Umění a kýč – Kulka Tomáš (2022)

"Dear Tomáš, you write to me melancholically that your book about kitsch is not 'politically correct', that postmodernism has long erased the difference between kitsch and art, that kitsch has become so ubiquitous that exposing it seems like an expression of elitism. Yes, that's exactly how it is. Talking about kitsch has become inappropriate at the moment when the world has become kitsch. Notice that Kafka writes about bureaucracy at a time when bureaucracy is still almost innocent. The moment it completely consumed our lives, it became taken for granted, and therefore invisible. Jaromír John wrote the novel Explosive Miscreant, where he tells about the horror of the automobile; but at that time, there were very few of them in Prague. What I want to say is this: a phenomenon is recognizable in all its horror only when it is not yet widespread. Once it becomes widespread, it turns into something 'natural' (something we know from birth, something we count on, something we are not surprised by). We are surrounded by kitsch today like never before: everywhere, on television, in newspapers, in private life, in politics. Even war is now presented (just look at how Sarajevo is written about!) as kitsch. And precisely for this reason, even if your book is not understood, it is needed more than ever. Yours, Milan" (Letter from Milan Kundera to Tomáš Kulka from Paris to Jerusalem) The book studies both the specific...