![]() Trash aesthetics are irrevocably tied to the term “white trash.” And certainly white trash culture features a heavy dose of trash aesthetics. Simon Warner traces the development of the trash aesthetic to that era’s “rise of a transient and high impact culture…one constructed on the premise of mass production and mass consumption aided by the power of mass promotion.” Whether rockabilly tunes leering about “Beaver Patrol” or B-movies at the drive-in, this golden age of trash was “based on extravagant display and featured a strong note of the temporary.” While not the space for an entire trash history, trash hit the big time post-World War II. ![]() It’s not simply garbage-pickings placed in a white-walled institutional space, even though it may still be drawn from mass-produced throwaway culture. While there’s certainly a glut of artwork culled from objects discovered in the bin, for our purposes here, trash is more of a sensibility, a style and a lifestyle choice. Trash has become indivisible from Western culture–a populist uprising of bad taste.ĭefining trash aesthetics isn’t as easy as it sounds. And this is essential because trash is no longer relegated to big-eyed thrift store tchotchkes and paternity tests on daytime TV. But, in this era of rampant anti-intellectualism, why fight it? Grasping hold of an aesthetic category allows for not only a rejection of the elitist values of the art world, but also a widening of scope to include pop culture and society at large. ![]() Is plumbing the depths of trash unscholarly? Possibly. In contrast to the perhaps more accepted forms of historical examination of chronology, provenance or style, the analysis of aesthetic categories is, as Ngai writes, “more vulnerable to accusations of unscholarly impressionism.” Like Ngai, I’ll acknowledge that delving headfirst into aesthetics risks sounding unserious. It upends long held standards of good taste, requiring a redefinition of the viewer’s own understanding and place within these cultural delineations.īy analyzing trash as an aesthetic category, I owe a debt to Sianne Ngai’s Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Trash, as an aesthetic category, is a power bottom, an unlikely source of transgression, particularly of proper, upwardly mobile society and its dominant designations of taste. Failure is inexorably linked with trash whether literal garbage, cheaply made throwaway items, economic stagnation or ignorance of good taste.īut, trash’s bottom feeding is deceiving. This shamefully debased position shouldn’t be a surprise. When searching for “trash” or “trashy” online, Merriam-Webster informs curious clickers that these two words are (respectively) in the bottom 50% and 30% of popular words. It’s not hard to agree with Logan: Who could wish for anything more?ĭespite Logan’s invitation, art and other cultural objects that exude an aesthetic of trash are typically anything but desired. His Pee-Wee’s Playhouse-esque studio is filled with giant eggs, regal tributes to Pegasus, and sculptures dedicated to outrageous friends and colleagues like the eponymous drag queen and “Filthiest Person Alive” Divine. The Glasshouse resembles a Technicolor tumble through the looking glass if Alice sniffed poppers. “We are surrounded by everything you ever want,” purrs artist Andrew Logan, inviting viewers of into the Glasshouse, his studio in London. Advertisement for the city of Baltimore featuring Andrew Logan’s Divine sculpture
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