Lo trivial y su representación

Abstract

«Trivial» qualifies everything that has become banal owing to repetition and habit. In a second sense, triviality is socially and even politically defined: it is what is considered vulgar, that is to say typical of the «low» social classes. In the XVIIth century, in Spain and Italy to be precise, and later in the XIXth century, Art History is refreshed by including trivial elements in works that dignify them. Triviality, then, extracts its provocative strength from a contrast effect with what is taken for «high». What happens when the economically and socially highest classes make themselves the example of the triviality until they make it omnipresent and unnoticed?