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Will Durant, well-respected philosopher wrote the following: "Primarily and originally the object does not please the holder because it is beautiful, but rather he calls it beautiful because it pleases him." Maybe this is why the kitsch-lover refuses to see how anyone can denounce things categorically as 'bad taste.' If you find your pleasure in humor, irony, or the absurd, then how can this item, this thing scorned by some person either lacking in adoration for those principals, or who has other pleasures that over-ride these, simply be anything less than beautiful to you? If you find some deliciously hidden memory or secret in an object, and that nostalgia or delight is not found by another, then certainly you will not agree on it's beauty. In college (where I studied those fluffy liberal arts) we were taught that you need to identify your artistic response. It was not 'good enough' to claim "I adore it!" or "This is yucky." You had to articulate the 'why.' This, of course, took more work than imagined. You had to look past the object, through it to yourself, to see what it made you feel, how it manipulated you into a reaction. And if you said, as I often did, that you disliked a work because it was 'cold' and left me without a reaction, you had to say why that was... Not just "the harsh black lines" or "the fact that it's just a big blue rectangle of canvas," but why you disliked feeling 'cold.' For me, most of my 'artistic response' is about warmth & memories. (Even humor is 'warm & fuzzy' to me as my entire family is hysterical.) I think for most collectors it is that personal. And 'bad taste' has nothing to do with it. So go enjoy your 'crap.' Buy some more. And the next time someone mocks your 'ugly' collection, tell them they have just insulted your fondest childhood memory. Maybe even challenge them to a duel.
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