Hooked on Kitsch: The Lure of Bad Taste – A New Book is Now Available!

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The list price is $48.95 but Amazon frequently discounts it at a variable rate.

A PDF is available for $14.95 on Payhip.

On our Amazon page, click on READ SAMPLE to view a preview of the book. It’s under the cover image on the left side.

Throwing a hissy fit over cheapjack thrift store gewgaws seems unwarranted to the authors of this profusely illustrated compendium of bad taste. Consumerism has produced myriad objects that display vulgarity or sentimentality—but the antique-picking Paytons contend appreciating kitsch shouldn’t be a criminal offense as its critics claim.

Really, what is wrong with corny ornaments? Granny cherished her cute little kitty knickknacks and she was a lovely person. Modernism, with its contempt for the pedestrian taste of the masses has worn out its welcome. Pop artists pointed out that commercial products can be graphically interesting. Postmodernists like Jeff Koons have blown up examples of commonplace products and sneaked them into galleries.

Occasionally junk shop items are not dissimilar to multimillion dollar art objects. Don’t bother Christie’s with your antique mall Jasper Johns lookalike flag painting. Just decorate your living room. Your friends will be shocked at your esthetic acumen and wonder where you came up with $40 million.

This 259-page collection is a banquet of flea market fare the cultivated consider tasteless. Some are esthetically indigestible. Kitsch is art’s junk food, but it contains palatable tidbits. Readers may find some entrees savory and become Hooked on Kitsch. After perusing these pages, you too may start trolling local flea markets for misrepresented, misunderstood and inexplicably toothsome memorabilia.

This is a highly original examination of the esthetics and politics of good and bad taste – and whether in fact these distinctions matter as much as they once did. The art world and academia’s zest for creating a hierarchy of all human expression may be dated. Truth be told, almost everyone is attracted to some form of kitsch. This book gives you permission, if not universal forgiveness.

About the Authors

The writer Richard Rhodes introduced Leland to Crystal Merriam. Less than a year later they married. They have two adult sons, Strader, a Foreign Service Officer for the State Department, and Ross, a writer and podcaster.

Leland’s participation in a lawsuit brought by the Environmental Defense Fund to stop or modify an unjustified gigantic dam on the Osage River angered its staunch supporter, Stuart Symington. Missouri’s senior senator pressured the University of Missouri Extension to release Leland from his job creating traveling photographic exhibits. Without a relationship to a nonprofit to receive foundation funds, the couple turned to picking antiques and collectibles, a precarious occupation at best.

Familiarity with flea market merchandise led to writing three books on popular culture for major publishers. Leland pined for his Ozark homeland, so they moved back to Missouri. National publishers are disinterested in regional subjects. The Paytons’ Ozarks titles have been self-published. For illustrations they acquired memorabilia as they searched for folk art and Art Deco to sell. This book’s contents were acquired as a byproduct of dealing in better recognized antiquarian objects.

To see our other posts on kitsch, click here.

SNAPSHOT CULTURE

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The next to the last chapter in Pastoral and Monumental: Dams, Postcards, and the American Landscape delves into the decline of the postcard in American life. Donald Jackson concluded that it was a form of communication that competed with new technologies:

Postcard culture did not end in cataclysmic collapse. It slowly shrank as a distinctive feature of modern life, ceding ground to mass media as well as to amateur   photography, slide projectors, and super 8 home movie footage. With the ascent of personal video cameras and recorders in the late 1970s, the creation and consumption of images became ever more integrated into American’s social fabric. Digital technology of the twenty-first century with every cell phone and PDA serving as a camera has only further entrenched images into the social media that connects people through a flourishing Internet. A century ago, there was no Internet. Instead, a burgeoning mail system provided a mechanism for the sharing of visual imagery on a scale that someone at the beginning of the nineteenth century—before the invention of photography—would have found astonishing, if not beyond belief. Picture postcards of the early twentieth century represented an amazing cultural construct, one involving a tremendous range of participants and devotees.

(click on image to enlarge)

Dr. Jackson observed that in addition to commercially produced imagery of dams, the public created their own pictures when inexpensive cameras became available:

Dams are well represented in this snapshot culture. As captured in a multitude of personal photographs, people visited, posed in front of, and relaxed at dams and reservoirs throughout the United States. From the 1920s on, the settings for such snapshots came to be dominated by monumental structures.

Mixed in with amateur-produced postcards in the book are a few snapshots.

Amateurs often copy the look of professional artists, at least to the limits of their ability and equipment. In the case of snapshots that practice has been reversed. A number of art photographers shoot snapshot style, incorporating the off-handed mannerisms of amateurs. These professionals are often collectors of images by the public. From the baskets full of anonymous family snapshots found in flea markets, they’ve pulled expressive, amusing, and the unintentionally arty image for inspiration. Like Walker Evans, some contemporary pros acquire all genres of vintage photographs.

Visitation of dams is very popular and hundreds or thousands of family snapshots memorializing these outings. Many do not identify the dam in the picture.(click on image to enlarge)

Boots and Danny did ink the back of their snaps, identifying Hanson’s big sculpture as a “winged statue—Boulder Dam, 10-9-54.” (click on image to enlarge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photography arrived without a stylistic tradition. Its esthetics evolved with more vernacular input than painting, which evolved over centuries of academic study. Camera imagery was often not considered art or suitable for museum display. Its documentary value was recognized from its earliest days.

 

 

 

 

 

PICTURE A DAM ON A MAILABLE CARD

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This text is from Leland’s amazon.com review:

Pastoral and Monumental: Dam, Postcards, and the American Landscape by Donald C. Jackson is an original take on water resource development. Books on dams are usually politicized, often technical, and unnecessarily rhetorical. Rarely are discourses on river blockages as nuanced as Donald C. Jackson’s study. The postcard illustrations and highly readable text document the history of dam building in the United States. The book clearly shows the evolution from small dams that drove water wheels used for grinding grain or sawing lumber to mammoth multipurpose projects, which have debatable justification. Between the nostalgic era of “the old mill stream” and pork barrel government impoundments stand the heroic dams of the Depression. The public’s perception of these developments is extraordinarily told in popular imagery.

The title page of Pastoral and Monumental is handsome. The text is lucid, and more palatable to the average reader than most treatments of water resource development. (click on any image to enlarge)

 

The book is also a phenomenal telling of the rise and fall of the picture postcard. I don’t recall any book on technology that quotes Susan Sontag and Errol Morris. In addition to Jackson’s reputation as an expert on engineering projects, it must also be acknowledged that he has a profound grasp on photography and mass media. Jackson has used postcards and photographs as source material, not merely illustrations of ideas. They contribute to the reader’s understanding of our perception of dams. This is a de facto history of the postcard – as good as any specialized history. People interested in postcards and photography (he includes snapshots and stereo cards as well) would enjoy this book, as well as anyone for or against dams. It’s impressive the way he blends the evolution of postcard culture with dam technology.

 

It’s a very handsome, substantial book, with color throughout (although many cards are monochromatic) and razor-sharp illustrations and an excellent value. I’ve got three shelves of books on dams and this one is perhaps the most fun to look through. Books on important environmental matters need not be boring or pedantic.

Our dam collection contains postcards, but this book has made us realize how significant these objects are to understanding the issues of controlling water for human purposes. Jackson, a professor of history at Lafayette College, has authored several well-regarded books on dams and their builders. He is skilled at documenting a social, economic and cultural environment in which these massive and costly alterations of river flows are conceived and built.

 

 

 

 

 

DAMMED PLATES

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A souvenir, something that evokes a place or vacation experience, is purchased to remind the traveler of their trip or to be gifted to a friend or family. Such stuff is sold in shops near attractions. Now with the internet you can also order some items online. Souvenirs verify you trekked to Niagara, the Great Natural Bridge, or Vegas. That’s their intent at least.

On the back of some plates are descriptions of the dam. The reverse of the artist rendering in green of an African dam reads, “This Spode plate was made to commemorate the completion of the dam at Kariba Gorge on the Zambesi River, in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. 1960” It is imprinted “Spode England”. On the reverse of the 5 ½” plate of the powerhouse of Garrison Dam, N. D. is printed, “Hand painted ENCO N.Y.C. Made in Japan.” Collectors begin picking up plates with state, city, monuments, natural wonders, and church (and dam) iconography and guides were published. American kilns produced million of these souvenirs beginning in the 1920s. The fad has pretty well died out. (click on image to enlarge)

Ceramic plates with images of attractions or destinations became popular “I’ve been there” artifacts in the late nineteenth century and have persisted in one form or another since. Clay is cheap and can be shaped into many items. Advances in ceramic technology allowed complex patterns to be applied to the surface of a plate. By the 1870s decorations no longer had to be applied by an artisan with a brush but could be stenciled. This improved and lowered the cost of producing decorated wares. Numerous firms in England, Germany, Japan, and America competed to produce souvenir china and pottery.

Around the central view of Mt. LeConte, Great Smoky Mountain National Park are two historic buildings and two dams. One dam is a major government structure; the second is a small power source for an antique grist mill. Great or small dams are landmarks often visited and souvenired. (click on image to enlarge)

Glancing through these two collectors’ guides to souvenir plates we find imagery of natural wonders and built landmarks. Courthouses, tall steepled churches, or post offices were perhaps not tourist draws but prosaic souvenirs were probably the product of a special order by a local civic group. Souvenir plates were not dinnerware. They were for display. A fixture of middle-class households was the china cabinet where a ceramic record of the owner’s travels could be seen. By the 1920s, wire plate hangers became available allowing plates to be hung on the wall like pictures.

In state or regional montages, dams pop up among bridges and historic monuments. Plates solely dedicated to major water resource projects are not unknown. Some may have been manufactured to mark a dam’s dedication or a ceremonial anniversary.

Serious examinations of any given water resource project would be enhanced by the inclusion of a picture of it on a plate. Its esthetic style and the fact that it was once considered worthy of being a decorative object would impart a certain realism to the discussion of its hydrologic and environmental impact.

GALLERY: Dams, canals, locks and reservoirs (lakes) are notable landscape-shaping features. These manmade landmarks seem to be coequal with natural wonders like Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon in the judgement of plate manufacturers.  Indeed, the builders of great dams push the idea that their river control projects are as grand as the most spectacular wonders of nature. (click on any image to enlarge)

THEY DIED TO MAKE THE DESERT BLOOM

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Hoover Dam Snow Globe. This impressive desktop ornament is marked on the bottom Three Js Imports JJJ Inc. Northbrook, Illinois USA. Made in China. Like the Las Vegas snow globe with a Hoover Dam feature (see The Payton Dam Collection), it’s probably designed by the same uncredited person. Souvenirs of any kind, even postcards, of this monument to perished dam workers are uncommon. This one is 6 inches tall, very detailed and has a windup music box.

 

Oskar J. W. Hansen, Norwegian-born sculptor, was chosen by architect Gordon B. Kaufmann who had been brought on by the Bureau of Reclamation to modernize the original Greek look of Boulder (Hoover) Dam. They thought Kaufmann, the L.A. modernist, embodied the slick Art Deco style which communicated a Futurist look they sought. Both Pop Modernists did indeed add design elements that projected modernity.

There are probably thousands of printed postcards of these large bronze Pop Deco fantasy figures in the bins of antique dealers. On the back is an explanation: “These two identical bronze figures, designed by Oskar J. W. Hansen, and installed as the principal decoration at Boulder Dam, are 30’ high and are cast in bronze. One sits on either side of the 125-foot flagstaff facing the gorge of Black Canyon of the Colorado River over the crest of Boulder Dam.”

Hansen’s 30-foot-high pair of bronze winged figures flanking the 125-foot-tall flagpole are his best known decorative enhancements. Tourists photographed each other posed by these Futurist expressions. Today thousands of postcards of the winged apparitions are for sale by dealers in vintage postcards.

Little appreciated and virtually unreproduced on postcards is the work Hansen possibly felt was his most profound—the memorial to the workers who perished building Hoover Dam. How many died is not known. Estimates run as many as 90 to 114. Some historians believe the number could be higher.

In Imaging Hoover Dam, Anthony F. Arrigo has a wonderful description of this unusual, sculptured monument:

In keeping with the approach of New Deal artwork, Hansen glorified the laborer. One of his pieces at the dam is a bronze plaque commemorating the men who died while working on the project with the words “They died to make the desert bloom” arcing across the center of the piece. In this image a laborer rests with his legs beneath the waves, his impossibly narrow torso leads up to a broad, muscular chest and shoulders, his face turned upward toward the sun, while the symbols of power, irrigation, and conservation rise above him. The hands of the laborer are stretched upward, suggesting homage to the Great Spirit and to the power required to achieve feats such as building the dam and controlling nature. At the top of the plaque are wheat and gourds, food staples of indigenous peoples that also symbolize the bounty that will result from the continuous supply of irrigation water to the Southwest. These images are described by one writer as expressing “the artist’s belief that productive control over natural forces is obtained through trained physical strength and knowledge of our environment.”

COULEE IS GRAND—BUT IS IT AS GRAND AS HOOVER?

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Stephen Grace’s Dam Nation: How Water Shaped the West and Will Determine Its Future (Globe Pequot. 2012) is an exciting read for a water resource development study. Grace is a novelist who could pass for a hydrologist. Like Anthony Arrigo, he works pop culture imagery of water resource projects in with their science and economics. And like Arrigo, he is sensitive to the political climate of the era in which these gargantuan landscape-altering projects were dreamed up and built. Consider how expressively he depicts the turbulent times in which Grand Coulee Dam materialized:

By the time the Okies began pouring into the San Joaquin Valley, dams were being erected around California, altering the state’s plumbing so that food and fiber could grow in dry lands and jobs could be created for the destitute. Shasta Dam, which blocked the upper Sacramento River and stalled its timeless flow, would stand taller than the Washington Monument. Armies of laborers were required to raise it. But so great was the mass of unemployed humanity in America, and so low were the nation’s spirits, another monumental public works project was needed to generate jobs and to show the world that America was capable of achieving great things. FDR dreamed of a humongous dam holding back the waters of the West’s greatest river—one that pushed more than ten times the flow of the Colorado through the channeled scablands of Washington State, a landscape carved by ancient floods when ice age dams burst apart.

No river as large as the Columbia had ever been impounded by people. Because of its steep gradient, tight canyons, and prodigious volume, the river’s potential for hydroelectric power was enormous. The rich soils that surrounded Grand Coulee, which President Roosevelt and the Bureau of Reclamation were eyeing as a dam site, were perfect for agriculture. Most important to the president, he believed the elephantine dam would create many thousands of jobs through its construction and through the farmland it would bring into production.

Hoover (Boulder) Dam tames a great but smaller river than Grand Coulee Dam, which harnesses the exceedingly-well-watered Columbia. Grand Coulee’s hydroelectric output is exponentially greater than Hoover’s. So too is the volume of material used in its construction. Hoover, on the other hand, is higher and visually more interesting than Grand Coulee. Hoover’s reputation in popular culture and the press is unequaled. Grand Coulee though has many dimensions and such great scale that its reputation is large, diverse, and dynamic as these illustrations show, even if Hoover’s fame eclipses the massive Washington State-Columbia River structure. There is rivalry between local supporters of their respective dams. Both projects have generated a multiplicity of images that come from a wide variety of sources. In Imaging Hoover Dam, Arrigo wrote, “Few projects in America have had such extensive documentation (both textual and visual) as Hoover Dam yet the dam does not have a single representation.” This applies to Grand Coulee. This “range of modalities and accumulation of imagery” phenomena he calls “hypervisualization.”

The press and business community echoed government water resource propaganda. Not only did journalists not report negative impacts of dams, but their purposes were also given moral values, and builders were heroic. Products and individuals posed beside dams suggested parallel virtues.  (click to enlarge image)

 

The images we’ve assembled have little to do with the dam’s purpose or with each other. The cutline of the 1944 press photo (upper left) links the two projects to their designer, “tall, 64-year-old John Lucian Savage … the designer of the world’s biggest dams, Grand Coulee, Boulder.” To the right a smaller photo shows a model of the huge, but undistinguished-looking Grand Coulee Dam.

Other representations link Coulee’s embrace of “new ideas” to a cutout 1949 Kaiser DeLuxe automobile in front of the spillway suggesting the two share “achievement” and are “dreams come true.”

A six-pack of Bud holds back the river in a Madison Avenue surrealistic metaphor.

Then there is the bizarre photograph of a man in suit and tie in front of Coulee’s spillway. “Grand Coulee Dam was born of the same bold imagination that fuels many of today’s emerging growth companies,” asserts the president of a New Jersey bank. How odd that he believes a West Coast water project has the same “bold imagination” as First Jersey Securities.

Like Hoover (Boulder) Dam, Grand Coulee doesn’t have a single dominant image. It’s creatively pictured on postcards, license plate toppers, plates, and souvenirs, and fruit crate labels. Both projects proclaim their Western-ness with objects decorated with cowboys or Indians no matter how irrelevant these Western symbols are to the project’s purpose. (click to enlarge image)