I like kitsch. I like that post card in the article.* I also like the old masters whose works were often commissioned from uneducated patrons who were lacking i

I like kitsch. I like that post card in the article.* I also like the old masters whose works were often commissioned from uneducated patrons who were lacking in any notion of "achieving wisdom" as the article puts it. I enjoy those works even without the historical contexts. To me many of them stand on their own and the ones that don't I have little interest in regardless of the historical value. Meanwhile I don't like much of the art that is supposed to have intellectual value. I read a book about van Gogh and I still don't like any of his works: not enough kitsch for me to enjoy it I guess. I also don't care much about the life of the artist or the symbolism (in the case of van Gogh, any symbolism was probably unintended anyway). In fact in literature now we are supposed to not care about the author and interpret it on our own because Roland Barthes told us to. Nobody has been able convincingly to explain to me why struggling to understand the artist's feelings from his work makes those feelings worth anything, or why those feelings are any different or more complex than regular feelings if they are wrapped in layers of symbolism. I suspect that is in part why modern/contemporary artists and their consumers keep falling into the kitsch trap as described in the article. Perhaps some art consumers can give convincing answers to some of the above issues but I believe a large enough number cannot which is distorting their market. *And look - They even reused the same work for an Easter postcard. Now it is double kitsch: https://www.ebay.com/itm/275158490852 https://www.ebay.com/itm/275158490852