Decorative aspects of reality with reference to sociological painting

Abstract

The writer could not blame the reader for finding the title to this essay couched in somewhat academic terms. It must be said immediately that the title is a fake -- or that the following essay is a fake; the title has pretensions to the academic -- the essay has not. All academicism no longer has an independent existence -- it operates by formulae, is mechanical, uses faked sensations and vicarious experience and borrows its tricks and themes from a mature, established culture close at hand. This ' culture's life's blood is looted, given new twists, watered down and served up in academic terms. For these reasons, academicism and Kitsch are the same -- both change according to style and yet are always the same; both are the epitome of all that is spurious in our time. So, academicism could be said to be the 'stuffed shirt-front' for Kitsch. Preamble, p. 1.