It's an unashamedly touristy general dealer but still worth visiting for its curious range of goods - from high kitsch to genuine antiques.

Unless you're into high kitsch, you can skip Pivot Rock and Natural Bridge, Blue Spring and Cosmic Cavern.

But while technically proficient, Bargue's own painting qualifies as high kitsch.

The exhibition is also a mixture of often contradictory delights, moments of high achievement and high kitsch, of undeniable pictorial poetry and deliberate showmanship.

The candle-carrying children's chorus chants "Please, holy Eva," a moment of high musical-theater kitsch.

A look at its three-quarters of a century of awards suggests a radar for what Milan Kundera would call the higher kitsch: "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession.

The very busy production designer is Eugenio Zanetti, who showed an affinity for high kitsch with "Restoration" and "What Dreams May Come."

But to this eye the painting - although technically expert - comes off as high kitsch.

In memory, the drama had become high kitsch, a childish fixation dominated by Lou Ferrigno's mold-colored flesh and mad-clown wig.

Part of the fun, too, is to be found in what you might call high kitsch.