Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

Romanticism is the mother of kitsch and that there are moments when the child becomes so like its mother that one cannot differentiate between them

You must neither completely nor partially copy the art of others. If so, you will be producing kitsch.

A kitsch novel describes the world not as it really is, but as it is hoped and feared to be.

If the embodiment of the fundamental idea of our age were to be found in Victorian architecture, in the Church of Cristo Re in Rome or the Church in Brasilia, in Moscow University or the Capitol in Washington, then our age would undoubtedly be called the 'age of kitsch.'

The maker of kitsch does not create inferior art, he is not an incompetent or a bungler, he cannot be evaluated by aesthetic standards; rather, he is ethically depraved, a criminal willing radical evil. And since it is radical evil that is manifest here, evil per se, forming the absolute negative pole of every value-system, kitsch will always be evil, not just kitsch in art, but kitsch in every value-system that is not an imitation system.

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.