Kicz w trzech odsłonach

This article contains an attempt to put order in the chaos of definitions accompanying the concept of kitsch and simultaneously to free kitsch from any cognitively dubious connection with the category of art. While considering the difficulties of definition arising from the connotative nature of the concept and its contextual modality, the author criticizes the entirety of the conceptualization of kitsch and then divides the phenomenon into ‘first elements’, distinguishing three different views of kitsch: textual essentialist (idyllism, sentimentalism), formal essentialist (triviality, eclecticism), and processual (the effect of unthinking pop culture reproduction). Configurationism and its derivative category of the projective model are useful to the attempt to reject ‘art’ as the ‘good’ antithesis of ‘bad’ taste. These arguments are accompanied by the author’s thoughts on the cultural function of kitsch, its contextual entanglements, and its role in forming the social structure.