The Museum Of Bad Art Exists

okwhatever.org/topics/things/terrible-paintings

That terrible painting you saw on the curb the other day might have looked like trash to you, but to one Boston-area museum, it’s a piece of fine art.

You won’t find any Mona Lisas at the Museum of Bad Art, where all that is weird, wacky, and awful gets a nail in the wall. Instead, you’ll find paintings of ferrets in brothels, women riding lobsters, and anatomically incorrect nudes, all divided up into cleverly-titled categories such as “Poor Traits,” “Look Ma, No Hands!” and “Oozing My Religion.”

“We’re not collecting kitsch or schlock, you know, dogs playing poker, things that are produced commercially like that,” Curator-in-Chief Michael Frank told OK Whatever. “We collect pieces that were made in what I believe was an honest attempt to make an artistic statement, to create real art, and clearly something has gone wrong, either in the execution or the original concept.”

Frank — who is also a professional musician and balloon artist — is part of a group of art-loving volunteers that help run the museum, which was founded in the early 1990s and located in the basement of an independent movie theater in Somerville, Massachusetts, for the last decade.

okwhatever.org/topics/things/terrible-paintings

Attached: bad art ig 4.jpg (382x382, 71.53K)

I should toss paint on a canvas, call myself a "liberal progressive" and sell it for $10,000 at a NY auction then!!

Why not?…..

You've called me a progressive liberal before, and I've sold complete crap paintings for $16,000

got it

The criteria here isn't 'that something went wrong along the way, either in the execution or the concept'

The real criteria in this case is people who didn't know how to sell artwork

Because it doesn't have to be a Rembrandt to charge client thousands of dollars for one of your paintings, and it's really not that hard to sell a painting to a client. It's just about confidence.

In summary, not only were these people no good at illustrating or painting, but they were equally as bad at marketing themselves and convincing somebody the artwork had value.

They didn't believe in themselves

So of course nobody else believed in them either

The irony about art:

It has whatever value you say it has

Nothing more and nothing less…..

I have painted really complicated large exquisite tedious artwork that was close to perfection when I was younger and naive, and I didn't believe in myself or my artwork enough, and I foolishly asked for too little in payment…

Conversely, I have charged exorbitant amounts of money for really small easy quick artwork which didn't take very long to execute, and the clients never scoffed at the price…..

It's not about the 'art of the deal'
It's about the 'deal of the art'

If you want to be an artist, that's EASY
if you want to survive creating artwork, HARDER

professional commercial artists don't have time to sit around creating artwork and hoping it sells one day

I don't paint ANYTHING without a 50% down payment, and the other 50% deferred balance due immediately upon completion of the job

So you're selling something that doesn't exist yet

You're selling a hypothetical

And that's not easy to do, unless you know how to do it

To be a really good professional commercial artist, you must first be a really good CON ARTIST

CON = CONFIDENCE

You have to make your client confident that you can back up your claims

You have to give them confidence you are capable of executing the artwork you are about to sell to them

Then, once you receive your 50% down payment, that's when you better be a good fucking artist

However there is a unique phenomenon associated with being a professional artist:

When you are younger and you're not even selling your art yet, you are passionate about the ART

then once you start charging money things begin to change

Eventually you become passionate about MONEY

Then you turn around and realize you don't even care about the art anymore

I was so happy when I did my first piece of professional artwork, charging $20 to illustrate something for my first grade teacher.

I was elated and proud !!

when I was 12 I got paid $3,600 to illustrate my first magazine cover, and I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life, to be a professional illustrator….

By the time I was in my mid-20s charging $16,000 for a mural, I began to lose my passion for the art, and instead began focusing on how many square feet of mural I was painting, and dividing it into the $16,000, etc etc etc

Some of the shittiest art work I've ever done in my life was when I got hired by Warner Brothers, and I was being flown around the country and booked into really expensive hotel suites, because I was focusing on eating the very best most expensive food, buying really expensive clothes and drugs, living in really expensive high rise apartments, buying really expensive presents for my girlfriend, but I had absolutely no passion for my artwork and I didn't care if it was good or not.

These days I don't care about the money OR the artwork

These days I really don't care about anything

I have no passion for anything anymore

I don't even like music anymore

I hate the human race… I fucking hate people…

I hate this planet

I hate this goddamn planet and every human being that lives on it, and I don't give a fuck what happens to me or anybody else anymore.

The only thing that makes me happy is helping animals and seeing that they are happy

There was a time I had become so good at selling artwork (that didn't exist yet) I was on fire, I was a lightning bolt, I was unstoppable !

I would actually make cold calls on the telephone, speaking to business owners I had never met, and getting them to agree to a 50% down payment of $3,500 within a 2 or 3 minute phone call…

And I would never even go follow through

I had become addicted to the SALE

My mother was a professional executive recruiter for one of the biggest firms in America, and she saw my sales techniques, and told me I was the best salesman she had ever seen in her life…

She wasn't just saying that because I was her son

She was correct.. I had become the best salesman

I was so addicted to selling my artwork, that I was just looking for the 'high' of convincing people into investing thousands of dollars in one phone call, but I never even went to pick up the money or start the job…

I was just amped, buzzed as fuck, on a natural surging high, simply from realizing my ability to manipulate people out of money at the drop of a hat.

I didn't care about the art anymore

And I didn't even care about the money at this point

I only cared about the SALE

CLOSING THE DEAL

Just hearing them say "yes" was good enough

And I would never go meet them or follow through with the deal I just sold…