4 ms·
Ugliness Is Underrated: In Defense of Ugly Paintings
- yiyus 8y agoThis reminds me of something an artist friend of mine worked on. She tried to make really ugly works, as ugly as she could. Surprisingly, this is extremely difficult. In the article, the curator of the Museum of Bad Art says: "People are always posting, I like it. Or even, I like this painting—it shouldn’t be here.". My friend tried to do something that everyone would say "That is horrible". But there is always someone who likes it, who find beauty in the ugliness or tell you how cool it is. It turns out making an ugly painting was not easier than making a beautiful one. I think the Museum of Bad Art is a great idea.
- mcguire 8y ago"Frank prefers to think of these paintings as “badart,” one word, no hyphen. Badart is not the inverse of “good art”; it’s the inverse of “important art.” Some might call these pieces outsider art, and in the past, many of them could have been termed primitive or art brut." Somehow, I don't think the "Museum of Bad Art" matches the rest of the article, which includes Bosch and Leonardo's grotesques. And then, there's "When Leonardo da Vinci began his search for beauty through interrogating a “series of disgusts,” as the historian Walter Pater terms it, he began by painting deeply misogynistic images (perhaps as a way to air out his disgust for heterosexual sex) and people with diseases and disabilities." Walter Pater wasn't a historian. He was an art (or perhaps cultural) critic.