I'm not sure I follow your thinking about kitsch, but's a very contested term. Master art forgers represent an existential threat to art "connoisseurs", it's l

I'm not sure I follow your thinking about kitsch, but's a very contested term. Master art forgers represent an existential threat to art "connoisseurs", it's like what they do is an exploit aimed precisely at fooling a connoisseur's judgement. For obvious reasons they rarely try to pass off new concepts or compositions, just the superficial styles of painting etc. It's like they have a style-transfer filter but no working model of the source artist's thought processes. Pastiche (which does often attempt to synthesize whole new works) is usually identifiable and not intended to deceive, but AGI will probably eventually blur that distinction as more and more of the characteristics of an artist's work can be captured in some kind of model. It's not necessarily true that a derivative work is always worth less than the original, particularly if you include something like appropriation art. Elaine Sturtevant was an interesting example of imitations being taken very seriously: 'In 1964, by memorization only, she began to manually reproduce paintings and objects created by her contemporaries with results that can immediately be identified with an original, at a point that turned the concept of originality on its head. She initially focused on works by such American artists as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol. Warhol gave Sturtevant one of his silkscreens so she could produce her own versions of his Flowers paintings, and when asked about his technique, once said, "I don't know. Ask Elaine."' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Sturtevant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Sturtevant The work of making a superb pastiche is very highly respected in the art world. See this fictitious 1930s-style animation from a few years ago: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/imitation-of-life-sneaks-animation-into-the-venice-biennale-88149.html https://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/imitation-of-life-sneaks-... This topic is really fascinating but OTOH the art world is a horrible phenomenon on a social level. It's not a place where deep thinking happens, at least not in public.