Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
ful. Thus, according to Kant, the original fear and intimidation produced
by nature is turned into the delight of the sublime once we recognize our
capacity to comprehend and ultimately control its seemingly overwhelm-
ing might. By a clever displacement, when industry, such as the Coal-
brookdale industrial site, is placed into natural landscape or replaces na-
ture all together, as in today's chemical landscapes, the Kantian sublime
assumes a new dimension: industry becomes the object by means of
which the human mind can recognize its own greatness.
3.4 Chemical plants as kitsch
Kitsch has been a topic of debate among art/cultural critics and scholars
for more than a century (Kulka 1996, pp. 13-22). The most influential
critics on the subject include Clement Greenberg (1909-1994) and Her-
mann Broch (1886-1951). Greenberg (1939) defined kitsch as “popular,
commercial art and literature” (as opposed to avant-garde art and
literature) that “is a product of the industrial revolution which urbanized
the masses of Western Europe and America” and “is mechanical and
operates by formulas [… and] vicarious experience and faked sensa-
tions”. Similarly, Broch (1969) considered kitsch a “system of imitation”
that corrupts real art (in his case the art of Romanticism) serving as an
“element of evil in the value system of art” (Broch 1969). More recently
scholars have attempted to recuperate kitsch from these harsh critiques
by reframing it as a distinct aesthetic without regard to class-based tastes.
These include Robert C. Solomon's (1991) defense of sentimentality in
art, Sam Binkley's (2000) argument “for a uniquely kitsch aesthetic that
employs the thematics of repetition, imitation and emulation as a distinct
aesthetic style” and Kulka (1996, pp. 1-12) who conservatively attempts
to reduce kitsch to an aesthetic category (like the grotesque or the beauti-
ful) that is objectively deficient as an art form rather than subjectively a
matter of taste. In sum, despite the complexities and inconsistencies
between the arguments articulated by these critics and others, kitsch can
be understood as a sociocultural phenomenon (normally connected to the
development of the middle-class in the nineteenth
century) and a debased
artistic sensibility with roots in the Romantic era.
