Museum of Bad Art

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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."

Here's the critique I would like to have seen from MOBA for such a work:

> human fetus made of chicken bones

Delicious.

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.

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.

If you are what you eat then many of us are made primarily of chicken. I could read it as a commentary on society

Yes. A sense of humor.

This entire HN page is a performance piece. There is only one commenter who is not in on it.

> 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.

I’ve been had.

So have I.

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.

This is amazing dialog. Deserves a website of its own. You two should collaborate.

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.

But what are chicken mainly made of?

>>"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."

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.

Eggs, of course!

If it's true that many of the items displayed came from the trash, I think this lacks an important part of humor: that the person be in on the joke. There's a saying that a practical joke is only good if the person on the butt end of it is laughing the hardest, otherwise it's just cruel.

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

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.

> and make it more uplifting

And end up with the E954 praising of children and participation awards?

If we grow through adversity, what happens when we edit all adversity out of our realities?

LOL, humans are a uniquely vicious species and will never lack for either assholery or self doubt. There will always be sufficient human misery to foster growth.