The artificial kingdom

Description:

The Artificial Kingdom is the first book to provide a cultural history of kitsch, an immensely popular aesthetic phenomenon that has always been disdained as "bad taste," or a cheap imitation of art. Proposing instead that kitsch is the product of a larger sensibility of loss, Celeste Olalquiaga shows how it enables the momentary re-creation of experiences that exist only as memories or fantasies. Simultaneously exposing and celebrating this process, Olalquiaga gives us a bold, trenchant analysis of what and how we see when we look at kitsch.

subjects: art,  attachment,  collectibles,  fantasy,  figurines,  imagination,  keepsakes,  kitsch,  loss,  mementos,  memory,  narrative,  nostalgia,  past,  preservation,  remembering,  remembrance,  sentiment,  sentimentality,  snowglobes,  time,  tourism,  New York Times reviewed