Typology Analysis of the Concept of Kitsch in Andy Warhol’s Artworks

The term “kitsch” in the 1860s to the 1870s was used by the painters and art dealers of Munich in order to present weak works of art. But after the first decades of the 20th century, kitsch became an international term. On the other hand, Andy Warhol was a leading American artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker and one of the founders of Pop Art in the 1950s. In the United States, he was one of the most well-known figures of Pop Art and had avant-garde ideas. The purpose of this research is to expand the concept of kitsch in art and to analyze the typological concept of kitsch in the works of Andy Warhol.The main research question is how to analyze the typology of this concept in the works of Andy Warhol. In this regard, the research method is based on qualitative content analysis, using coding with an inductive approach. In this research, firstly, the terminology and genealogy of the concept of “kitsch”, then, the opinions raised about the aforementioned word have been examined and an analytical classification of these opinions has been given. Following that, in order to understand the ways of producing kitsch in the work, a typological analysis of the concept of kitsch in Andy Warhol’s works has been done. The results of the research show that kitsch always refers to the concept of “aesthetic inadequacy”. Furthermore, in this era, the work of art often becomes a mere commodity. The work of art becomes an everyday thing and the everyday thing becomes art. In addition, two types of kitsch based on content and kitsch based on form can be explained in Warhol’s works. The content-based kitsch strategy includes the representation of the banal and the reproduction of everyday images, and the form-based kitsch strategy includes the banal technique, collage, reference distortion, accumulation and repetition.