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."
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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 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.
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?"
> 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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
My favourite painting of all time "The Escorial from a foot-hill of the Guadarrama mountains" by Lucas van Uden [https://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.
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!
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")...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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").
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.
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.
> "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.“
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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Here's the critique I would like to have seen from MOBA for such a work:
> human fetus made of chicken bones
Delicious.
If you are what you eat then many of us are made primarily of chicken. I could read it as a commentary on society
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?
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."
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.
My sentiments are very similar, and I'm glad to read someone else articulating it here.
Edit: Are we missing something?
Yes. A sense of humor.
This entire HN page is a performance piece. There is only one commenter who is not in on it.
I’ve been had.
So have I.
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 didn't know there was a bad art museum there. However I do strongly recommend the penis museum in Reykjavik.
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.
Everyone wants it to be bigger, but we just have to work with what's there.
But if people drive up even just to gawk at it, you've won.
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.
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
Ha-- Yeah... nobody that sits down and listens to a whole Portsmouth Sinfonia album can plug anything into my stereo, ever.
The only one? Cafe Racer in Seattle had an excellent collection in their OBAMA room (Official Bad Art Museum of Art) :P
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.
As backronyms go, this one is a winner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backronym
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.
I don't mind fixing it, but I can't see the problem. Which sentences annoy most?
Oh, they moved! I think they used to be in Somerville below the Somerville theater.
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.
More discussion/picks from a couple of years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Museum of Bad Art - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26031441 - Feb 2021 (57 comments)
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.
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.
"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.
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?
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...
Oh cool, they have a new location! I missed poking around after shows at the Somerville Theater.
It was great fun, especially after having a couple beers in the theatre.
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.
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.
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.
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...
No pictures though. Wish I could see some sample of the art.
This is said to be the most iconic work in the collection:
https://arthur.io/art/unknown/lucy-in-the-field-with-flowers
just go to Collections on their main page, OP's link.
A morbid wish. Something like wanting to look at photos from a murder investigation.
Honestly, most of them are still better than I could draw.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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...
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?"
> 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).
If they sell it for that much
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.
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).
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.
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)?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
You could satisfy those constraints with an expensive traditional museum piece by a) asserting that it is bad, and b) stealing it.
> 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.
My favourite painting of all time "The Escorial from a foot-hill of the Guadarrama mountains" by Lucas van Uden [https://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.
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!
I actually thought "Blue Mushroom Man" in Poor Traits was alright, although the other "poor traits" were really weird.
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")...
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.
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.”
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.
"Terrible Art in Charity Shops" is quite an amusing facebook group, too.
I find this indistinguishable from any modern/contemporary art museum.
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/
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.
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?
I went there this past Summer. It isn't advertised externally. Look for the brewery.
I didn't realize it had relocated from near the bathrooms in the basement of the Somerville Theater.
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").
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.
When I go through a museum I just powerwalk through pointing at each piece and saying "CRAP" "MEH" or "GOOD".
The rise of generative AI will usher in a golden age of bad art.
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.
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.
> "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...
It's not even a bad rendition of the naked human body.
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/
Now this is what I call taste.
If this would have been the most prestigious and highly regarded Art I wouldn´t be able to tell the difference.
What's wrong with the page? I can't select the address to copy & paste it into maps.
Please don't break the web.
Browsers should come with an option to ignore `user-select` rules.
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.
> 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.
Oh wow, that's bullshit. I just tried to copy the address and got a little alert saying "ALERT: Content is protected !!"
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.
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!
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.
Wow, that's extremely retro. Was somewhat common in the early noughties.
We can finally classify art as bad now?
The Museum should ask if Ubisoft, Bethesda and EA would like to get involved (Digital "Art").
A.k.a. MOMA?
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.
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.
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.
No good artist cares about their audience.
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.
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.
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.
Modernism is over 100 years old!