The museum of bad art...

[headscratcher4]

http://www.mobagallery.org/index.html

its all relative, of course, and in the eye of the beholder, but there is some really bad art here...

[Bikewer]

I've had the Bad Art site bookmarked for several years. it's great fun.

Of course, I work at a major university, and anytime I want to see bad art all I need do is stroll through the fine arts department....

[El Greco]

I don't see any sculptures there which is a pity, since sculptors these days are horrific.

[Bikewer]

There are still 3-d artists doing quality work; you just have to look for it. Some remarkable stuff is done for the "garage kit" industry; really amazing stuff in the realm of characters and objects from Sci-Fi, comics, and film.
Each year, they publish "Spectrum", a compilation of the year's best fantasy and sci-fi art and illustration. They always devote several pages to 3-d work.

But I agree, a lot of stuff you see nowdays is just awful. Piles of junk, ropes wrapped around scrap lumber (a favorite at our art school), and so forth.
There was a story in News of the Weird about an "installation" piece at a Brit gallery. (The Brits seem to love this stuff...) The piece was a representation of an office workspace, complete with candy wrappers and junk on the floor.
Seems the gallery cleaning staff mistook the exhibit for an actual workspace, and cleaned it up, causing major trauma for the artist. Fortunately, they were able to rescue the "objects" from the dustbin.

[Tanja]

Originally posted by Bikewer

There was a story in News of the Weird about an "installation" piece at a Brit gallery. (The Brits seem to love this stuff...) The piece was a representation of an office workspace, complete with candy wrappers and junk on the floor.
Seems the gallery cleaning staff mistook the exhibit for an actual workspace, and cleaned it up, causing major trauma for the artist. Fortunately, they were able to rescue the "objects" from the dustbin.

I almost did a similar thing couple of years ago back in Croatia. I was looking at a local artists' exibition in one of the seaside towns. The exhibition was quite varied, many artists, many styles. Amongst the exhibits, I was horified to find that someone left a plastic cup with an inch of water and some extinguished cigarette buds in it. I thought some uncultered visitor left it there on the shelf, and I wanted to throw it in the bin, and at the last moment realised it was an exhibit, titled "morning coffee" or something like that. Now, even if I did throw it away, it would only take the "artist" about five minutes to make another one of those, wouldn't it? I have no appreciation for that type of art whatsoever. I openly admit I like (visual) art to be beautiful and decorative.

[Hand Bent Spoon]

I'll admit, I've got a soft-spot for some of this stuff.

But in an age that called Jackson Pollock a great artist, is any of this stuff truly that bad?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Originally posted by Hand Bent Spoon
I'll admit, I've got a soft-spot for some of this stuff.

But in an age that called Jackson Pollock a great artist, is any of this stuff truly that bad?

I would say yes, since Jackson Pollock was a great artist.

[Tez]

Originally posted by Tanja


I almost did a similar thing couple of years ago back in Croatia. I was looking at a local artists' exibition in one of the seaside towns. The exhibition was quite varied, many artists, many styles. Amongst the exhibits, I was horified to find that someone left a plastic cup with an inch of water and some extinguished cigarette buds in it. I thought some uncultered visitor left it there on the shelf, and I wanted to throw it in the bin, and at the last moment realised it was an exhibit, titled "morning coffee" or something like that. Now, even if I did throw it away, it would only take the "artist" about five minutes to make another one of those, wouldn't it? I have no appreciation for that type of art whatsoever. I openly admit I like (visual) art to be beautiful and decorative.

I was at the serpentine gallery in Hyde Park the other day, which has a modern art exhibition. As you walk in there's a pile of tiles on the floor, with a rope around - the first piece you encounter. Unfortunately the little plaque on the wall explaining the piece and the artist is actually closer to one of those microwave motion sensors which is up in a corner. I was greatly amused to see an elderly couple reading the plaque, looking up at the sensor, reading the plaque again and so on in obvious confusion...

Oh - and there's one interesting piece there (normally in the gugenheim I believe) which has a bunch of dead vermin, clumped in balls, on top of two poles. A lot of people walk in and walk out rapidly, but in fact if you look carefully you see that a light on the floor is situated so as to cast a beautiful shadow from the vermin on the wall, a shadow that is definitely very artistic!

[Bikewer]

You mean that I've been paying good money for paints, colored pencils, and clay, while at the same time disposing of perfectly useful deceased mice? Ah, the irony....

[Mr Manifesto]

Well, all I've seen is "Lucy in the Field with Flowers", and already I'm blind after seeing what is unquestionably one of the most horrific paintings of all time.

If you put your hand on the lower half of the painting to conceal it, your faced with an evil matron, about to whip some Flowers in the Attic perhaps. Cover the top half, and you have possibly Doris Day doing a dose-si-do. Sorry about the alliteration, but it really does seem to sum up the inanity of the 'movement' captured in this bilge.

Trying to look at the picture as a whole, one can feel one's brain explode as it tries to gel the two incompatible images together. Perhaps the artist intended it to be so, as a sort of mental exercies, akin to trying to take off chinese finger-cuffs under the influence of mescaline while a small child beats you about the head with a bat.

Even if I were inclined to undertake excercises such as this, I wouldn't with this painting: the f***ing colour of the sky burns holes in your retina.

WHAT WAS THE ARTIST THINKING???

[Bluegill]

Ms. Lawlor told us of the day that the painting arrived wrapped in paper. Everyone gathered around to watch as the paper was torn off, the thirteen year old Susan bit her lip to keep from gasping.

It was a wonderfully accurate likeness of her grandmother's face in an oddly postured and formed body against a bizarre, surreal background.

Her mother, who commisioned the painting, was quite pleased with the result and gave it to her sister Eileen. The painting hung in Eileen's house for years. Ms. Lawlor and her siblings have strong memories over the years, of the strange portrait hung in Eileen's living room.

The bad art is very entertaining, but equally entertaining--and touching--are stories that might be revealed. This painting, at one point, was valuable to someone not because it's an aesthetically pleasing work, but because it connected them to a dead relative. There's a lot of sweetness and sadness to the story.

[Bottle or the Gun]

Is 'Piss Christ' art? Remember that one?

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Originally posted by Bottle or the Gun
Is 'Piss Christ' art? Remember that one?

Yes and yes.

[Bikewer]

At about the same time, Mapplethorpe came out with his book of homoerotic photos (leatherboys and all) which attracted even more howls and started yet another round of "lets shut down the NEA!"

But you could get the book at our county library branch...

[Johnny Pneumatic]

:roll: Thanks headscratcher4, very funny.

[Jude]

My favorite is The Athlete (http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/portraiture-8.html). The shoes and socks put it over the top.

[Bikewer]

Hehe- the perfect combination of manly athleticism and cross-dressing. Oh, sure, they SAID it was a toga....