When Formulas Become Kitsch
How Technological Convenience Detaches Artistic Form from the Conditions That Once Produced It
Kitsch is often mistaken for formula, but the two are not identical. Formulas are sedimented habits — solutions repeated often enough to become patterns. Only a few endure long enough to harden into kitsch. Over time, these formulas can detach from the historical and technical conditions that gave them meaning. When this detachment occurs, the very success that once sustained them transforms into kitsch: a residue of creation rather than an active practice.
The difference is easier to observe than to define. Consider a familiar scene: people practicing tai chi in a public park and a master training in a martial arts school. Both perform the same sequence of movements, yet the resemblance is largely superficial. The practitioner in the park follows gestures for leisure or health. The master carries an entire structure of technique — breath, force, bodily alignment, and years of accumulated discipline. The form may look identical, but the density of intention is radically different. The park practitioners are not kitsch; they illustrate how a formula can exist without the conditions that once gave it depth. Kitsch emerges when detachment is complete and only the form persists.
Artistic style follows the same logic. A style is never merely a visual appearance. It forms through a convergence of historical conditions, technical limitations, and evolving modes of perception. Imitating a style requires none of these conditions. Once removed from their context, styles become easy to replicate, devoid of the perceptual and historical weight that originally shaped them.
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Consider Impressionism. Its emergence coincided with a profound shift in how light was perceived and understood. Painters left the studio to work outdoors, directly engaging with the eye and the hand. This was not simply a stylistic choice but a perceptual experiment, shaped by technology, environment, and historical circumstance. Today, artists can still paint outdoors, but the shock of “seeing light for the first time” has long faded. Plein-air painting now compensates for what the studio lacks, rather than revealing the world anew.
The value of artistic practice rests on its entanglement with the conditions that shape it. In plein-air painting, for instance, the artist negotiates light, weather, and fleeting moments; each decision carries weight precisely because the environment cannot be fully controlled. The resulting work is inseparable from this engagement — its resonance emerges from a dialogue with the conditions themselves, not merely from formal choices.
New media amplify this gap between origin and repetition. When I first obtained a digital camera, the constraint of thirty-six exposures expanded to hundreds. The threshold for taking a photograph dropped, and the reasons for taking one loosened. Decisions that once occurred in the decisive moment of exposure migrated to the computer screen. Photography shifted from immediacy to iterative selection. Illustration underwent a similar transformation, moving from cautious execution to exploratory revision. Convenience does not merely accelerate production; it reorganizes the conditions under which images are made.
I have approached new media with curiosity. I experimented with 3D software and VR drawing, yet neither fully integrated into my working practice. Unlike traditional tools that constrain through their material properties, AI imposes an internal logic that actively predicts and shapes outcomes. All variation occurs within elements already contained in the system. Technical skill is no longer required — one only needs to invoke it. Every selection feeds the next cycle, gradually narrowing the range within which judgment can operate. Choices appear free, yet they increasingly confirm patterns already encoded by the system.
As judgment is displaced, artistic production detaches from the conditions that once sustained it. When production no longer depends on those conditions, creation — an engagement with material, environment, and time — loses its urgency. The making of results becomes sufficient.
Kitsch, in this sense, is no longer simply the degeneration of style. It is what inevitably remains once the conditions of creation vanish.
