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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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."
All artists are credited if known — and most are, if only because they've signed their work. It's hard to imagine MOBA doing otherwise — they're already copying without permission (I assume), and deliberately suppressing artist identities while ridiculing their copied works would be gauche even if legally defensible as satire.
MOBA's schtick is to present these works as alternatives to "important" art, which is cool. But they just can't help themselves and lay on the snark heavy and thick.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes. Art exactly like what's shown in this museum is commonplace in serious art galleries or exhibits, and there is not really anything anyone can say or do, except just walk past it or use it as a palette cleanser.
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
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.
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?
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.
Readit News
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> human fetus made of chicken bones
Delicious.
Edit: Are we missing something?
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."
MOBA's schtick is to present these works as alternatives to "important" art, which is cool. But they just can't help themselves and lay on the snark heavy and thick.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
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.
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?
Museum of Bad Art - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441 - Feb 2021 (57 comments)