Above: Blue Mountain Collage by Roberta Hoffman

Musings from the Board: To Kitsch or Not to Kitsch, Part 2

By Roberta Hoffman

I grew up in the art world. My father was an art dealer, and his gallery held a wide range of work — from highly commercial art that many people loved, to quieter, more difficult pieces that required patience and explanation. I spent a lot of time watching people encounter art for the first time — often without any formal background — and trying to help them understand what they were seeing, or at least feel less intimidated by it.

Later, when I visited what were considered “serious” fine art galleries, I often felt something very different. These spaces were immaculate and sterile, sometimes literally behind locked doors. The work could be compelling, but the environment felt exclusionary, as if art had become something to be guarded rather than shared. I remember thinking, even then, that something felt off. Art seemed split between what people could access and what they were expected to revere. That tension has stayed with me.

The Age of Kitsch

Kitsch used to mean bad taste — sentimental, decorative, mass-produced art that offered easy emotional payoff. Today, it feels less like a category and more like a cultural condition.

Social media, and now AI, reward what is immediately recognizable, emotionally charged, and easily consumed. Over time, this flattens visual culture. Everything starts to feel familiar. Comforting. Predictable. It’s not that kitsch is inherently wrong — it’s that when it becomes dominant, it stops asking anything of us.

At that point, taste isn’t something we cultivate. It’s something we absorb.

And that’s where I start to worry — not just aesthetically, but psychologically.

When Culture Puts Us to Sleep

I’ve come to think of this saturation as a kind of anesthesia. When we are constantly fed images, opinions, and emotional cues, there’s very little room left for our own inner responses to form.

Neuroscience gives us one useful way to talk about this. The Default Mode Network is the part of the brain associated with imagination, reflection, memory, and meaning-making. It’s active when we walk, daydream, make things, tinker, or sit quietly. It’s not productive in the usual sense — but it’s essential to creativity.

The problem is that this network doesn’t function well when it’s constantly flooded with external input. Endless scrolling fills the same mental space where ideas would otherwise emerge. Over time, our inner imagery starts to look suspiciously like everyone else’s.

Our minds become colonized — gently, almost politely — by other people’s desires and aesthetics.

Stepping Outside the Loop

I understand this not just intellectually, but personally.

I once lived for four years in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the time, there was very little access to Western media. No constant television. No social feeds. No advertising ecosystem. Art was handmade and improvised. Signs were painted by hand. Visual culture was immediate and local.

It felt, at first, like deprivation.

But something unexpected happened. Without the constant influx of images, my mind became incredibly active. I was full of ideas. I wanted to make things, experiment, explore. Creativity didn’t dry up — it intensified.

Looking back, I realize that what I experienced was a kind of aesthetic isolation chamber. Without the noise, my imagination could hear itself again.

A Deeper Creative Intelligence

I grew up in Subud, and I’ve done the latihan. I’ve also had experiences while fasting — moments where conscious control loosened and something quieter, deeper, and more intelligent seemed to take over. These experiences are difficult to describe and easy to dismiss — especially in a culture that values control, productivity, and explanation.

What matters to me here is not the form of the practice, but the shared recognition behind it:

There is a deeper creative intelligence available to us — but it cannot be forced.

It appears when effort relaxes. When the mind stops trying to manage outcomes. When we allow rather than direct.

This capacity is subtle. It’s easy to ignore. And in a culture saturated with stimulation, it’s very easy to forget altogether.

The Default Mode Network gives us a modern language for something people have known intuitively for a long time: creativity doesn’t always come from doing more. Often, it comes from letting go.

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out — Revisited

In the 1960s, the counterculture reacted against mass media, consumerism, and industrial conformity. “Turn on, tune in, drop out” was a call to reclaim inner experience from external systems.

Today, we’re under different pressures — algorithmic feeds, infinite scroll, AI-generated sameness — but the psychic tension feels familiar.

There’s an irony in how the phrase plays out now. We turn on devices. We tune into feeds. And we quietly drop out of deep thought.

What might be needed today is a quieter reversal: turning off, tuning inward, and stepping out — not permanently, not dramatically, but deliberately.

Countering Aesthetic Entropy

For me, this isn’t about rejecting technology or retreating from the world. It’s about remembering how creativity actually works.

Some simple practices help:

• Creating before consuming
• Walking without headphones
• Sketching without a goal
• Allowing boredom
• Letting ideas arrive unfinished

It also means valuing ambiguity and imperfection — qualities that algorithms actively smooth away.

To create with both mind and soul is not efficient. It doesn’t scale well. And it doesn’t always look impressive right away. But it’s deeply human.

In an age of passive replication, choosing to listen inwardly is a quiet, radical act.

And perhaps the most important thing to remember is this:
Creativity isn’t gone — it’s just waiting for space.

Above: Underground Mouse, watercolor,  by Roberta Hoffman