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.

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.

My sentiments are very similar, and I'm glad to read someone else articulating it here.

Edit: Are we missing something?

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?

Are the works anonymous or do they call out the artist? I'd they're anonumous, I don't see much harm.

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 didn't know there was a bad art museum there. However I do strongly recommend the penis museum in Reykjavik.

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.

Agreed. Art is what you like. There's really no good or bad.

Ha-- Yeah... nobody that sits down and listens to a whole Portsmouth Sinfonia album can plug anything into my stereo, ever.

As backronyms go, this one is a winner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym

I’ve spent many evenings there, the owner definitely has a soft spot for clown portraits

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.

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.

Yup! And before that they were in the basement of the Dedham Community Theater.

Yeah! I think I went there back in 2004.

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Museum of Bad Art - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441 - Feb 2021 (57 comments)

No pictures though. Wish I could see some sample of the art.

In the landscapes section there are some that look as if the author was Dalí.

Now, Dalí is divisive and many hate his work. But when you add Dalí-like art to your "bad art" gallery you're making a bold & controversial statement...

It was great fun, especially after having a couple beers in the theatre.

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.

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.

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.

“Our collection include sincere art in which something has gone wrong in a way that results in a compelling, interesting image.”

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.

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.

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 Pärt, 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.

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).

> 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...

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!

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.