# Art > Art & Art History >  Bad Art

## cacian

this thread is inspired from another thread I have read in a different forum.

how do you define bad art?
from literature to lyrics to gadgetry to audio masonry can you tell which is executed to perfection and which is poor and literally bad?
can you find an example of bad art as oppose to good one?
taste is personal and so there are many paintings I have seen that I can easy lable as not to my taste. 
does that mean they are bad?

for example:
'the screaming man' painting I personally consider too bad any time of the day.
220px-The_Scream.jpg

_''the creative side of an artist, any artist, is that it is so bad he/she wants to make it better''_

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

Until today, the debate would have gone ad infinitum, but lo the answer is only an ear away.
A living replica of Vincent van Gogh's ear has been created complete with a microphone adapted to receive questions from the curious, even those seeking the definition of "bad art"

http://blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/20...ar-on-display/

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## cacian

> Until today, the debate would have gone ad infinitum, but lo the answer is only an ear away.
> A living replica of Vincent van Gogh's ear has been created complete with a microphone adapted to receive questions from the curious, even those seeking the definition of "bad art"
> 
> http://blogs.wsj.com/photojournal/20...ar-on-display/


Gilliatt thank you fro your post.
I mean this more then bad art. it is obsessive sick.
one must consult with the person in question before putting their private belonging in public. this is a breach of privacy and should be reprimanded. made illegal. when people are not longer their privacy should remain closed. bad taste which makes art looks even worse.

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## Melanie

Good find, Gilliatt. That "Art" is not only in bad taste, it's based on the artists false claim that it's a live specimen from DNA…or is he just pulling our leg. You can't grow an appendage alone with DNA. You have to "grow" the whole person and then cut his ear off. Maybe that's all a part of this artist's definition of "freedom of expression"….free to lie and free to cash in on further humiliation of a genius-artist. Of course, what I just said is already obvious to everyone so that makes bad art even worse. Furthermore, I find it to look more like a machine or science experiment with great lighting than art.

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## Lokasenna

I've seen worse than Van Gogh's ear, which is merely risible. The other day I read an article about a female 'performance artist' whose latest 'work' (called 'PlopEgg') involved standing stark naked on a platform in the middle of public square, pushing eggs filled with ink and paint out of her vaginal canal on to a canvas below.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/wa...aint-out-of-he

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...art-milo-moire

Apparently it symbolises the 'casual and creative power of womanhood', but I'm damned if I understand it. Give me a nice Constable or Turner any day of the week...

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## Iain Sparrow

I've got y'all beat on this topic... this is a piece of art by Dutch artist Bart Jansen, it's his cat; which was hit and killed by a car, and was then stuffed and turned into a helicopter. It's a flying dead cat... and it's so bad that perhaps it makes it good?.. whatever you may think of it, it'll make you laugh. :Smile: 

http://socialchaos.net/2012/06/05/helicopter-cat/

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## YesNo

I hope Jansen didn't kill his cat and say it was hit by a car. If he did that, it might go over the top. 

It kind of reminded me of Schrodinger's cat except this one is definitely dead.

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## mona amon

I don't think so. He seems to be genuinely paying it tribute by enabling Orville to fly after the birds, at least in death.  :Biggrin:  And anyhow it's far more imaginative and funny than the woman laying eggs onto a canvas. Eww!  :Ack2:

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## Lokasenna

> I've got y'all beat on this topic... this is a piece of art by Dutch artist Bart Jansen, it's his cat; which was hit and killed by a car, and was then stuffed and turned into a helicopter. It's a flying dead cat... and it's so bad that perhaps it makes it good?.. whatever you may think of it, it'll make you laugh.
> 
> http://socialchaos.net/2012/06/05/helicopter-cat/


Perhaps the most offensive thing about it is the look of permanent surprise on the cat's face...

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## mal4mac

Darn cats, however high you build a fence they'll always find a way to get into the garden.

Did you watch the video? I love the manic mieowing sound the helicopter blades make. I think he should take it on adventures, e.g., "Helicopter cat visits crufts".

Also, check out "Ostrich copter". The Ostrich looks so happy to be flying at last...

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## cacian

> Darn cats, however high you build a fence they'll always find a way to get into the garden.
> 
> Did you watch the video? I love the manic mieowing sound the helicopter blades make. I think he should take it on adventures, e.g., "Helicopter cat visits crufts".
> 
> Also, check out "Ostrich copter". The Ostrich looks so happy to be flying at last...


it is amazing how and art suddenly turns to animals  :Biggrin: 
however why would an ostrich wants to ever fly is beyond my wild imagination.

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## cacian

> I don't think so. He seems to be genuinely paying it tribute by enabling Orville to fly after the birds, at least in death.  And anyhow it's far more imaginative and funny than the woman laying eggs onto a canvas. Eww!


is there life in death?? :Aureola:

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## Iain Sparrow

> Perhaps the most offensive thing about it is the look of permanent surprise on the cat's face...


Yes, from my experience with cats, the look of *surprise* is most un-cat like.
Dogs often get that look, but for the most part cats usually look like they're in control. The cat-helicopter looks both surprised, and worried. But as they say, the dead don't care. :Smile:

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## cacian

> Yes, from my experience with cats, the look of *surprise* is most un-cat like.
> Dogs often get that look, but for the most part cats usually look like they're in control. The cat-helicopter looks both surprised, and worried. But as they say, the dead don't care.


ha talking about cat I was just thinking
the cat curiosity killed
or something like that??

anyhow
bad art can be quirky for some and so i am beginning there is no such thing only bad taste.
or maybe not.

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## Gilliatt Gurgle

> Gilliatt thank you fro your post.
> I mean this more then bad art. it is obsessive sick....





> Good find, Gilliatt. That "Art" is not only in bad taste, it's based on the artists false claim that it's a live specimen from DNAor is he just pulling our leg. You can't grow an appendage alone with DNA. You have to "grow" the whole person and then cut his ear off. Maybe that's all a part of this artist's definition of "freedom of expression".free to lie and free to cash in on further humiliation of a genius-artist. Of course, what I just said is already obvious to everyone so that makes bad art even worse. Furthermore, I find it to look more like a machine or science experiment with great lighting than art.





> I've seen worse than Van Gogh's ear, which is merely risible. The other day I read an article about a female 'performance artist' whose latest 'work' (called 'PlopEgg') involved standing stark naked on a platform in the middle of public square, pushing eggs filled with ink and paint out of her vaginal canal on to a canvas below.
> 
> http://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/wa...aint-out-of-he
> 
> http://www.theguardian.com/artanddes...art-milo-moire
> 
> Apparently it symbolises the 'casual and creative power of womanhood', but I'm damned if I understand it. Give me a nice Constable or Turner any day of the week...


**Friends, Litnet, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come with new means to seek answers, not praise it as bad art.
The wisdom of past masters lives after them
The knowledge is oft interred with the DNA
So let it be with Van Gogh, Phidias, Michelangelo,(Bernini, Vermeer, Caravaggio, and a host of others that have been referenced in adjacent threads courtesy of St. Lukes, Mortal and others)

** a twist on Shakespeare:
Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them
The good is oft interred with the bones
So let it be with Caesar. 


My posting of the Van Gogh ear wasnt intended to serve necessarily as an example of bad art, in fact the notion that the VG ear as art never made it past the drum. 
Please hear me out, what Im suggesting is that we have stumbled on the first step in a fascinating approach to obtaining objective answers to those eternal questions; what is bad art, good art, who is the best Rococo painter? 

At the moment all we have is a microphone and the VG ear, our entreaties will remain unanswered, without a voice they will, how shall we sayfall on deaf ears.
Imagine the possibilities. Taking this to the next step, we naturally need a voice; a great orator from the past, how about Ciceros vocal chords? 

To hear and to speak,
still leaves us up a creek
with no paddle, the current strain,
requires a smart brain!

A DNA cocktail is required, but alas I fear well end up debating whose DNA should be included. I suggest we start with a firm foundation with 60% of the brain mass being Michelangelos. Perhaps theres an eyelash that fell to the floor of the Sistine Chapel swept under the edge of the baseboards. Beyond Michelangelo, the skys the limit as long as it does not include that gal from England that created this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everyon...3%E2%80%931995


The brain trust might go something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZQ8SEQbpgQ

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## cacian

bad art
to depicts art a movement it has to move. 
otherwise it is not suggesting what it is arting.
art does not lie.

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## DocHeart

I just had a thought.

You seem like you post every little INSANELY INANE thing that comes to your head in a new thread, but this cannot be so. Surely you think of other inane things in 24 hours, which are probably so inane that you decide against creating a thread in which to express them. Would you mind sharing some of them -- in a new thread, of course, which you could name "The most inane things I think of". Such a thread would HAVE to be useful to some obscure, basement-dwelling, spotty-faced lard-arse of a scientist SOMEWHERE. Who knows, starting from this research sub-project, they could find the cure for fukcin cancer.

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## stlukesguild

How do you define bad art?

You can no more define "bad art" than you can "good art". Yes, there are formal "rules" in art related to (if we are speaking of visual art) color harmony, balance, composition, etc... but there are great works of art that break these "rules" and there are mediocre works that are perfectly structured according to these "rules". Ultimately, each of us as individuals determines what is "good" or bad" art based upon our experience and perceptions... and in the larger scope of things, "good" and "bad"... and even "great" art is determined by the collective opinions of the art audience as a whole. This collective opinion is most impacted by those who have the most invested in the appreciation, admiration, preservation, and promotion... even love... of art: art critics, art historians (and other academics; curators, gallery directors, collectors, well-informed art lovers... and most importantly, subsequent generations of artists. In other words all opinions on art are subjective, but some opinions are better than others. :Ihih: 

There are different forms of art/painting that I would deem "bad". There are works that are clearly amateurish:













Then there are those works that are by professional artists, but exhibit egregious lapses in taste or gross mistakes in drawing... to the point that I would also deem them "bad":









Then there are the works of art that I must admit (however begrudgingly) are quite good for what they are... but they simply are not to my taste:













from literature to lyrics to gadgetry to audio masonry can you tell which is executed to perfection and which is poor and literally bad?

Can you? Based upon my experience with literature, music, and most of all, visual art, I can certainly recognize a solidly composed and executed work from one full of awkward mistakes.

can you find an example of bad art as oppose to good one?

Contrary to your thoughts on the matter, this is very good painting...



... as opposed to any of the works shown above.

taste is personal and so there are many paintings I have seen that I can easy lable as not to my taste. 
does that mean they are bad?

To admit that something is not to your taste at the moment) is not the same as to judge something "good" or "bad".

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## cacian

stlukes and thank you for posting: )
harmony is the mother of all proportions.
can you explain why you think 
_the scream_is a very good painting?

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## stlukesguild

Edvard Munch was one of the first true "Expressionists". Where other artists strove to convey their perceptions of the visual world about them, Munch strove to convey his emotional responses. The artist wrote in his journal, "Just as Leonardo Da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected corpses, so I try to dissect souls."

The artist was admittedly a melancholy individual. Like many artists during this period of sexual liberation, Munch felt a sense of foreboding accompanying intimacy and sexuality. His father was a priest... obsessed with religion, "to the point of psychoneurosis," according to the artist. "From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born." Religious guilt was combined with a fear of Syphilis and Tuberculosis... the twin commonplace killers of the era. The artist's mother and his favorite sister died of Tuberculosis.

Munch painted any number of scenes of illness and death:


-_The Sick Child_


-_The Sick Child_ (lithograph) 


-_The Sick Room_


-_The Death Bed_


-_The Inheritance_

_The Inheritance_ is perhaps the most unsettling of these paintings, portraying a woman... likely a prostitute... sitting at a clinic with her sickly child, dying of Tuberculosis. We see the spatters of blood that the child has coughed up across his torso. 

When you take Munch's experiences of death linked to intimacy... the child "inheriting" Tuberculosis from its mother just as his sister had... and combine this with the growing fear of women as a result of increasing sexual liberation and growing women's rights, you will not be surprised by proliferation of images of women as sexual predators and _femme fatales_ during this period in history. Munch painted several images of "The Death of Marat"... which he made explicitly sexual in nature:





We also find images of woman as the vampire:



Other paintings such as _Ashes_...



... and the variations on _Adam and Eve_...





... convey a similar fear of women and sexuality.

One of the most shocking paintings for the time was that known as _The Madonna_:



The image portrays a woman in the throes of passion, eyes shut, her head thrown back... as seen by her male lover. Her head is framed by a red halo... or a passionate aura. Most disconcerting, at the time, is the fact that what is represented is an erotic scene in which the woman is on top... not unlike the woman as vampire. Munch is more explicit in the print version of the image...



... in which the woman is framed with tiny spermatozoa while in the lower left we see the result of lust/sex/intimacy: a sickly child quite like that in the painting _The Inheritance_.

_The Scream_ takes Munch's angst ("For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.") and applies them not only to sexuality... but the whole of nature. Munch, like Baudelaire, was in many ways an anti-Romantic. He saw Nature, as "red in tooth and claw..." The artist wrote of the inspiration for the painting:

"One evening I was walking along a path with two friends. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting... I felt a tinge of melancholy... the clouds turned blood red. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

The Scream is similar in nature to many of Van Gogh's late landscapes in which the whole of nature seems to undulate and writhe along with the artist's state of mind:







Munch employs the same "tilted perspective" employed by Degas in his painting _Le Viol_...



... and Van Gogh's hellish _Night Cafe_:



This tilted perspective creates an imbalance or sense of disorientation in all three paintings causing the eye to rush forward and back.



The harder geometry and strong diagonal of the man-made bridge is contrasted by the organic undulation of nature. The figure in the foreground (Munch?) is visually separated from his two companions in the distance. We wonder whether it is he who screams... or whether he is simply covering his ears in response to the piercing scream he hears. The handling of the paint... brutally crude and raw... perfectly suits the image and emotion the artist seeks to convey. The colors clash... but in a harmony of complimentary red/orange and blue. 

Whatever one thinks of the craftsmanship or technique, the artist has succeeded in creating a highly memorable iconic image that speaks of its age and the emotions the artist sought to convey.

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## Lokasenna

I enjoyed that. Thanks, St Luke.

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## mortalterror

> ... and Van Gogh's hellish _Night Cafe_:


What's so hellish about it? It looks like a cafe with typical chairs and billiards. It's got a lot of yellow in it, but I don't know that that should be considered a bad thing, especially since that was supposedly his favorite color.

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## Lykren

> What's so hellish about it? It looks like a cafe with typical chairs and billiards. It's got a lot of yellow in it, but I don't know that that should be considered a bad thing, especially since that was supposedly his favorite color.


The unbalanced perspective, the unnatural garishness of the coloration, and the facelessness of the people all work together to unsettle the viewer. In particular the clearly non-mimetic auras of light which the lanterns exude cause us to interpret the atmosphere of the room as something material, something thick, ponderous, and smothering, into which light itself settles and solidifies.

I'm sure Stluke can correct me if necessary, as well as answer your question far more fully.

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## mona amon

I guess each viewer responds differently. I don't find it particularly disturbing or unsettling. 




> Then there are the works of art that I must admit (however begrudgingly) are quite good for what they are... but they simply are not to my taste:


Never could understand Andy Warhol. StLukes, can you explain why the Campbell soup cans are good (even begrudgingly)?

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## mal4mac

I like Warhol's use of colour - it makes a comment on everyday urban environments, which were very grey & bland in the early 1960s in the UK & USA (maybe not in India!). Just looking at that Warhol shows up supermarkets as still very drab! I think Warhol deserves great praise for getting us to think about our everyday environment, one that includes soup cans, and how we might make it more colourful, more beautiful.

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## cacian

> What's so hellish about it? It looks like a cafe with typical chairs and billiards. It's got a lot of yellow in it, but I don't know that that should be considered a bad thing, especially since that was supposedly his favorite color.


I think it is the bright light the yellow effervescent. it is a night café. it is supposed to have low lights.
the characters seem out of place almost flanged onto their tables.
there is a malaise about the picture.
the clock signifies time ticking. when one has a good time one does not want to time to run out.

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## stlukesguild

What's so hellish about it? It looks like a cafe with typical chairs and billiards. It's got a lot of yellow in it, but I don't know that that should be considered a bad thing, especially since that was supposedly his favorite color.



I think what you must attempt to experience the painting as Van Gogh's peers might have. This work was painted only a few short years after the Impressionist shocked the audience with their blue and green shadows:



A painting such as Renoir's _Swing_ appears quite natural to us... thanks to the Impressionists. We accept the reality of bluish shadows and bounced colors... the manner in which the local color of an object is affected by light and objects around it. (Hold your hand over an object that is bright red or orange or yellow and you will see how the color "bounces" into the color of your flesh.) In Renoir's painting, the artist plays up the bluish shadows on the young lady's dress, and the yellowish color of the male figure in the background. At the time Impressionism was new, such effects were deemed by many among the critics and audience as garish.



One of Renoir's finest nudes portrays a woman sitting beneath a tree. The sunlight streams through the leaves causing her flesh to be dappled with areas of light and shadow. The bluish shadows outraged one critic so much that he declared that the young lady looked like her flesh was rotting or gangrene. 

Prior to Impressionism, all oil paintings were realized in the artist's studio. A painter might make sketches or even watercolors from nature... but the finished oils were completed in the controlled environment of the studio with its artificial light. By working plein air, the Impressionists were able to carefully observe the effects of light and color... which the exaggerated to a certain extent.

The Post-Impressionists, including Van Gogh, were profoundly inspired by the experiments of the Impressionists with regard to color... but they were more concerned with an expression of emotion than of visual observation. Painters such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Bonnard exaggerated color even further than the Impressionists, employing it as a means of conveying an emotional state. The colors of Van Gogh's Night Cafe would have been deemed far more ghastly than anything attempted by the Impressionists.

Van Gogh's painting, as Lykren suggests, employs a harsh contrast of complimentary reds and greens. The artist "bounces" lime greens into the faces of the patrons, the floor, and the halos of light. One has to wonder whether the artist's choice of color, intended to lend an overall sense of sickliness, did not owe something to the color of absinthe... Van Gogh's drink of choice. The light of the room appears overly bright illuminating the floor with a brilliant halo and causing halos around the gas lamps. One senses that this, and the tilted floor, suggest the artist's unbalanced drunkeness. 

StLukes, can you explain why the Campbell soup cans are good (even begrudgingly)?

Pop Art came upon the scene after Abstract Expressionism and the 1950s. Much of Europe lived under a black and gray cloud of the Post-War period... and in spite of America's youth and self-confidence, the US was struggling with the Cold-War and McCarthyism.


-Jackson Pollock


-Wiilem DeKooning


-Robert Motherwell


-Franz Kline


-Mark Rothko

Pop Art started in Britain where younger artists became enthralled with the image of the youthful United States and its glittering, glamorous image of Rock & Roll, race cars, Hollywood celebrities, big houses, bigger cities, and general excess. They began to explore images drawn from advertising and popular culture:

British artist Eduardo Paolozzi began employing collaged images drawn from pulp fiction and men's magazines, commercial ads for products such as Coke, etc... as early as 1947:



Richard Hamilton pretty much struck upon every major theme of Pop Art in his little collage, '_Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?_' from 1956: movies, cars, comic books, sex, music, outer-space, commercially packaged products (especially food), television, etc...

On the American side of the Atlantic, the experience was a bit different. American artists, such as Warhol... but also Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Tom Wesselmann, etc... were inspired by the grand scale and aspirations of Abstract Expressionism. Rosenquist had worked for some time an a billboard sign painter, and Warhol (as well as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg) had worked on a theatrical scale in designing New York store window displays. All these artist applied the theatrical scale and confidence to their paintings.

Warhol was important in reducing his focus to a single "iconic" image. He recognized that the icons of the time were no longer kings and queens and gods and goddesses... but rather Hollywood celebrities:



Pop Stars:



and commercial packaged items:







Where Warhol has become increasingly influential today in is his manner of working. Warhol adopted the working manner of the commercial world. He had a factory and employees who did most of the labor... even coming up with ideas (like graphic designers). Warhol's role was as the idea man... and the CEO overseeing all the work. By the mid-to-late 1960s "Warhol's" art was produced in the same manner as a Hallmark card. Like a fashion designer, his name or logo was often all the "artist" had contributed to the work. This manner of creating art wholly negates the artist's touch... and the fact that much of the creative thought that occurs in a painting or sculpture, happens during the actual process. But Warhol's manner of working has been embraced by contemporaries such as Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, and numerous others... for better or worse (worse in my opinion).

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## mortalterror

With all due respect Stluke, I don't buy that Van Gogh's contemporaries would be shocked or find the painting hellish. There are always some who are seeming shocked at everything and I think those outliers often get dug up and used as the primary example of a time. I think most people just looked at Renoir's Swing or woman under a tree and thought "Oh, well that's nice." The overall disturbance a piece of art makes in society can be a little overblown by the historic record. For instance, I don't believe there was actually a riot after the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I hear that and think, "Really? Those millionaires in their top hats and scarves, and bourgeoisie women in expensive ball gowns erupted out of the theater and started flipping over cop cars and setting things on fire like soccer hooligans? How many people died?" I think public taste has always been a tad edgier than many suppose, and though the past is often presumed to be highly conservative quite the opposite was often the case.

When I think Hellish or unsettling today, I think of HR Giger. When I think of unsettling, dark, scary or hellish for that time period I think of certain paintings by Franz von Stuck.
  
And then then in the past there was the work of Henry Fuseli

works by Goya

and actual hellscapes by painters like Pieter Bruegel the Elder

and Hieronymus Bosch


I can't see anyone even remotely aware of art history describing the Van Gogh cafe as hellish.

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## stlukesguild

With all due respect Stluke, I don't buy that Van Gogh's contemporaries would be shocked or find the painting hellish.

Your beliefs are irrelevant. The shock felt by the audience of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists is a fact that can be easily corroborated by reading any number of the critical commentaries of the era. 

There are always some who are seeming shocked at everything and I think those outliers often get dug up and used as the primary example of a time. I think most people just looked at Renoir's Swing or woman under a tree and thought "Oh, well that's nice."

You can always believe whatever you want. It doesn't make it true. Monet and Renoir struggled financially for a good decade or more until audiences began to accept their work. Degas and Manet were better off from the start as a good deal of their works fit within the ideals of the Salon... but also due to inherited wealth. Van Gogh and Gauguin did not begin to attract an audience until after they had died. 

The overall disturbance a piece of art makes in society can be a little overblown by the historic record. For instance, I don't believe there was actually a riot after the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

A conspiracy theorist, eh?

Your list of scary art works come from another time and place than late 19th century Paris. Franz von Stuck is the closest to Van Gogh... a Symbolist... or essentially a late Romantic. His work is not far removed from Munch in intention. Personally, for unsettling art of the ear, I prefer Egon Schiele...



Max Klinger...



James Ensor...



Alfred Kubin (whose strongest works can't be shown here)...



Fernand Khnopff...



Baron von Bayros (none of whose prints can be shown)...

and of course, Munch.

But lets face it, art usually doesn't make a mark... or shock the audience... through the usual juvenile means akin to a contemporary slasher film. 

Fuseli, Goya, Brueghel, and Bosch were certainly masters of horror... from another time and place. Goya and Fuseli are Romantics... and Romanticism is as laden with monsters, ghosts, and ghouls (real or imagined) in art as in literature. Bosch is one of the most unique figures in the history of art... and Breughel was somewhat his follower.

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## stlukesguild

Returning to the focus of the OP... namely "Bad Art":

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## cacian

> Returning to the focus of the OP... namely "Bad Art":


could the subject rather then the style represent bad art?
and I agree the above representation are not very pleasing but I believe there is a fine line between the last picture here and the scream painting.
the faces seem to be of the same type.

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## Lokasenna

> Returning to the focus of the OP... namely "Bad Art":


I'd forgotten about _Our Lord the Orangutan_ - thanks for making me chuckle...

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## mortalterror

> Your beliefs are irrelevant. The shock felt by the audience of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists is a fact that can be easily corroborated by reading any number of the critical commentaries of the era.
> 
> You can always believe whatever you want. It doesn't make it true. Monet and Renoir struggled financially for a good decade or more until audiences began to accept their work. Degas and Manet were better off from the start as a good deal of their works fit within the ideals of the Salon... but also due to inherited wealth. Van Gogh and Gauguin did not begin to attract an audience until after they had died. 
> 
> A conspiracy theorist, eh?
> 
> Your list of scary art works come from another time and place than late 19th century Paris. Franz von Stuck is the closest to Van Gogh... a Symbolist... or essentially a late Romantic. His work is not far removed from Munch in intention. Personally, for unsettling art of the ear, I prefer Egon Schiele...
> 
> Max Klinger...
> ...


I'm sure that some newspaper accounts were highly negative, but I also believe that the present historiographical paradigm can be slightly revisionist and selective taking outliers for averages. For instance, we tend to think of Victorian society as sexually uptight, so much so that they would put clothing on chair's legs; but I read in either a Norton or an Oxford Anthology of English literature that there were more brothels than churches in either Dublin or London. Or you have the contemporary revisionist works of Howard Zinn cherry picking complimentary accounts of Native Americans however inaccurate or unlikely they may be to depict Columbus and other Europeans in the worst light possible.

When I read the old and even the ancient works I see men much like our modern contemporaries, who routinely make vulgar jokes and have a very high threshold for impropriety. There's quite a bit of that in the Greek, the Latin, the French of all ages. Sometimes you get censors who crack down, but they are often cracking down on things which are popular with the general public and offend a minority. Whether it's Mozart making poop jokes, or The Earl of Rochester making dildo jokes, Chaucer making adultery jokes, I think it's fair to say that some things are perennial and universal. Think of how dirty the Decameron is, Gargantua and Pantagruel, or parts of Don Quixote. I don't think modern sentiments are necessarily modern. And with all the things happening at the time in France, I just don't see the average person being shocked by a slight alteration in painting. The sophisticated people who'd read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont, and Joris-Karl Huysmans probably wouldn't bat an eyelash at that Van Gogh cafe painting or Renoir's work.

And so what if a few artists struggle. Artists struggle. Almost nobody meets with immediate success. Van Gogh probably would have died rich if he hadn't offed himself at such a young age.

Your point about the slasher flicks is good. Did you know that for several decades whenever a big horror movie comes out the promoters spread the rumor that the film is so scary that people have had heart attacks and died while watching it? Of course, it's true. Whenever you get a large group of people together for anything on a big enough scale someone will have a heart attack. I was once at a county fair watching a performance by Carrot Top and an old broad keeled over. But they circulate a few photos of ambulances outside a theater and inform a couple of newspapers and they get their free advertizing. The publisher of Chuck Pahlaniuk's book "Haunted" tried the same thing when he was on his book tour a few years ago.



> "Guts" and Haunted
> 
> While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel, Diary, Palahniuk read to his audiences a short story entitled, "Guts," a sensational tale of accidents involving masturbation, which appears in his book, Haunted. The story begins with the author telling his listeners to inhale deeply and that "this story should last about as long as you can hold your breath." It was reported that forty people had fainted listening to the readings while holding their breath.[22] Playboy magazine later published the story in their March 2004 issue and Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing to publish.[citation needed] On his tour to promote Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories during the summer of 2004, he read "Guts" to audiences again, bringing the total number of fainters up to fifty-three (and later up to sixty while on tour to promote the softcover edition of Diary). In the fall of that year, he began promoting Haunted, and continued to read "Guts". At his October 4, 2004 reading in Boulder, Colorado, Palahniuk noted that, after that day, his number of fainters was up to sixty-eight. The last fainting occurred on May 28, 2007, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where five people fainted, one of whom fell and hit his head on the door while trying to leave the auditorium.[citation needed] Since then audio recordings of his readings of the story have been circulated on the Internet. In the afterword of the latest edition of "Haunted", Palahniuk reported that "Guts" had been responsible for seventy-three fainting events. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Palahniuk


I read the short story in question that supposedly caused all of those "faintings" and did not find it scary at all. At least it's no scarier than Poe's Raven. Sometimes good publicity gets written up as history.

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## stlukesguild

I'm sure that some newspaper accounts were highly negative, but I also believe that the present historiographical paradigm can be slightly revisionist and selective taking outliers for averages. For instance, we tend to think of Victorian society as sexually uptight, so much so that they would put clothing on chair's legs; but I read in either a Norton or an Oxford Anthology of English literature that there were more brothels than churches in either Dublin or London. Or you have the contemporary revisionist works of Howard Zinn cherry picking complimentary accounts of Native Americans however inaccurate or unlikely they may be to depict Columbus and other Europeans in the worst light possible.

Of course history always has its biases. Modernism promoted certain biases in art as well anyone else. I think of the manner in which not only were artists who didn't fit the narrative of Modernism dismissed or simply written out of the picture (Edward Hopper, Grant Wood, George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Balthus...to a certain extent, Klimt, the German Expressionists (not formalist enough... too much the Expressionists, rooted in Romanticism... and not French), the California School of figurative painters (David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn), Fairfield Porter, etc...) but in any number of instances, the artists were vilified. The most extreme example, of course, being William Bouguereau. As the head of the French Academy, Bouguereau was portrayed as this close-minded ogre. What is ignored is the fact that Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Delacroix, Ingres, Turner, Klimt, and any number of other innovative masters had also exhibited in the official academies. Yet beyond the unquestionable craftsmanship of his paintings, Bouguereau was also an important teacher, educating thousands of students including the American, Robert Henri, the German Lovis Corinth, and Henri Matisse. Bouguereau was also one of the first artists to push for acceptance of women in to the art academies... and equal recognition of them as artists.

When I read the old and even the ancient works I see men much like our modern contemporaries, who routinely make vulgar jokes and have a very high threshold for impropriety. There's quite a bit of that in the Greek, the Latin, the French of all ages. Sometimes you get censors who crack down, but they are often cracking down on things which are popular with the general public and offend a minority. Whether it's Mozart making poop jokes, or The Earl of Rochester making dildo jokes, Chaucer making adultery jokes, I think it's fair to say that some things are perennial and universal. Think of how dirty the Decameron is, Gargantua and Pantagruel, or parts of Don Quixote.

Think also of how often such "vulgarities" were censored. Are Mozart's scatological works among his acknowledged masterpieces? Is Lord Wilmot that well known... even among those with a solid knowledge of literature? Certainly sex and dirty jokes were not new. What was "shocking" to the peers of Manet when he presented Olympia for public view was the manner in which he drew attention to the hypocrisy of the upper classes that frequented brothels or financially supported Degas' dancers in return for sexual favors. Everyone knew what was going on... but you weren't supposed to talk about it. That's what outraged the readers of _Nana_ or _Madame Bovary_ as well.

Bouguereau's paintings could be as erotic as anything by Courbet, Manet, Degas, etc... if not more-so.



The difference is that this eroticism is hidden under a perfumed facade of respectability. Yes, the scene shows a bevy of nubile young women cavorting about nakedly... but its really a portrayal of a Greco-Roman myth... or such was the thinking. If you take away the respectable veneer, it makes many people very uncomfortable. The idea that sex or lust are in themselves a valid theme of art is unsettling to many... especially if you believe in the ennobling spirit of art. 

I don't think modern sentiments are necessarily modern. And with all the things happening at the time in France, I just don't see the average person being shocked by a slight alteration in painting. The sophisticated people who'd read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont, and Joris-Karl Huysmans probably wouldn't bat an eyelash at that Van Gogh cafe painting or Renoir's work.

Again, whether you believe it or not, the criticism of the time, the audience responses, and the financial struggles for decades suffered by many of these artists are facts. Certainly, they can be exaggerated. Contemporaries who argue in favor of the more extreme examples of the avant-garde make claims as to how Picasso and Van Gogh were ignored... but the reality is that in most cases it took the audience a decade or so to absorb the innovations of Impressionism, Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, Stravinsky, Bartok, Wagner, etc... 

And so what if a few artists struggle. Artists struggle. Almost nobody meets with immediate success. Van Gogh probably would have died rich if he hadn't offed himself at such a young age.

Almost certainly. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and Picasso and Matisse all did quite well after a decade or so of solid mature work. The same was even true of the Abstract Expressionists. The idea that artists always struggle however...? Is this true of Raphael, Michelangelo, Rubens, Ingres, Titian, Veronese, etc...? Certainly not. These artist were recognized as powerful new artistic voices right from the start. Modernism, however, presented a greater shift away from the past... a greater challenge to the audience. 

Your point about the slasher flicks is good. Did you know that for several decades whenever a big horror movie comes out the promoters spread the rumor that the film is so scary that people have had heart attacks and died while watching it? Of course, it's true. Whenever you get a large group of people together for anything on a big enough scale someone will have a heart attack. I was once at a county fair watching a performance by Carrot Top and an old broad keeled over. But they circulate a few photos of ambulances outside a theater and inform a couple of newspapers and they get their free advertizing. The publisher of Chuck Pahlaniuk's book "Haunted" tried the same thing when he was on his book tour a few years ago.

 :FRlol:

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## cacian

stlukes should art makes one think they are part of the drawing or out?

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## mortalterror

I'm also reminded of the Degenerate Art Exhibit in Nazi Germany.



> One million people attended the exhibition in its first six weeks.





> The exhibition lasted until 30 November 1937,[2] and 2,009,899 visitors attended it, an average of 20,000 people per day.[2]





> The exhibition was held simultaneously with the Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung ("Great German Art Exhibition"), which was to show the more classical and "racially pure" type of art advocated by the Nazi regime.[2] That exhibition was hosted near Hofgarten, in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst.[2] It was described as mediocre by modern sources, and attracted only about half the numbers of the Degenerate Art one.[2]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_Art_Exhibition

The next time you exhibit your works, Stluke, you should stand outside the hall saying things like "Why, I never!" "Disgraceful!" "It's obscene." "Nothing but a bunch of smut peddlers!" and "I'm never coming back here again so long as they continue to hang such dirty pictures."

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## Iain Sparrow

> I guess each viewer responds differently. I don't find it particularly disturbing or unsettling. 
> 
> 
> 
> Never could understand Andy Warhol. StLukes, can you explain why the Campbell soup cans are good (even begrudgingly)?



They are not good.
Pop Culture is all about timing, and Andy Warhol had perfect timing. It's disposable art for a disposable generation. Besides which, it was never really about his art; he was an odd fellow and it was his enigmatic personality and celebrity status that sold his work.

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## Aiken

Hi Cacian,
Informative post and link but I think art is not at all bad, it is just the angle which make it bad or best. Vision from immature artist and mature artist!

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