kitsch or art?

[YOJIMBO]

Somehow my feelings alternate.

[lonely panet]

it horrific,  kitsch is being to nice

[ROKUJURO]

That is not a question, or?

[YOJIMBO]

Basically, I'm not very interested in tosogu. But some things that seem terrible to me personally are expensive to sell, and they say it's art. The seller pretends to be a beauty, I don't like it.

[Spartancrest]

A form of modern Shibayama? [without the skill and lets face it without the destruction of endangered fauna] - My definition of Shibayama is "non functional tsuba-like object to sell to the uninformed". Totally over the top decoration, any idea what the price was? Not my taste at any price.

[Shugyosha]

1 hour ago, lonely panet said:

it horrific,  kitsch is being to nice

+1. 🤮

[John A Stuart]

Kitsch is a legitimate art style and not necessarily trash by definition. Ikea to me is kitsch and has a simple beauty, Whirligigs', kitsch and very collectible. Louis Quinxe ormolu kitsch. These are not kitsch, they are garish. John

[Gakusee]

Unfortunately, John, in common parlance “kitsch” means garish and tasteless, excessive and ostentatious. So, kitsch might be collectible, but it does not make it tasteful or elegant. 
Now, of course, we are entering the realm of personal preferences and tastes. There is not winning in that morass

 

Sometimes, I like a bit of kitsch too, so perhaps I am a culprit too. Overall, I try to steer clear. 

[Surfson]

As I learned in my high school Latin class; "de gustibus non est disputandum", which roughly means "of taste it is not to be disputed".   

 

As to the tsuba put up by the OP, I would call them "gaudy".  There is an interesting discussion of the derivation of this word.  It is not derived from Antoni Gaudi, the famous Catalan artist that helped to make Barcelona the beautiful city it is.  i found this little blurb about the word.

 

I was recently told that the word “gaudy” comes from the name of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. I find this hard to believe as he died in the late 1920s and it seems to me that this word is of older origin. Can you give me more information?

http://blog.barcelonaguidebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/GaudyIceBar.jpg

Gaudy: tastelessly ornate or showy

As you say, it is “hard to believe.” Probably what you really mean, of course, is “Get that ridiculous story away from me before I call the cops.”

Nobody minds a little creative conjecture every so often, but trying to trace a word such as “gaudy,” which has been in common usage since the 16th century; to a 20th century architect whose name just happens to sound like “gaudy” is a bit much.

 

http://blog.barcelonaguidebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Gaud%C3%AD_1878.jpg

Antoni Gaudí (1878)

That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a bit of a debate about the origin of “gaudy,” meaning “tastelessly ornate or showy.” One theory traces “gaudy” to an old Middle English term, “gaudy-green,” which was evidently a sort of bright yellowish-green. Gaudy-green dye was made from the weld plant (Reseda luteola, for you botanists out there), whose name in Old French was “gaude,” so that’s where “gaudy-green” got its name, anyway. But most etymologists doubt that “gaudy-green” was the root of our more generally tasteless, Elvis sort of “gaudy.” A more likely source is the obsolete English word “gaud,” meaning “joke, toy, or showy ornament.” This “gaud” came from the French “gaudir,” meaning “to rejoice or jest,” which came in turn from the Latin “gaudere,” meaning “to rejoice or delight in.” (That Latin “gaudere,” by the way, is also the source of the English word “joy.”)

 

I think that the “joke, toy, or showy ornament” definition fits the description of these items.