by Maria Koropecky
Zdorov! Magazine
winter 1997, pages 16-17
I had a dream that I walked into a warehouse full of kitsch. Ukrainian kitsch. There were salt and pepper shakers embossed with embroidery patterns, ornate drinking glasses, Luba records, wooden engravings of Taras Shevchenko, black lacquer boxes with red flowers painted on them, huge dolls in Ukrainian clothing — dolls whose eyes followed me wherever I walked. To my surprise, the vision was beautiful.
When I woke up, I realized I never paid much attention to any of this Ukrainian cultural flotsam that has surrounded me all of my life. OK, maybe I've been ignoring it, but you can only tune things out for so long.
Some people love kitsch, others hate it. Whatever your view, kitsch is everywhere. According to Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary, kitsch is simply defined as "Professionally produced art in bad taste."
Gillo Dorfles' Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste (University Books, New York, 1969) tackles the subject with a certain lack of sensitivity or respect. "The relationship between the tourist and the environment that surrounds him is only rarely genuine, and it is the veil of falseness, imitation and admiring sentimentality that more often than not makes the world, as it appears to the tourist, vomit kitsch all over itself."
On the other hand, Natalka Husar, a Ukrainian artist who lives in Toronto, really enjoys kitsch. She has "a big appetite" for popular culture and incorporates it into her paintings. "I never think of these items as kitsch," Husar says.
Husar genuinely appreciates what others consider bad taste or, at the very least, common. "There's something about these items that have tactile, or sensual appeal. They have that kind of base appeal, like fuzzy pink slippers," the artist says.
She continues to defend these objects. "I don't look down on things like instant embroidery. It's appealling in that it's very instant. It's part of that instant American culture. Squeeze here and apply. Lick here. Instant gratification. It's kind of fascinating."
Husar uses items of popular culture as props in her paintings because "they're heavy with baggage. Quite often, religious connotations too."
"Once an artist reinterprets kitsch into another medium like painting," Husar contends, "you free it from its baggage and give it another set of baggage. One thinks of kitsch as somehow insignificant or tacky or in bad taste," she says, "but if you think of it as popular culture, it becomes legitimate. As we're nearing the end of the 20th century, popular culture is of great relevance."
Sometimes people don't have a clue where their kitsch has come from. Many of us acquire kitsch as gifts, and since the items have taken up residence among the various knick-knacks in the home, guilt overpowers the impulse of throwing it out. Often, you inherit it from family. It passes to your from your parents or grandparents who decorated their home with what they perceived as a true representation of Ukrainian culture to comfort them and to remind them of their homeland.
Arguably, none of these kitschy things (from mugs with your name on them to perogy fridge magnets), accurately represent or remotely resemble anything you'd find in Ukraine.
A large source of Ukrainian kitsch is Elsie Enterprises. Elsie Yormal's company has been selling Ukrainian porcelain products full time out of her Mississauga, Ontario home since 1969, the same year that "Kitsch, The World of Bad Taste" was published. She buys the porcelain, or white ware, from East Asia, Germany, the Czech Republic and the United States, applies the enbroidered decals that she imports primarly from Italy, then ships them all over Canada, the U.S., Australia and England.
Occasionally Elsie buys things like wood carvings or paintings from Ukraine, but most of her products are assembled in her home. She employs two part-timers who can turn out a mug in about 10 minutes. Larger pieces, like vases, take 20 minutes to a half an hour. The most expensive product is a set of dishes that sell for $600.
I saw some of Elsie's work in a tiny gift store in the Ukrainian Canadian Cultural Centre in Victoria, B.C. One particular item caught my eye. It was a procelain mushroom decorated with a red and black embroidery pattern, too big to be a pepper shaker. As it turned out, you're supposed to keep it by the sink to store powdered cleanser. Practical kitsch!
Love it or hate it, kitsch is with us. Future archeaologiest will find this porcelain mushroom and will ponder its meaning. They might even conclude that it was a very important item with sacred cultural meaning.
