[HN Gopher] Museum of Bad Art
___________________________________________________________________
Museum of Bad Art
Author : purkka
Score : 160 points
Date : 2024-11-18 00:09 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (museumofbadart.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (museumofbadart.org)
| purkka wrote:
| Came across this today. Especially the collection highlights on
| Wikipedia [0] really made my day.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art#Collection_h...
| celeritascelery wrote:
| No pictures though. Wish I could see some sample of the art.
| commakozzi wrote:
| just go to Collections on their main page, OP's link.
| CPLX wrote:
| This is said to be the most iconic work in the collection:
|
| https://arthur.io/art/unknown/lucy-in-the-field-with-flowers
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| A morbid wish. Something like wanting to look at photos from
| a murder investigation.
| pvg wrote:
| More discussion/picks from a couple of years ago
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Museum of Bad Art_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441 - Feb 2021 (57
| comments)
| willis936 wrote:
| I went there this past Summer. It isn't advertised externally.
| Look for the brewery.
| bhickey wrote:
| I didn't realize it had relocated from near the bathrooms in
| the basement of the Somerville Theater.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| What's wrong with the page? I can't select the address to copy &
| paste it into maps.
|
| Please don't break the web.
| Zealotux wrote:
| Browsers should come with an option to ignore `user-select`
| rules.
| debugnik wrote:
| It's worse than that, they're using some lame WordPress
| plugin called wp-content-copy-protector to hijack shorcuts to
| copy or view source as well. Really hostile and yet
| ridiculously easy to bypass.
| smsm42 wrote:
| > show_wpcp_message('You are not allowed to copy content or
| view source');
|
| Yes I am, you poor deluded soul, yes I am. There's
| absolutely no way for you to control what happens to the
| content once it has left your server. And using such tricks
| is a huge red flag about the professionalism of the site
| makers.
| weberer wrote:
| Oh wow, that's bullshit. I just tried to copy the address and
| got a little alert saying "ALERT: Content is protected !!"
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Fuck this anti-copy bullshit site. Here:
|
| The Museum Of Bad Art, MOBA
|
| MOBA is the world's only museum dedicated to the collection,
| exhibition, and celebration of art that would not be welcomed
| to any traditional art museum. Our collection includes
| sincere art in which something has gone wrong in a way that
| results in a compelling, interesting image. Location: inside
| the Dorchester Brewing Co, 1250 Massachusetts Ave, Boston MA
| 02125. Hours: Sunday Monday 11:30-9, Tuesday through Thursday
| 11:30-10, Friday and Saturday 11:30-11. Winter 2024/25 Hours:
|
| Wednesday, Nov 27, close 6pm; Thanksgiving, Nov 28, CLOSED.
|
| Christmas Eve, Dec 24, close 6pm; Christmas, Dec 25, CLOSED.
|
| New Year's Eve, Dec 31, open until midnight; New Year's Day,
| Jan 1, open 11:30 to 10pm
|
| January and February, every Monday, open at 3pm.
|
| Admission: free
|
| Dorchester Brewing Company
|
| DBco is Boston's hottest Tap Room filled with fresh craft
| beer. It's right on Mass Ave in Dorchester! Admission to MOBA
| is free only because DBco allows (even encourages) MOBA to
| adorn the walls in the taproom, game room, the stairwell,
| even on the outside of the elevator shaft and a walk-in
| refrigerator. While you're there, try house-made craft beers,
| cider, seltzer, and wine. Here's the Taproom menu. Enjoy
| lunch or dinner from their onsite food partner, M&M Barbecue.
| DBco has a Rooftop Greenhouse and outdoor roof deck with
| views of the Boston skyline; Game Room with skeeball,
| pinball, arcade games, pop-a-shot, and tabletop shuffleboard;
| and public events like Yappy Hour, Trivia Contests, Crafting
| Sessions, and more. Event Calendar here.
|
| Meet the MOBA Staff
|
| WSBE RI PBS (Rhode Island Public Broadcast System) came all
| the way to Boston to learn about the Museum Of Bad Art. The
| result is a 7-minute video introducing MOBA's people,
| history, and art. It was broadcast on their weekly show, Art,
| Inc. and is now available on YouTube. If you want to meet
| Curator-in-chief Michael Frank and Permanent Interim Acting
| Executive Director Louise Reilly Sacco, aka Mike and Louise,
| take a look here.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Among all the other bullshit, this is a pretty circular
| definition:
|
| _MOBA is the world's only museum dedicated to the
| collection, exhibition, and celebration of art that would
| not be welcomed to any traditional art museum_
|
| Bullshit - plenty of traditional art museums have "outsider
| art" exhibitions.
|
| That term is arguably still a bit snobby, but it's better
| than just calling it "bad art" because a lot of it isn't
| actually bad at all!
| rsynnott wrote:
| Wow, that's extremely retro. Was somewhat common in the early
| noughties.
| zelos wrote:
| Even better, you get the alert if you click too quickly on
| the left/right arrows in the galleries because it thinks
| you're trying to select text.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| Honestly, most of them are still better than I could draw.
| ferguu_ wrote:
| My thoughts exactly! What makes a bad art piece anyway? While
| they might not have yet mastered the brush or the canvas, these
| artists are obviously passionate all the same, and isn't that
| what matters? Real bad art is soulless and as such would offer
| no value, be it entertainment or contemplative, when placed in
| a gallery. That is a true Mueseum Of Bad Art, and I suppose the
| curators know this. I thought some of these pieces were quite
| incredible, actually.
| vundercind wrote:
| _Entertainingly_ bad is different from simply _bad_ in
| every(?) art.
|
| So-bad-it's-good film isn't the worst film in every dimension
| --often it's competently- or even well-made in at least some
| ways. Films that are simply all-around bad, made with no
| amount of skill at the craft and insufficient effort, usually
| aren't entertaining and aren't the kind of thing anybody
| wants to watch. So-bad-it's-good is defined by being a kind
| of bad that one can still appreciate, even if part of the
| appreciation is of the ways in which it _is_ bad.
|
| There was a thread on here about bad songs the other day, and
| the kind of bad people meant wasn't, like, an untalented and
| under-practiced 9-year-old screeching out their original
| composition on a violin. Obviously that's worse than nearly
| anything, but nobody means that when they talk about
| something like "what are the worst songs?" A credible effort
| has to be put in for anyone to even care to think about it to
| _shit on it_.
|
| I think it's still useful to call those categories "bad",
| even if they're not the _most_ bad. Often the badness is what
| distinguishes them from the merely forgettable.
| ferguu_ wrote:
| I definitely agree with you - it reminds me of an inverted
| bell curve, or the YouTube series "The Search For The
| Worst" - It is far better from a viewer's perspective to
| wholeheartedly and absolutely fail, then create something
| so mediocre and lacking in soul that it isn't worth a
| thought. I suppose the primary purpose of an art gallery,
| at least this one, is to entertain, and MOMA (Mueseum Of
| Mediocre Art in this case) was already taken
| [https://www.moma.org/]
|
| I'm reminded also of the corporate art style
| [https://thebroadsideonline.com/17614/opinion/opinion-the-
| cor...] - every effort was taken to produce something so
| inoffensive and average that it could not possibly provoke
| any emotion in any demographic. Nobody would ever say that
| this is their favourite art style.
|
| What's your favourite piece within the collections on the
| MOBA website?
| vundercind wrote:
| The entire sports category is hard to beat. I think its
| tendency to provoke an attempt at depicting somewhat-
| realistic humans in action gives it an edge on some of
| the others, in terms of producing multidimensionally-
| baffling pieces.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > What makes a bad art piece anyway?
|
| Whatever the people who buy art and are influential say is
| bad. In general, very wealthy people and the dealers in their
| orbit determine which art is worthy and which art and artists
| will be forgotten.
| ferguu_ wrote:
| My favourite painting of all time "The Escorial from a
| foot-hill of the Guadarrama mountains" by Lucas van Uden [h
| ttps://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/image/media-4256550851]
| is quite a small painting that I'm sure most people have
| never heard of, hell, I'd never heard of it before I found
| it tucked politely in a corner of the Cambridge Fitzwilliam
| Museum, and I sure as hell don't know who Lucas van Uden
| is. Nevertheless, it is a remarkably beautiful painting and
| demonstrates true craft from the artist. I have no idea
| what a painting like this would cost, but I can't say it
| would be worth much compared to some of the other pieces in
| there. Your comment leads me to wonder what the incredibly
| wealthy would have to say about this painting's quality. It
| certainly feels worthy to me.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Just doing a quick search of auction prices for his work
| it looks like it can be had by fairly regular people.
| Mostly looks in the range of a few thousand euros for an
| oil on canvas landscape. Go get one!
| geophile wrote:
| I think it is quite simple to characterize MOBAs curation
| process. First, it has to be bad, in an ambition-vastly-
| exceeds-talent kind of way. Second (per MOBA rules) there is
| a price limit on each acquisition. It used to be $5, but may
| have been adjusted for inflation.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| You could satisfy those constraints with an expensive
| traditional museum piece by a) asserting that it is bad,
| and b) stealing it.
| gspencley wrote:
| I was tempted to create a top-level post suggesting that they
| just call themselves "Museum" since "Of Bad Art" is redundant,
| but I figured the joke would get lost and I'd just get down-
| voted into oblivion.
|
| I'm fairly creative, I can draw (at one time in my life I
| seriously wanted to be a comic book illustrator) and I'm a
| musician. I appreciate that art is subjective, often difficult
| to do well and that technical skill is not the only factor that
| matters.
|
| But when I looked at their "collections" page my first thought
| was "How does this distinguish itself from the bulk of what
| goes on display in modern fine art exhibits?"
|
| The serious question being posed is: "What makes this
| particular collection 'bad' but something like 'Voices of Fire'
| is so 'good' that it was worth charging the Canadian tax payers
| $1.8 million dollars in 1980s money to acquire for the National
| Gallery of Canada?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > In 2014, it was reported that senior personnel at the
| National Gallery estimated that the current value of the
| painting is in excess of $40 million.
|
| Sounds like the purchase worked out well for the taxpayers...
| gspencley wrote:
| How does it help the tax payers to have a 40 million dollar
| asset on display?
|
| Even if it has appreciated after adjusting for inflation
| (and I'm sure it has), what is the National Gallery's
| possession of that piece of canvas, oil and pigment doing
| to help the taxpayers with anything that concerns them in
| either 1989 or 2024?
|
| In any event, this is a huge digression from the topic. I
| never meant to start a conversation about whether or not
| tax dollars should be used to purchase art, and what kind
| of art. The discussion is what makes art 'good' or 'bad'.
| And Voices of Fire was controversial in 1989 and still is
| ... because many Canadians are like "why do rich people pay
| money for this kind of stuff?"
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > How does it help the tax payers to have a 40 million
| dollar asset on display?
|
| Aside from the raw on-the-books investment value,
| valuable artworks a) bring in visitors and b) can be
| loaned in exchange for other works which will do even
| more of a).
| dooglius wrote:
| If they sell it for that much
| the_af wrote:
| I didn't know this piece or the artist. Went through the few
| examples in Wikipedia of his art and it's almost all like
| this, minimalist blocks or stripes of color. Definitely not
| my thing.
|
| Why does it matter? To me, because it's different for a
| masterful artist to purposefully create something minimalist
| (e.g. Picasso) when you know they could make something
| technically complex if they wished so, vs an artist for which
| there's no evidence they could create anything else but a few
| blobs of color.
|
| In the second case, why are they not in the Bad Art Museum?
| Is it because of financial success of the art piece? Seems
| odd.
|
| (I'm not trying to dictate anything universal or what others
| should think, it's just my own preferences and musings about
| art and artists).
| microtherion wrote:
| Some time ago, I attended the memorial service for a
| skilled painter (not exactly a household name, though), and
| one of the stories told about him was that he visited the
| municipal museum, where there was a new exhibit of a newly
| acquired abstract expressionist painting (I believe by Mark
| Rothko), which just consisted of painted rectangles.
|
| He studied the painting for some time, and then asked to
| see the director of the museum, to inform him that the
| painting was hung upside down! When asked why he would
| think that, he pointed out that wet paint does not flow
| upward...
|
| So it is indeed possible for a connaisseur to distinguish
| interesting details in a painting like this.
| the_af wrote:
| Excellent anecdote! Thanks for sharing.
|
| Isn't this more evidence that it's arbitrary to decide
| something is "bad art" vs "good modern art" (of the
| pop/avant garde variety)?
| zelos wrote:
| I guess it would be an interesting experiment to randomly mix
| 'good' art into the bad art collection and vice versa and ask
| a load of critics and/or artists to comment on them.
| dvirsky wrote:
| I knew a guy who was selling his art online, he was making
| tongue-in-cheek, technically bad art but it was very
| deliberate as part of what he was trying to get at, he had a
| real artistic vision to his work.
|
| His work got picked by MOBA and was made fun of, but they
| totally missed the point.
| PrismCrystal wrote:
| With a work of a size like "Voices of Fire", one has to
| consider the possibility that it hits differently in real
| life versus seeing a reproduction in a book or on the
| internet. For example, some people who were sceptical about
| the value of Mark Rothko's paintings (which are fairly
| comparable in style) were won over once they saw the works in
| person. Or consider how Arvo Part, a composer who writes
| music in a style that could be labeled anti-modern, was moved
| almost to tears at seeing Anish Kapoor's modern-art sculpture
| _Marsyas_.
|
| Museums like the National Gallery of Canada like having in
| their collection pieces that might make people go wow, and
| tell other people who in turn might visit the museum.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Unless you've sat in the Rothko chapel or the Rothko room
| at the Tate, I don't think you can appreciate the profound
| solemnity of these things. You just can't experience these
| things through a photograph.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I didn't know about "Voice of Fire" but it is the story makes
| it interesting.
|
| By itself, the painting is not bad, kind of like a flag, just
| not particularly remarkable. But that it was bought for $1.8M
| with taxpayer money and the controversy it created is where
| its real value lies. With a name like "Voice of Fire", it is
| almost as if it was the plan. According to the Wikipedia
| article, it has been valued $40M in 2014, which, if real,
| would have made that $1.8M a worthy investment!
| forinti wrote:
| I actually thought "Blue Mushroom Man" in Poor Traits was
| alright, although the other "poor traits" were really weird.
| rob74 wrote:
| I guess some genres attract worse artists than others. Most in
| the "Oozing My Religion" and "In The Nood" categories are truly
| atrocious, while some from "MOBA Zoo" are actually not _that_
| bad (including my favourite - more because of the retroactively
| added title than because of the work itself - "You're a Mule,
| Dear")...
| yapyap wrote:
| We can finally classify art as bad now?
| davrosthedalek wrote:
| Oh, they moved! I think they used to be in Somerville below the
| Somerville theater.
| mtlguitarist wrote:
| Yup, they moved back when Somerville Theater did the most
| recent renovations I think. I kind of miss going to the
| bathroom down there and seeing the strange art while wandering.
| caboteria wrote:
| Yup! And before that they were in the basement of the Dedham
| Community Theater.
| zactato wrote:
| Yeah! I think I went there back in 2004.
| trash_cat wrote:
| If this would have been the most prestigious and highly regarded
| Art I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| This philosophy matches up with how I curate my music collection,
| which has brought me a great deal of joy even if it means no one
| will give me the aux cable at parties
| chefandy wrote:
| Ha-- Yeah... nobody that sits down and listens to a whole
| Portsmouth Sinfonia album can plug anything into my stereo,
| ever.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| I went to the bad art museum in iceland and it was quite
| something to see in person. As you turn each corner, new
| dimensions of weird and shock emerge. Some was just kind of
| silly, and some was accidentally horrifying in an uncanny valley
| sort of way. Some were mental illness on display. I left with
| some very mixed feelings.. the ha-ha with the oh-no, and the oh-
| my! Definitely glad to have seen it. Online photos do not do the
| awfulness justice.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I didn't know there was a bad art museum there. However I do
| strongly recommend the penis museum in Reykjavik.
| graypegg wrote:
| I actually went to the penis museum 5 years ago! It was...
| maybe not the best thing. It's not exactly clear in a lot of
| the marketing materials, and even once you arrive, that it's
| just a single room behind the front desk. It felt a lot more
| like a road side attraction than anything else. The gift shop
| in the front was a similar size to the museum in the back.
|
| To be fair my expectations of a penis museum weren't THAT
| high, and it was still funny to go and get pictures! But
| that's about all the experience really is.
| amp108 wrote:
| Everyone wants it to be bigger, but we just have to work
| with what's there.
| euroderf wrote:
| But if people drive up even just to gawk at it, you've
| won.
| bitwize wrote:
| The MOBA was always fun to visit after seeing a movie at
| Somerville Theatre. Recently I found myself wishing I were back
| in Somerville, because they had an anniversary showing of Hackers
| there in September, with special guest Renoly Santiago ("Phantom
| Phreak").
| jihadjihad wrote:
| _The Athlete_ in the Sports Section [0] is glorious:
|
| > Crayon and pencil on canvas, 40" x 30"
|
| > Rescued from trash in Boston, MA
|
| > The discus thrower's pink mini toga, wing tip shoes, and white
| socks define athletic sartorial splendor. This is among the
| largest crayon on canvas pieces one can ever hope to see.
|
| 0: https://museumofbadart.org/sports/
| vundercind wrote:
| The, "this is among the largest crayon on canvas pieces one can
| ever hope to see" part is just the best. Annotating bad art is
| itself an art.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| The Museum should ask if Ubisoft, Bethesda and EA would like to
| get involved (Digital "Art").
| tompetry wrote:
| Now _this_ is what I call taste.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I flipped through the "unseen forces" section and so far about
| half of them aren't actually bad. For example Monochrome 006
| (supposedly inspired by Schoenberg) would IMO fit right in at
| MOMA and was actually kind of cool. Likewise, Inside The Egg,
| Twins In Utero, and Spewing Marshmallows were both really
| interesting. Some of these are actually goofy doodles, but it's a
| shame to dismiss everything that isn't a conventional oil
| painting as "bad". I say this as someone who doesn't really enjoy
| or appreciate modern art (or modern music like Schoenberg for
| that matter).
|
| I see the same problem in other sections too. A New Day looks
| like a child's doodle. But Greenscape and Burning Bush are
| interesting. They both look like they were painted by big Bob
| Ross fans. Amateur, sure. But hardly "bad art" to the point of
| being in a museum of bad art. Or maybe they're much worse in
| person?
| the_af wrote:
| In the landscapes section there are some that look as if the
| author was Dali.
|
| Now, Dali _is_ divisive and many hate his work. But when you
| add Dali-like art to your "bad art" gallery you're making a
| bold & controversial statement...
| dbalatero wrote:
| The only one? Cafe Racer in Seattle had an excellent collection
| in their OBAMA room (Official Bad Art Museum of Art) :P
| weard_beard wrote:
| As backronyms go, this one is a winner.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
| gxs wrote:
| That article has to have some of the worst written language
| I've seen in a wikipedia article in a while.
|
| Just bad, unclear, convoluted explanations.
|
| Thankfully they provide a lot of examples - they should
| probably just skip to those and you'd be better off for it.
| card_zero wrote:
| I don't mind fixing it, but I can't see the problem. Which
| sentences annoy most?
| broabprobe wrote:
| yeah I also have a gallery of 'bad art', in my home entryway. I
| have about 25 pieces I've collected from the side of the road
| when students move out. Mostly half-finished canvases,
| portraits of beer cans.
| sameoldtune wrote:
| I've spent many evenings there, the owner definitely has a soft
| spot for clown portraits
| _joel wrote:
| "Terrible Art in Charity Shops" is quite an amusing facebook
| group, too.
| zxexz wrote:
| Oh cool, they have a new location! I missed poking around after
| shows at the Somerville Theater.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| It was great fun, especially after having a couple beers in the
| theatre.
| eadmund wrote:
| Consider the possibility that the artists behind these pieces
| were not trolling, but genuinely trying to express something, or
| craft something beautiful. Mocking their failures is a little bit
| liking making fun of a small child's fingerpainting.
|
| I completely agree that this stuff is ugly, much of it
| atrociously ugly. But it's likely the artists knew no better, or
| at least could _do_ no better. It's also ugly to mock others --
| and we _do_ know better, and we _can_ do better.
| the_af wrote:
| That's my impression as well. Very few of the pieces look like
| trolling. They look more like when an enthusiastic relative
| tells you they've started art classes and they show you what
| they've done so far...
|
| You know, that aunt that has started doing watercolors and asks
| for your honest opinion.
| dahart wrote:
| "Our collection include sincere art in which something has gone
| wrong in a way that results in a compelling, interesting
| image."
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I was just thinking that when an animal paints, we sometimes
| see at least a little something worth seeing in there. They
| have no scholarly craft but still there is something that came
| out of them. It seems that the same should also be true for
| humans.
| the_af wrote:
| Some of these look similar to stuff I've seen in galleries
| purporting to display good modern art.
|
| There's an asymmetry going on here... I think making bad art at
| this level is very easy. Most of it looks like things created by
| children (or young people) who are not very talented or still
| lack direction and practice. Perspective errors, hiding body
| parts that are difficult to draw for novices, uninteresting
| composition, garish colors... (making things more confusing: each
| of these "flaws" can be done on purpose by a decent artist, to
| make a statement).
|
| I wonder what qualifies for inclusion in MOBA. Creating _good_
| art is difficult, but creating bad art is trivial.
|
| Or maybe it's bad art that is noteworthy for external reasons,
| like Ecce Homo?
| d--b wrote:
| Honestly... It's not that terrible... The comments are really
| harsh.
|
| I don't understand the need to label it as bad. It's just stupid.
|
| Lots of museums of amateur art exist around the world and don't
| just shit all over the artists.
|
| Fuck you MOBA.
| the_af wrote:
| It's like the label is guiding you about how you should think
| about the piece.
|
| Many of these, had they been in a modern art gallery and
| labeled something like "man despairing at the enormity of the
| cosmos" would have gone unnoticed or even praised.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The rise of generative AI will usher in a golden age of bad art.
| otteromkram wrote:
| > "MOBA curators believe this painting, as well as others in the
| collection, may have been affected by the artists' never having
| actually seen a naked woman."
|
| Cold blooded.
|
| (ref - https://museumofbadart.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/03/PAULIN...
| rectang wrote:
| Repaired links:
|
| https://museumofbadart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PAULIN...
|
| ... which is the fourth picture in on this page:
|
| https://museumofbadart.org/in-the-nood/
| the_af wrote:
| It's not even a bad rendition of the naked human body.
| calebm wrote:
| A lot of contemporary art is bad... surprisingly bad. A lot of it
| is /intentionally/ ugly. As an outsider just getting into the art
| world, it is fascinating - some kind of weird social phenomenon
| is going on. Maybe it's "different at all expenses" or something
| else. Not sure.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yeah, modern art is almost universally bad. I suspect that it
| is because artists are absolutely soaked in art from all over
| history. They study it, they live and breathe it, and by this
| point they are _bored_ of it. So they try to make something
| different and unlike the art of old, but have lost sight of the
| fact that normal people _aren 't_ jaded and bored of old art
| like they are. So they wind up making stuff which can only
| possibly appeal to others who are just as soaked in art (and
| bored of the old stuff) as they are. It basically turns art
| into this giant circle jerk of artists making stuff to impress
| each other, having lost touch with their audience.
|
| I've noticed the same thing with other fields as well, not just
| art. Cooking is this way, for example. The food that fancy
| chefs at fancy restaurants make is so ridiculous that it feels
| like a joke sometimes. And as far as I can tell, it's the same
| thing. Those chefs are bored of normal food, are trying super
| hard to make something creative that has never been done
| before, and have lost sight of the fact that it's just not
| going to appeal to people who aren't as bored with food as they
| are. Maybe it's the inevitable result of being steeped in a
| craft and spending all your time on it, IDK.
| verteu wrote:
| Perhaps a large fraction of art was always bad, but only the
| best old art is remembered today. Modern art hasn't been
| culled by time.
| card_zero wrote:
| Modernism is over 100 years old!
| pavl- wrote:
| Why do you think the goal of modern art should necessarily be
| to appeal to as many people as possible - or when you say
| "universally bad" do you mean to say "perceived as bad to
| people who aren't immersed in art"? Marvel movies and
| McDonalds will always exist for normal people.
| duderific wrote:
| Same phenomenon in modern classical music, and what is known
| as "free jazz". Much of it is unlistenable for average
| people, or even those who enjoy "classic" classical or jazz
| music.
|
| Taking the example of free jazz, the artists are trying to
| free themselves from what they see as restraints on
| expression. However, the human mind and heart are themselves
| governed by pattern and organization, which is why most music
| took the forms that it did. Departing from those typical
| structures is an artistic choice, but the artists can't be
| surprised when most listeners don't respond well to those
| choices. Perhaps they don't care much about the listeners
| anyway.
| squidsoup wrote:
| No good artist cares about their audience.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Some artists aren't making art for other people or are making
| art for other artists.
|
| Even when I make art with other people in mind I still give
| preference to my own personal aesthetic impulses. Art isn't
| always a product seeking product market fit.
| benrutter wrote:
| I think I like the name more than any of the collections. They
| seem like one of two categories:
|
| - Art that isn't actually bad
|
| - Art that is bad, because its by amateurs
|
| The first feels disappointing, and the second feels mean.
| Honestly, making fun of amsteurish monstrosities is a lot less
| enjoyable than making them yourself.
| chefandy wrote:
| I do feel bad for the amateurs. I went to art school where we
| received and administered constant daily critique where
| frankness matters. Genuinely mean spirited comments obviously
| still sucked, but we couldn't hesitate to say things like "that
| nose reads more like a foot and that flesh kind of makes them
| look dead, so unless you were going for that, maybe you could
| consider [etc]" because class was only 4 hours long, 15 people
| needed crit, we still had another huge drawing to complete, and
| after you've been staring at a piece for hours or days, you
| can't even see it objectively anymore, so you're thankful for
| the reality check. It was technical stuff-- not commenting on
| people's ideas or what they were trying to express. That
| experience moves "the line" we instinctively don't cross as
| social creatures, and something we might say with the best
| intentions without reading the room could entirely put someone
| off of learning art, forever. Even if it seems constructive
| you're saying it, if it's received as mean spirited and is out-
| of-step with the tone of the exchange, then the intent doesn't
| matter much.
| geophile wrote:
| I love MOBA. The art is quite spectacularly awful. But what
| really makes the museum so wonderful are the blurbs on display
| with each piece of art. They are written in the style of Very
| Serious art museums (the art is "exploring" some issue, or
| "asking a question"), but tuned to the particular piece of
| horrendously bad art you are looking at.
|
| They used to be in the basement of the Dedham theater, when I
| lived nearby. Then they had the decency to move to the basement
| of the Somerville Theater when I moved to Somerville. But they
| have moved again, to Dorchester. Fortunately, not too far. I went
| to the (re)opening in Dorchester, and actually got to meet the
| couple who started the museum, and got the story of MOBAs birth
| firsthand.
| rectang wrote:
| I dislike it. Ostensibly this is taking on art museum snobbery,
| but many of these works are by amateurs and were literally pulled
| out the trash. It feels like an embittered teacher making fun of
| a kid, while the class snickers at the spectacle of public
| humiliation.
|
| To each of the artists: congratulations for having the courage to
| trust in your imagination. I hope that others have engaged with
| your works with greater generosity.
|
| EDIT: There's a missed opportunity here for a critic to
| participate in the exhibition by praising the works sincerely.
| (If museum goers can detect sarcasm then the critique has
| failed.) That would be more fun and it wouldn't even be hard
| since the works have already set expectations low.
| eth0up wrote:
| My sentiments are very similar, and I'm glad to read someone
| else articulating it here.
|
| Edit: Are we missing something?
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Yes. A sense of humor.
| rectang wrote:
| This entire HN page is a performance piece. There is only
| one commenter who is not in on it.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I've been had.
| rectang wrote:
| So have I.
| adamc wrote:
| Yeah, it seems unkind. What is the purpose here? To teach about
| art, using art that maybe was someone's learning attempt seems
| like a huge mistake (and is likely to scare away students). If
| you aren't teaching, why talk about bad art at all?
| nuclearnice3 wrote:
| Here's a delightful and illuminating 6 minute video which
| explains some of the purpose.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB6UhGbyXfE
|
| Punchline at the end: "We don't say negative things about the
| art or the artist. Our stated goal is to collect, exhibit,
| and celebrate this art that would be appreciated nowhere
| else."
| rectang wrote:
| I watched the video and I don't see how cutting commentary
| like otteromkram pointed out here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42168503#42173585
| aligns with their intent to not say anything negative about
| the artist:
|
| > _MOBA curators believe this painting, as well as others
| in the collection, may have been affected by the artists '
| never having actually seen a naked woman._
|
| Or how this, with regards to https://museumofbadart.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/05/photo-... doesn't say anything
| negative about the art:
|
| > _The model, whose red hair matches the wall color almost
| perfectly, leans to her right in a pose designed to help
| the artist avoid the difficulty of portraying her hands. In
| doing so, she seems to have dislocated her left hip._
|
| This isn't some cubist work where the body distortion was
| deliberate, it's just a painting by an artist that hasn't
| mastered realistic anatomical perspective.
|
| I admire the sentiment in the video, and I can appreciate
| how it's difficult to live up to it. I wish they would go
| through the commentary on their site and make it more
| uplifting -- I think that would make their creative
| endeavor of curation more compelling.
| ikesau wrote:
| i find it endearing. a celebration of human striving and
| failing. it reminds me of the quote from the incredible fiasco
| episode of This American Life:
|
| > Jack Hitt: And what you have to understand is that everybody
| in this sort of community understood that they were-- there was
| certainly a sort of air of everyone sort of reaching beyond
| their own grasp. Every actor was sort of in a role that was
| just a little too big for them. Every aspect of the set and the
| crew-- and rumors had sort of cooked around. There was this
| huge crew. There were lots of things being painted.
|
| > Ira Glass: See, but this, in fact, is one of the criteria for
| greatness, is that everyone is just about to reach just beyond
| their grasp, because that is when greatness can occur.
|
| > Jack Hitt: That's right. That's right. And maybe greatness
| could have occurred.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > And maybe greatness could have occurred.
|
| I'm going to steal this line. I can only imagine this being
| read in a soft NPR voice. This kind of subtle jab, so polite
| you don't even notice it unless you're paying attention, is
| so perfectly characteristic.
| willis936 wrote:
| It didn't feel mean sprited when I went. Many of the pieces
| were actually good in their own way. Sure, some were simply
| technically lacking, but those weren't what viewers found
| interesting. The human fetus made of chicken bones is what I
| remember.
| rectang wrote:
| Here's the critique I would like to have seen from MOBA for
| such a work:
|
| > _human fetus made of chicken bones_
|
| Delicious.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| If you are what you eat then many of us are made primarily
| of chicken. I could read it as a commentary on society
| codexb wrote:
| I think you're missing the point, or at least the point I took
| away from it.
|
| Much of the art in the collections is genuinely interesting and
| enjoyable, even if it is technically "bad", in the sense that
| it's a poor attempt at a certain type of art.
| awfulneutral wrote:
| To me it looks like pieces are chosen that show a contrast of
| good and bad - they have amateurish or weird proportions and
| colors, but generally they have good or at least interesting
| composition. I couldn't really say how much is intentional vs
| accidental, for a lot of them.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I agree with MOBA's position but I also think taking it out on
| these no-name artists misses the target. It is misdirected
| snobbery.
|
| Some may dislike drawing distinctions between the art of low
| and high talent artists because it seems mean-spirited towards
| low talent artists. In other words, they dislike talent-seeking
| snobs.
|
| Others may dislike it for the opposite reason: that there are
| many examples of _famous_ artists who don't display discernible
| talent. You might say these people dislike talent-eschewing
| snobs. Paging through an art history textbook yields tons of
| examples.
|
| Compare Henri Matisse's Music from 1910. If you told most
| people a 5th grader painted that, they wouldn't have been
| surprised.
|
| Ditto with Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, 1920. Or even Rodchenko's
| single-color paintings. And Arshille Gorky seems to have
| painted using a paintbrush tied to his forehead.
|
| So maybe that's the answer. This MOBA should be filled with
| famous artists, not no-name amateurs. There seems to be no
| shortage of them. And it's not like the only alternative to
| Jackson Pollock is dogs playing poker. There are many obviously
| talented artists who got far less recognition because talent
| eschewing snobs pushed out the talent seeking ones.
| c0detrafficker wrote:
| A.k.a. MOMA?
| smsm42 wrote:
| To be honest, if it weren't labeled "bad art" and were put aside
| of other modern art, without any labeling or commentary, or even
| better with standard commentary about "the artists boldly defying
| the established conventions to express the feelings deeply in
| their soul" and so on - I would not be able to say which is which
| and which comes from some official "best of" collection and which
| from a mock "bad art" collection.
| bwanab wrote:
| I have to admit that going to the Museum of Bad Art always has
| had a similar effect on my very poor art eye as going to the
| Institute of Contemporary Art across town.
| asdfasvea wrote:
| The best general art museums I've ever gone to were 80% crap, 15%
| meh and 5% good. The average general art museum is 90% crap, 9%
| meh and 1% ok.
|
| But that's the nature of the beast. You can't have a diverse
| collection where half the pieces are good to any individual. 1
| person's opinion of great art is 99 other people's crap.
|
| There really are very few pieces in the world where 90%+ of
| people agree they are great pieces of art.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| When I go through a museum I just powerwalk through pointing at
| each piece and saying "CRAP" "MEH" or "GOOD".
| OCASMv2 wrote:
| I find this indistinguishable from any modern/contemporary art
| museum.
| thordenmark wrote:
| I use the MOBA as a resource for my classes of what not to do (I
| teach at an art university).
|
| There are so many spectacularly bad examples useful for any topic
| I'm teaching.
| t43562 wrote:
| "What is art anyhow?"
|
| some answers I could think up:
|
| - whatever I like is art
|
| - whatever some people who are "better than me" call art is art
|
| - whatever an artist can sell to a rich person for a high price
| is art...
|
| I can't make up my mind.
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