Avant-Garde and Kitsch

Avant-Garde and Kitsch is the title of a 1939 essay by Clement Greenberg in which he claimed that avant-garde and Modernism art was a means to resist the dumbing down of culture caused by consumerism. Greenberg termed this kitsch , a word that his essay popularised.

= Key ideas =

Greenberg believed that the , was heavily centered in rules and formulations that were taught and tried to make art into something learnable and easily expressible. He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as it became heavily criticized.

= See also =

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction