It's art, but is it bad?
(TimeOut Magazine)
On the steps leading down to the urinals in a small arthouse cinema in the unremarkable suburb of Dedham, museum patrons are closely scrutinising “Sunday on the Pot with George”, a detailed, technically adept pointillist painting by an unknown artist. They smile, agreeing that it demonstrates proficiency in an artistically demanding style. But it’s hard to get away from the subject matter: a middle-aged fat man sitting regally on the toilet, his difficult-to-paint feet dipping tantalisingly but conveniently off the canvas. This breathtaking piece is a prime exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Bad Art.
Louise Reilly Sacco, a founder member of the museum, is explaining to me how the exhibits come to find their spiritual home. Mostly it seems to be the eagle eyes of the museum Directors, scouring the rich mines of charity shops and other people’s rubbish. In some cases, the work will have been recommended by friends of the artist who, on seeing the finished piece, can suggest only one place for its unique charms. Then she tells me of the art student: “She and her colleagues had all left their paintings outside to dry, the night before an exhibition. In the morning, all the works had been stolen….apart from hers. She came to us.”
Before seeing the exhibits, I had expected bad art to equal bad taste, but this is patently not the case. There is palpable sincerity here, an unsullied vision coupled with a degree of artistic control that has just at some vital juncture….missed the point entirely. Take perennial favourite “Pals” (pictured). The museum coquettishly bills it as “A blissful portrayal of deep friendship. The monkey with the Bette Davis eyes chases the blues away, bringing peace to the clown as he grooms his five o’clock shadow.” It’s a noble idea, earnestly but hilariously executed, and one that you know the artist just had to get down on canvass.
I ask Louise if anyone can be a bad artist, or if a painter had ever purposely tried to be exhibited. She says that the esteemed curators can always tell. “What we look for isn’t anything definable, but it must show signs of what we call…relentless creativity”. This, then, is the museum’s stock in trade. However, bad things happen when the irresistible urge spills over, resulting in graphic mutations as the artists struggle to limit their masterpiece to just one concept. An innocent sparrow assumes the face of a smiling schoolgirl, an understandably startled dog has the top of its head transformed into a snowy mountain, a ballerina pirouettes, all too gracefully for one with the head of a poodle.
Surveying the other exhibits, intriguing patterns emerge – the obscured or blatantly missed out hands, the inability to render the hindquarters of animals and the perversions of nature as trees line up in military formation and rivers suddenly disappear into the ground. But this is no simple freakshow of botched efforts. The paintings are poignant in their honesty, daring in their irrational use of colour, ill-advised in their choice of frame.
Leaving the gallery, I’m once more transfixed by the enigmatically placid ‘George’ on his pot. And as I’m drawn into the picture, noticing the fine detail in the stitching of the towel draped modestly around his ample midriff, I remember a testimony from the visitor’s book; “…the reverberating sound of urine splashing…bought the painting to life…when the dénouement of the flush sounded, I wept.” Just try looking for THAT kind of emotion in your Tate Modern. MOBA is a celebration, a triumph of will over talent, a joyous manifestation of the museum’s ethos – “Know what you love, paint what you feel.” And thankfully not a single disapproving nod to pool playing dogs or blue-faced ladies. After all, I may not know much about bad art, but I know what I don’t like.