Words

bondieuserie, n.

THAT SPLENDID artist Saul Steinberg has a penchant for collecting bad art. It fuels something far different in his own, which cannot simply be called cartoon, Pop, illustration - it's Steinberg.

Now that kitsch has become dulled by repetition, it is time to revive and expand upon a word of which he is fond, from the descriptive exclamation Bon Dieu!

Apparently imported by Rebecca West in 1941, it is a term of scorn in each example quoted by the OED between then and 1961. Steinberg is more subtle:

All that region behind Saint-Sulpice in Paris is a big center for selling plaster-cast Jesuses, sweet Madonnas, and so on. So many things become bondieuserie in the end - respectable and beautiful, but comical because they are such cliches.