Many creators and manufacturers—from Bauhaus to Sweden’s IKEA and Japan’s Muji—have attempted to fight kitsch by providing low-priced, mass-manufactured items in minimalist “good taste.” But these goods can be insulting to those without capital. “Consumers of kitsch,” writes the philosopher of art Tomáš Kulka, “do not buy kitsch because it is kitsch; they buy it because they take it for art.”
