I Love Bad Art (And So Should You)
Art Basel in Miami Beach 2015
By: Dr. Mark Goodman and Daedrian McNaughton
Premier Guide Miami
I love bad art. I love art that is so bad it abrogates one’s sanity to regard it as art. I love delusions of skill and talent smothered in nothingness. We all do. You can’t ignore it; you can’t understand it. You find nothing redeeming in it, but it envelops you. It swallows you without ever trying, your brain swollen from the intellectual oxygen it denies you. It is a guilty pleasure, a homage to our carnivorous nature of eating things bad for us. We love the bad, we covet the bad even as we protest its waste as a reputable piece of culture.
Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. His art incorporated tactical skills, an understanding of shades, colors, geometrical structures, mathematical modeling that few humans over our 50,000 years of existence could reproduce. He was the pinnacle of great art. There are hundreds of his kindred amongst the billions of us humans, geniuses of the visual arts whom can claim a uniqueness of form which is apparent to all and immediately so.
But bad art is on today’s menu . What is bad art? It’s like porn, I can’t really explain what it is but when I see it, I know it is frivolous boner material for late night consumption. But, I have a test. Bad art is that which is regarded as art merely by virtue of it be denoted as such by those whom espouse their credentials as art aficionados. It is art because it is labeled so by being in an art gallery, a museum or in the hands of someone so rich that he/she must know something we don’t know. It is a “piece “ if placed casually outside by the curb or randomly found in the trash would be regarded as appropriately placed, seen as nothing more than the superficial physical aspects it contained.
Yes, if I see rotten bananas, or a large white piece of canvas with an obscure dot at its frayed edge, or a few hoody angry words on a pink poster, or a pile of animal parts piled on themselves, I aint thinking Leonardo. I am thinking garbage, until they are hung or gathered in a fine art gallery that I just paid good money to enter and drink their champagne.
In the art gallery, the white canvas is the world, the dot the loneness of humans in the vastness of our numbers at the withering edges of our earthly existence. The bananas that rot is our depravity of human selfishness, an accepting of food waste when others suffer with hunger. The angry black words adorned by pink, is the duplicity of pleasant epitaphs used to obscure the simmering hatred of man’s unfairness. The perverse display of bones and animal tissues reflect our disregard for creatures whom we steward, a mountain of half life where individuality of spirits are vanquished to the herd.
Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you have eliminated the impossible, what is left no matter how improbable in the truth”.
You see bad art is not bad, it is our nature to assume more than what actually is. Some people really believe Kim Kardashian is interesting. Humans are dreamers; we project our thoughts and feelings in a manner that goes beyond “just the facts”. We imagine. We invent; we excel beyond our programming. But, we need a catalyst. We need something or someone to tell us there is more than meets the eyes and ears in a given moment. This is what gives us steam to project our humanity onto the world. We need labels to be placed by decree (museums, art galleries expert opinion yada , yada), a sign that it is ok to look beyond the physicality of a “piece”. Bad art makes humans the talent, the talent of the perceiver.
In this way good art and bad art are no different. Good art requires little of our participation. It stands as art even at the edge of vacant lot spewed with trash. Bad art requires us; it demands us to be whom we can be, not whom we are. It compels us to transform our perceptions of time, space, light, beauty, ugliness, hate and love into a Picasso. The designation of randomness, of the mundane and of the simple to reproduce as “art” is not deception or trickery. It is our humanity.
So come enjoy the good and bad art at this year’s Art Basel. It is all good.
Miami Beach, December 3 – 6, 2015
Opening hours
First Choice (by invitation only)Wednesday, December 2, 2015, 11am to 3pm
Preview (by invitation only)
Wednesday, December 2, 2015, 3pm to 8pm
Vernissage (by invitation only)
Thursday, December 3, 2015, 11am to 3pm
Public days
Thursday, December 3, 2015, 3pm to 8pm
Friday, December 4, 2015, 12 noon to 8pm
Saturday, December 5, 2015, 12 noon to 8pm
Sunday, December 6, 2015, 12 noon to 6pm
Miami Beach Convention Center
1901 Convention Center Drive
Miami Beach, FL 33139
For more information, please visit https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach
Photo credits: Art Basel