Museum of Bad Art in Massachusetts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

This museum's motto is: "This art is too bad to be ignored." And visitors' comments usually sound a little different: "This art is too emotional to be forgotten." And both of these statements are equally true for the "Museum of Bad Art" (Museum of Bad Art, MOBA), whose branches are located in several locations in the US state of Massachusetts.

We will tell about this most interesting cultural object in this article.

How the museum came about

Well, first, of course, there was a collection. One Boston antiquarian named Scott Wilson once showed his friends some paintings - an eccentric got them, rummaging through discarded junk. However, the paintings were so entertaining that Wilson, along with his friend Jerry Reilly, became seriously interested in collecting these "masterpieces among non-masterpieces" and soondecided to create a small museum.

By the way, the collection was replenished: the price of paintings of this kind at flea markets was negligible, or they were given as a gift to the museum, having heard about its existence, or "masterpieces" were found among the discarded junk.

The first exhibition settled in the antique dealer's apartment, but then, due to the expansion of the number of paintings, moved to the basement of the Amateur Theater in Dedham, a suburb of Boston. It happened in 1994-1995.

Then there was a room at the Somerville Cinema… Unfortunately, due to the limited space for the exhibition, visitors could see no more than 30-40 works at a time. On the days of receptions and exhibitions, sometimes about a hundred people gathered, and there was absolutely not enough space for placing works and for all the guests.

As Boston's largest newspaper, The Boston Globe, pointedly pointed out at the time, the artwork is placed in close proximity to a toilet, the sounds and smells of which very likely "help maintain an even humidity."

Since then, the museum has had several galleries and branches. There are more than 500 canvases in the vaults where the "strange paintings" are kept.

Exhibitions

The point, however, was not only in the narrowness of the premises: the creators were actively looking for non-traditional forms of demonstrations of their collection. So, at the very beginning of the existence of MOBA, paintings were hung on trees in the forest on the Cape Cod Peninsula, in the easternmost tip of Massachusetts. Its organizerscalled the exhibition "Art from the Window - Gallery in the Forest".

The next exhibition was Awash in Bad Art, which can be translated as "Bathing in Bad Art". 18 paintings were featured in this show, they were covered with a moisture-proof film and placed in a car wash so that guests could contemplate them from the car window.

In 2001, a show was held, designated as "Naked Buck - Nothing But Nude", where canvases of the corresponding subject were presented.

Criterion for selecting paintings

It's not the first scribbles of an inept artist that get into the vault of the "Museum of Bad Art", as it might seem. Criteria for selection of works are quite severe. In short, it's "the best of the worst".

The collection, as the curators of the museum assured, will never contain children's drawings or pictures made for tourists, as well as deliberately distorted copies of famous works.

We are looking for works that appeared in an attempt to make some kind of breakthrough in art - but something went wrong in the process -

says the current head of the museum, Michael Frank.

Therefore, if there are works in the collection that remotely resemble well-known masterpieces, then these are paintings with their own zest, the author's interpretation of a well-known plot. Like the Mona Lisa.

At the same time, neither the presence nor the lack of artistic skill among the creators of new works is the main criterion for the "Museum of badart". The main thing is that the painting or sculpture should not be boring.

The most famous masterpieces are not masterpieces

As the traditional museum legend says, the first painting that Wilson dared to pull out of a pile of garbage was the later and most famous - "Lucy in a field with flowers" (as the creators of the museum themselves called it). For some time it hung in the house of Wilson's friend Jerry Reilly. It was after the discovery of this work that the collection began to purposefully replenish.

As the brief description suggests, this is

oil on canvas; author unknown; painting found in trash in Boston.

"Lucy" consistently attracts the attention of the media and visitors. Here is what is written in the museum's promotional booklet about this work:

…the movement, the chair, the swaying of her breasts, the subtle hues of the sky, the expression on her face - every detail combines to create this transcendent and compelling portrait, every detail screams "Masterpiece!"

The painting "Juggling Dog in a Grass Skirt" was donated to the museum by the artist who painted it, Mary Newman from Minneapolis. She said that she used an old canvas already used by someone for this painting. The image is based on a caricature of a dachshund, toy bones for dogs from a pet store, and an image of a grass skirt that Mary saw somewhere.

In general, paintings with animals, in particular with dogs, are very popular in the museum. Take a look, for example, at this also "stellar" work, which is held in the hands of the curators of the collection. It is called"Blue Tango".

The next most famous painting is "George on the Chamberpot on a Sunday Afternoon" (acrylic on canvas; artist unknown; donated by J. Shulman). It is believed that this work is made in the style of primitivism and pointillism, a trend in neo-impressionism that arose at the end of the 19th century. For connoisseurs, it resembles the work of the French artist Georges Seurat.

The following review was once left about this picture by one of the visitors:

Someone slipped into the bathroom while I was looking at this picture and began to urinate loudly in the toilet. The booming sound of urine splashing while watching "George" brought life to the picture, and when the drain sounded, I cried.

It was also said that some important person was allegedly depicted in the picture. According to the assumption made by the creators of the Ig Nobel Prize, the prototype of the portrait is nothing more, nothing less than former US Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Conclusion

The "Museum of Bad Art" (sometimes called the "Museum of the Ugliest Pictures in the World") is featured in many guidebooks around Boston. It is believed that the creation of this particular collection became a source of inspiration for other collectors - those who decided to devote themselves to "the best bad art." For there is in these strange paintings something exciting, elusive something, hovering between kitsch and a masterpiece. What art professors talk about with contempt, and an article in the eminent edition of the NewThe York Times, which tells about the museum's paintings, begins with the words "It's almost funny…".

The museum has come under fire for promoting anti-art, but the founders say it was created to celebrate the artist's right to fail. For, working and trying again and again, trying to create an ideal, the artist in his most imperfect creations demonstrates this impulse, despite his mediocre mastery of the craft.

Whether it's true or not, but the museum, which exists and, apparently, has not been left without visitors for almost a quarter of a century, is certainly interesting as one of the most unusual art objects of our time.