Trite, lowbrow, vapid, sentimental, and commercial - these are adjectives that people often associated with kitsch. Kitsch generally refers to art that seems to lack genuine emotion, art that seems merely an uninspired replica. American art critic Clement Greenberg defined kitsch in the 1930s in response to an abundance of exaggeratedly sentimental art in the 19th century.
Artists and critics, however, alike bemoaned the presence of ¨fake emotion¨ long before Clement Greenberg coined the term. Modernists, for example, rejected the sentimentality of mass culture; artists like Picasso and sought out the expression of true, honest emotion amidst the melodrama of post-romantic art. Artists whose works might seem overly sentimental at times are William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell and Thomas Kinkade.
Such art gave rise to a different type of kitsch referred to as ¨preemptive kitsch,¨ or ¨Postmodern.¨ Artists began to deliberately replicate kitsch, preferring to imply parody rather than to unintentionally create another cliché. Whereas art is traditionally thought to demand knowledge, competence and discipline, ¨kitsch¨ adores the tacky, the ready-made and the impulsive. Andy Warhol, Allen Jones, Claes Oldenburg and Jeff Koons are artists considered to embrace ¨kitsch¨ or ¨preemptive kitsch.¨