Tool Kitsch

By William J. Clancey


Frame the ordinary and call it art, like"found objects." But these are tools. Tools we used to know how to use. Tools we all once had: Now for sale to hang on your wall. Once, you had "your tools." Now you buy another's. A remembrance of homo sapiens, "tool user,".now "consumer." And it's kitsch.

Etymology: German, from kitschen to slap (a work of art) together, from German dialect, to scrape up mud from the street: artistic or literary material held to be of low quality, often produced to appeal to popular taste, and marked especially by sentimentalism, sensationalism, and slickness.

Oddly enough, tool kitsch, meant to appeal to the very people who could have been craftsmen. Now fascinated by the icon of the skills they don't have. Caught, half unawares, perhaps with an inkling of self-understanding -- the framed tool as a reminder of who I might have been, what I could have accomplished. Now just put it on the wall. As if part of the self were carved out and hung in a frame. My heart, my soul, what I might have done. What I might have made of myself. Now just a symbol in a painted frame on the wall.

Life as decoration. Where the strong arms and hands might have carved, shaped, melded a worthy and useful object -- furniture, a table, even a wall or a toy -- now I am boxed and confined. Now I am caught. Myself held back, framed in time. That's me, there, the tool I might have used well.

How much? $45 bucks. Yeah, sure. Mount it. Get a beer and watch TV.

Copyright © 2004 William J. Clancey. All Rights Reserved.


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