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...
replies(1):
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Bad_Art#Collection_h...
https://arthur.io/art/unknown/lucy-in-the-field-with-flowers
Museum of Bad Art - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441 - Feb 2021 (57 comments)
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?"
You know, that aunt that has started doing watercolors and asks for your honest opinion.
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).
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.
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).
Cold blooded.
(ref - https://museumofbadart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PAULIN...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
His work got picked by MOBA and was made fun of, but they totally missed the point.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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!
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!
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.
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."
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.
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.
https://museumofbadart.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PAULIN...
... which is the fourth picture in on this page:
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
There are so many spectacularly bad examples useful for any topic I'm teaching.
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.
The important stuff tended to, I honestly don't find humor in criticizing amateur art, especially without a background or any info on the creator, etc.
I can definitely see how you might differ. I'm glad I'm different, even if I miss obvious things and don't get super funny jokes.
Perhaps this is a 'whoosh' moment for me, but it seems that by simply housing the art in the Museum of /Bad/ Art, you are certainly saying something quite negative about the art and the artist.
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.
So how do we really define bad art if the stuff called bad by one group is nearly identical to the stuff promoted by "high culture" galleries and organizations as being the latest in faashionably interesting art?
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