There's a lot of truth to that, except for what you said about "mediocre looking" which suggests that maybe you've missed something. Not all contemporary art is

There's a lot of truth to that, except for what you said about "mediocre looking" which suggests that maybe you've missed something. Not all contemporary art is trying to be "retinal" (Marcel Duchamp's word for the visual) and beauty or visual impact has been something suspect for years, sometimes coming into style, sometimes fading. It is largely a trivial, social, reputation-driven thing, funded by idiots with pretensions... But that doesn't mean there isn't an intellectual side to it, pursued by people who actually care about art and what it could be.