Museum of Bad Art: - So Bad It's Good
NY Museum Enables Courage and Delusion among the Untalented
Jun 26, 2009
Don't laugh. There is finally a dead serious organization that is preserving one of mankind's greatest legacies for the ages: the worst, most hapless, schlockiest "artworks" ever made by our species. It's called The Museum of Bad Art, appropriately located within proximity to New York, NY (the pretentious world center of Modern Art). So this collection of reviled, neglected and shunned masterpieces sticks out like a turd floating in a punch bowl next to the neighboring Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art.
Public Outreach Program Requires Courage and Experience Selling Used Cars
Founded in 1993, this non-profit labor of love got kick-started by the inspiring work called "Lucy in a Field with Flowers." Scott Wilson, now the Esteemed Curator Emeritus, discovered the work in a trash can. With every acquisition, the museum officials post education explanations next to the portraits. Lucy's critique reads, "This single painting planted the seed that grew into MOBA. The motion, the chair, the expression on her face, the subtle hues of the sky, the way of her breasts -- every detail cries 'masterpiece.'"
Obviously, these art experts know their artwork. If the viewer looks closely at the work "Lucy," he or she will discover a gaggle of symbolic half-hidden mysteries. For instance the elderly grandmother subject is skipping through the pastoral meadow in her sensible Sunday shoes... with a red chair mounted on her ass! And yet, the nimble senior citizen still manages to carry a bouquet of flowers despite the heavy back load to which she evidently is so fanatically attached.
And why is Lucy's face a dead ringer of Norman Mailer's visage? Only the enigmatic anonymous artist knows that secret. Get this: according to the MOBA catalogue, the subject commissioned that painting of herself. Did the artist collect his commission. Or was he sued for undue mental cruelty?
MOBA was the brainchild of former Executive Director Jerry Reilly and that eagle-eye art spotter Steve Wilson, and together with their staff and volunteers, the group has accomplished the long overdue public service of preserving the mountains of bad art that more accurately reflect the human condition: deluded persistence in any way possible to get out of having a real job.
Controversy Rages: Is MOBA a Public Service -- or an Incubator of Eye-Watering Works of Hell?
Art critics and psychologists alike are still disputing the legacy MOBA has handed to bad artists and the victimized public. Are the MOBA archivists who preserve these misunderstood paintings giving a pat of encouragement to struggling wannabe artists, knowing full well these poor slobs should just stick to occupational therapy classes wherein they can happily glue macaroni pasta on vases and spray-paint it in a gold "patina"? Are they enabling talentless flops to keep torturing the art-going public?
Or are they proving to the world that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Or, that at least repulsive visions of hell should be included and acknowledged in that vast depository born of why man creates? Whatever the case may be, the crew of MOBA has all the trappings of a fine arts institution: a volunteer army called Friends of MOBA, a public outreach program that enlightens art students and art teachers (some might take that as insulting), an acquisitions department and a preservation department.
Tough Criteria for Bad ArtistsThe directors of Moba are unbendingly strict about the bad art they consider for acceptance into their permanent collection. As outlined in their submission guidelines, the rules are sacrosanct.
Work must be original and show one or more of the following:
- complete artistic control
- no artistic control; courage and enthusiam
- unusual use of color
- interesting use of perspective
- strange subject matter
- an inappropriate frame
- MOBA is actively seeking three-dimensional art
Check out the Museum of Bad Art at their web site: Museumofbadart.org.
 |
