Beauty and the Beast) to Oscar de la Renta (where an ensemble was practically a replica of Snow White's famous outfit, down to the bow headband).
High fashion once had the same solemnity as fine art. No more. The Lait de Coco purse from Chanel's fall/winter 2014 collection evokes a milk carton. Not to be outdone, Kate Spade has countered with one resembling a Chinese take-out container. But whereas those houses and others – think Rodarte's infatuation with Star Wars – treat kitsch as punctuation, the exclamation point that livens up a collection, designers such as Scott speak the language of the modern masses in full sentences, producing everything from plush teddy-bear running shoes and military helmets accented with cartoon mouse ears to this season's quilted handbags emblazoned with the golden-arches logo of a certain fast-food behemoth and dresses inspired by drive-through- window uniforms. In intent and effect, it is kitsch as couture. And while the prices are high, it is fundamentally more democratic than, say, fast fashion. Scott's work truly democratizes taste, sometimes literally so.
A latter-day Warhol in many ways, the 40-year-old designer trades in both cultural and edible junk food – from SpongeBob to Cheetos to a Hershey's Bar ball gown. On the surface, it's playful, but his subtext should be taken as seriously as any stuffy art critic's. Season after season, he makes a persuasive case for the aesthetic value of mass culture in fashion.
Anya Hindmarch, for one, has also gone all in, putting familiar yellow smiley faces on mink scarves, googly eyes on leather totes and Mickey Mouse's thumbs-up on a wallet. Her Counter Culture collaboration with Kellogg's ("luxurious versions of our favourite household brands") includes orange striped Frosted Flakes mascot Tony the Tiger adorning a cerulean-blue version of her posh Ebury tote bag. The cylinder packaging and familiar logo of McVitties's Rich Tea and Digestives biscuits become clever zip pouches, but metal clutch purses are logo-free and merely shaped like potato chip bags and foil candy wrappers.
Of course, all of this has furrowed brows both high and low. Unlike the ironic embrace, kitsch is a bear hug that offers no apologies. Think of it as the difference between the ugly retro sweater worn by a winking hipster at Christmas and the one donned by your uncle for Sunday dinner. The latter isn't subtle, but it's completely earnest. As one of the characters, an upper-class contrarian, says in 1990's Metropolitan, my go-to holiday film, "I guess you could say it's extremely vulgar; I like it a lot."
Nathalie Atkinson