"Ugly paintings hang in every major museum, and ugly work has been accepted as part of the canon. But while ugly art crosses genres and time periods, it can still be useful to think of ugly art as falling into its own unified aesthetic category... Ugliness is about discomfort. It makes us feel a little unsettled—not because we’re looking at a depiction of something unsettling, like a gory religious scene or a photograph of a war zone or a painting of a warted nose, but because we’re confronted with a sense of disorder.... There’s a sense of brazenness to unintentionally bad art—it embodies desire gone awry. And being able to enjoy ugly art isn’t simply about making fun of it. It’s also about being able to sit in discomfort and recognize mistakes. Ugly art demands a sense of looseness; it asks you to dip into a slippery state of mind where you can hold multiple beliefs simultaneously. The piece can be both ugly and unappealing, and it can also delight and appeal for those very reasons. It can pull you closer—you want to know why this ugly art was made, what it means, and what the artists were thinking. And if you let yourself get unbalanced enough, you might just find yourself a little bit in love."
From "Ugliness Is Underrated: In Defense of Ugly Paintings" by Katy Kelleher (The Paris Review).
The essay is about painting, not politics, but it would be easy to connect this to Trump. All that ugliness... and yet... if you let yourself get unbalanced enough, you might just find yourself a little bit in love.
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"The essay is about painting, not politics"
Blame the left, but everything's about politics (which is the means by which the continues its march to control us all). And everything for which the left stands is ugly.
John Stossel, when at ABC (03/11/05), "You Call That Art?"
https://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=563146&page=1
"During the Russian Revolution a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The instrument for this was created just days before the October Revolution, known as Proletkult, an abbreviation for 'Proletarskie kulturno-prosvetitelnye organizatsii' (Proletarian Cultural and Enlightenment Organizations)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_art
It’s also about being able to sit in discomfort and recognize mistakes.
Mistakes? Discord might be what she means, but I'm wary about her possible error.
"Ugliness is about discomfort. It makes us feel a little unsettled"
Rejecting a waste of time and effort is good way to stay settled.
"There’s a sense of brazenness to unintentionally bad art—it embodies desire gone awry."
But how are we to tell if it is unintentional? Most "art" after 1900 seems intentionally "bad," bad with purpose.
One purpose being to "unsettle" the petty bourgeois and proles, and reinforce the self-regard of the anointed.
With intellectuals standing on the sidelines, "arguing" that art (or comedy, or whatever) should unsettle you.
Of course, only some kind of unsettlingness are officially approved.
Ugly paintings are deplorable and irredeemable and should be removed. But we will keep Melania, Ivanka and Kellyanne.
Call me a crazy iconoclast, but I prefer BEAUTIFUL paintings to ugly paintings.
You know, like oceans, and sunsets, and church steeples and meadows with flowers, and angels and cherubs, and beautiful women, and rugged landscapes, and noble warriors, and sea villiages - all that good stuff.
So, I guess I'm not a dark, existentialist, communist, bisexual, Euro-gothic idiot.
If modern art is a reflection of the current culture, what does it say that ugly paintings are celebrated? The dominant culture is Leftist, obsessed with ugliness.
God have you been to the new downtown Whitney Museum of American Art? Absolutely beautiful space juxtaposed with some of the ugliest art that's ever been produced.
Maybe that's what the Left likes - the juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness. The face tattoo is really popular. Before that, gauging your ears was.
Zoolander's Derelicte campaign was just before its time.
You know, like oceans, and sunsets, and church steeples and meadows with flowers,
Eshley had conceived and executed a dainty picture of two reposeful milch-cows in a setting of walnut tree and meadow-grass and filtered sunbeam
There's never a bad time for Saki: The Stalled Ox
Nonsense. Ugliness is about a cheap and easy emotional effect.
A piece of art elicits an emotion, a feeling. The easiest emotion to access is disgust, discomfort. The easiest place to be is in despair, unhappy, discontent. All you have to do is let it happen. Take your drug, scream at your kid or boyfriend, quit your job and run out of money. Easy, very easy. Not fun, not pleasant, not uplifting, it is hard that way, but easy to let it happen.
Art that reflects that space is easy as well.
That is why it is all over the place. A bunch of lazy, useless, shallow and ridiculous people make up the 'art' scene, curated by overeducated, overprotected and shallow fools who have no meaning in their life.
I don't think that these people could make anything beautiful or awe inspiring. Their art reflects who they are.
You can't always get art you want. But if you try sometimes you just might find yourself a little bit in love with an unappealing ugly art of the deal.
Just ask Mr Jimmy.
Contemporary artists may not be as technically accomplished as their predecessors, but they are masters of BS.
I saw Kathy Griffen today at the reception
In her glass was a bleeding head
She was practiced at the art of deception
Well I could tell by her blood-stained bed
Sorry, did that embody desire gone awry?
What do you call an ugly guy with no arms and no legs hanging on the wall?
Bravo, Meade!
When Alex Jones starts saying crazy shit about Trump and/or conservatives, I'm sure the left will give him his free speech back.
The beautiful is ugly because we envy it. The ugly is ugly because of Nature's bias.
"You know, like oceans, and sunsets, and church steeples and meadows with flowers, and angels and cherubs, and beautiful women, and rugged landscapes, and noble warriors, and sea villiages - all that good stuff."
In other words, bland wallpaper.
The point of inflection in Western art is the First World War. It is easy to see in any art museum. Check the dates on the ugly stuff.
Althouse and the piece in question are talking about allowing some degree of ugliness (but not foolishly mixed metaphors.) Maybe it's a matter of "how much?" How much ugliness has a good effect? For instance, cathedrals had gargoyles. The first chapters of the Bible are about a perfect garden which has something ugly in it for which the owners were unprepared. King Lear and Macbeth - why is tragedy great art? Symphonies include discords which are resolved. But what if you have gargoyles without a cathedral, sin without redemption, annalistic tragedy i.e., repeated stories of bad behavior without insight into why the tragedies happen? What if your music is the discords without the resolution? Will the members of a society who expose themselves for years solely to such unresolved artistic discords then readily recognize an inner obligation to do the moral thing in difficult situations? Did Hollywood expose Weinstein? Did the internationalist left fight Stalin? Does Black Lives Matter call for an end to the slaughter in Chicago which is reaching the level of the Iraqi war body count? Have people been morally somewhat deafened by immersion in amoral art just as people who listen to a lot of loud rock suffer a degree of hearing loss.
"During the Russian Revolution a movement was initiated to put all arts to service of the dictatorship of the proletariat"
Most of this wasn't ugly at all. And if ugly its an eye of the beholder thing.
Propaganda wants eyeballs, and effective propaganda gets them.
Trump is an almost perfect instrument pour epater les bohemes.
It’s too much of a stretch for me to move from Ms. Keeleher’s aesthetic commentary to thinking about Politics. Thank God!
That said, hers is an interesting enough conjecuture, but I’m not buyin’
As an artist, it’s fine to try and fail at creating a painting of purpose – happens all the time. It’s another thing all together to not even really try and slap some paint on a rectangle.
For the most part, you can tell who’s had some training (or in rare instances is just a flat out visual genius) and who just didn’t have anything better to do for an afternoon.
I’m sort of surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) that our host with her formal art training at a really good school won’t be a bit more pedantic on the topic. I’m certain Althouse makes assessments of a piece’s classical elements design by second nature: flow and purpose of line, unity of shape and color, effective choice of perspective, deliberate use of positive and negative space, harmony of light & shadow, etc.
I wonder if there is a distinction between ugly, traditional art and modern art? Modern art can be ugly but there is a lot of art that is just bad. I think it's worse than modern art.
"The piece can be both ugly and unappealing, and it can also delight and appeal for those very reasons. It can pull you closer—you want to know why this ugly art was made, what it means, and what the artists were thinking. And if you let yourself get unbalanced enough, you might just find yourself a little bit in love."
Really, just get a grip. The prose takes off, one unmoored generalization piling on top of the next, until it just spins, spins, spins into lala land. And the piece isn't about ugliness in its usual connotation. The referent is to works in museums, indeed, one museum in particular. It's been selected and is now displayed, and by that very fact, demands a response from those who bother to visit.
Picture yourself trying to sit through a bad musical performance or a really dreary play. Anyone imagine you'd find it "delightful and appealing" in its gawd-awful tone deafness? Me neither. Just get up and leave. But don't try to pretend it was what it clearly wasn't, even if you really, really want to show off.
The point of inflection in Western art is the First World War. It is easy to see in any art museum. Check the dates on the ugly stuff.
Not true at all. Lots of beautiful paintings and my favorite style of architecture/design - Art Deco - came in the first half of the 20th century.
The Chrysler Building, Frank Benson, Hassam, Empire State Building, Miami Beach's Art Deco district.
The ugly didn't hit until 1965 or so. The Boomers.
Richard Dolan @12:19:
Exactly. Well said.
Plus lots of beautiful poetry and literary works of art - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc.
Get what you're saying - The Great War caused a great disruption in Western Culture - but the war actually made conditions for some new masterworks - The Lost Generation. TS Eliot, Hemingway, etc.
The Depression created the conditions for American Gothic and Hopper's works.
John Steurt Curry - halfway between Art Deco and Classicism.
The ugliness started with the rise of Anti-Americanism and radical chic.
Go to the downtown Whitney. It's a travesty. You can see the change as you travel through the timeline.
Actually, I've been thinking of this in terms of music. The gym I just started going to plays the most godawful contemporary music. Or "music" if you will. I swear they have only about 15 rhythm tracks they just plug into every single song. Chuck in a bit more canned stuff, do an autotuned vocal, have a dopey rapper do his thing a couple times, and shove it out the door.
I've never worn earbuds working out before but I'm starting to consider it.
What do you call an ugly guy with no arms and no legs hanging on the wall?
First base?
It's bizarre and very adolescent to deliberately seek out the ugly to disturb others. It's like breaking the old porcelain during the cultural revolution; power and envy drive out beauty and talent.
If celebrating ugly art can lead to a sense of liberation, how about living under an ugly political system? Maybe only then can one achieve true liberation.
This defense of ugliness in art demonstrates the shallowness of progressive thinkers. They are clueless as to the consequences that follow from their world view.
It can be hard to remember why ugliness matters...
...especially near closing time, after a few hours of drinking.
...especially near closing time, after a few hours of drinking.
Deval Patrick knows what I'm talking about...
"you want to know why this ugly art was made, what it means, and what the artists were thinking"
I do not. Why would I?
Roger Scruton: “Why Beauty Matters?”
Documentary portraying the British philosopher's essay on the neglecting of beauty by contemporary arts and life, as well as the urge to restore it according to its essence.
Creating beautiful art takes talent. Selling ugly art takes a good agent.
Ugly is defined as, what Justice Potter once said about porn, "I know it when I see it". Ugly is just another obscenity produced by those who add little value to our short time on this planet.
I love this post and then, my second reaction is, “What will I do when she stops blogging” and get worried about that.
Ugliness is why I never hung up my Otto Dix posters.
Robert Cook: In other words, bland wallpaper.
Cookie, your opinions on art, like Ms. Kelleher's, are so tediously conventional and clichéd.
Yours have the advantage of being succinct, however.
Ugly ought to be an adverb.
The piece can be both ugly and unappealing, and it can also delight and appeal for those very reasons. It can pull you closer—you want to know why this ugly art was made, what it means, and what the artists were thinking. And if you let yourself get unbalanced enough, you might just find yourself a little bit in love."
I doubt this is what she had in mind, but I immediately thought of the infamously bad "Ecce homo" restoration that's now a tourist attraction.
https://nypost.com/2016/03/12/infamous-botched-jesus-painting-now-a-major-tourist-attraction/
(For some reason I can't get blogger to accept the html link.)
Think of a painting as a woman - some are nice-looking, some are pleasant, some are bland (like Cookie's interior wallpaper), some are unattractive, and some are stunningly beautiful.
Now, who would you rather look at, play with and sleep with? The bland? The unattractive? The dark, depressing, gothic ugly?
Of course not. The sane, sentient man will migrate towards the beautiful. This even includes friendly reclusive types like Robert Cook. Even he, secretly aims for the beauty - although we don't know what his batting average is. It may be hovering well below the Mendoza line, if you get my drift.
I've forgotten where I was going with this.....
I buy plenty of paintings at garage sales, they're mostly old-timey western scenes: a Navajo woman tending white blobs near a giant turd, a miner out in the saguaros with a gigantic dog, robots climbing into a kiva, etc., but they also address other classic themes like the gnome having a heart attack.
Out: "A thing of Beauty is a Joy forever"
In: "Embrace the Suck"
@madAsHell, we call him "Arthur" because he's rather formal.
Anthony said... Or "music" if you will. I swear they have only about 15 rhythm tracks they just plug into every single song."
"Objective proof that modern pop music has degenerated, and the reason why it happened" Capitalism market failure.
A friend stopped overnight with his 19 year old son who was all like, so to speak, "Hey can you make us a copy of that stuff?" after playing a bunch of 50s and 60s songs, Buck Owens, and some polka to round things out.
The Fountainhead (the book, not the movie) offers the best explanation of ugliness in art I have yet seen. Elsworth Toohey and his ilk were deliberately trying to sabotage true beauty by aggressively lifting up mediocrity for praise. It was premeditated and purposeful.
Rand got it back in the '40s.
Today, art is considered to be anything that a self-described artist creates. Virtuosity and vision no longer required.
"Objective proof that modern pop music has degenerated, and the reason why it happened"
Yes, I have seen the video.
Very interesting.
Seems to be a constant progression downwards from an 18th-19th century peak, though there could be some argument about what was popular at the time (and it would have been an extremely fractured market) vs what music has actually survived.
Twin Towers coming down, planes and buildings burning with people inside ...
Ugly or beautiful?
Make your choice, reveal your soul.
Went to the Chicago Institute and was directed to their huge impressionist collection. Wandered around with the crowd, looked at beautiful paintings and then turned the corner and found the modern art collection. The change was electric. Monet, perfect and beautiful, was boring. Not because it was ugly but because Monet is everywhere. Hotel rooms, classrooms, mousepads, everywhere. After a while, even Monet becomes boring. The modern art collection showed something new, something different. Some was ugly, some was funny, some ridiculous, some pretentious, some beautiful...but they made me think more than the impressionist collection did. Maybe they made me think things that art isn't supposed to make me think, I don't know. As a museum experience, though, the modern art was preferable. Fresh air.
Ugly, as well, is in the eye of the beholder. Many likely see Francis Bacon's work as unappealing and distasteful. Yet others find depth and originality in his bleak, unsparing style. Who can say about such things? It's really a matter of personal taste.
Some elements of beauty are objective: symmetry, harmony of color, use of light, composition etc. There are technical measurable aspects of beauty as beauty is a expression of order.
I've been reading "Mozart's Starling," recently by Lyanda Lynn Haupt (quite good), and read a quote by Mozart about music which I think applies equally well to art:
The passions, whether violent or not, should never be so expressed as to reach the point of causing disgust; and music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, attributed, The Journal of Eugene Delacroiz
I wonder now if he would even consider most modern art to be art at all. I certainly don't find a lot of value to a great deal of it. I want something that pleases the eye, just as Mozart talked about something that pleased the ear. We're people made to enjoy beauty, whether in listening or looking.
Sparrow said...
Some elements of beauty are objective: symmetry, harmony of color, use of light, composition etc. There are technical measurable aspects of beauty as beauty is a expression of order.
The principles and elements of art provide a heuristic for analysis. The application of that heuristic is value-neutral.
All these words, and I'm not sure how anyone defines ugly.
That Otto Dix print at the link for example, is a disturbing image, but beautifully drawn and a technical marvel of printmaking. The badart examples are generally goofy and unthreatening.
Ugly is not a useful word.
Webgrandma: Hard to argue against the exquisite mastery of Mozart. Yet, 20/21st Century music has benefited greatly from Wagner, Shoenberg, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartok, Debussy and many others who explored the depth of power in atonality and dissonance.
@prairie wind -- I know where you're coming from.
One of the real drawbacks of blockbuster shows is that walking through galleries and galleries of work by the same artist can just be deadening.
My family is full of artists and my view is that ugly art is a way for artists who aren't very talented to feel important. They pretend that their work is "important" and "transgressive" and "powerful" when it is really just ugly and often reflects their inner ugliness. Sad.
SDaly said...
Ugly art is boring art. Ugliness is all around you, and the argument that "it makes you think" is ridiculous. You need to be in a museum looking at a pile of trash to think? Go outside in any decent sized city and reflect on the intentional and unintentional ugliness all around you.
I have the opposite reaction. I see so much that is interesting and beautiful in the urban landscape that I'm not sure how artists compete.
The transition in fine painting from realistism to fucking bizarre coincides with the mass appeal of photografism. Since timeless modern painting can't be derivative, ugly is forced to rear it's head. Almost all Successful fubar paintings are quite rare because they must also have sublime design and a plasticity to the forms. Cy Twombley is the exception that additionally proves the non-derivative rule.
I'm with you Henry.
Walter Murch is the dude of industrial ugly .
industrial ugly
Chuck in a bit more canned stuff
That isn't nice and bound to be ugly. Let him out.
The reason why there are so many ugly paintings today is there are so few talented artists.
" I see so much that is interesting and beautiful in the urban landscape that I'm not sure how artists compete."
You have to capture it. Most is transient, a glance, a split second. I run around everywhere with a camera, I have been obsessive this way since I was little. Some people prep and plan, and take what they expect to take. Me, I just try to grab what God sees fit to show me, if I can see it fast enough. It doesn't work for me very often. The planners do better, but I am too lazy for that, and I never know what I want to see before I see it, if that makes sense.
A real artist, that can paint from life, can do better than those photographers that prep and plan.
The exhibits section of my old museum pulled a wonderful prank. They took the old spray booth backing boards, with numerous colors and shapes where they overlapped in the booth, and placed them on the floor of a juried exhibition. The responsible curator went crazy trying to figure out who the 'artist' was because he/them/ze wasn't listed in the exhibit catalog. They let him know the morning of the opening. He wasn't happy.
A real artist, that can paint from life, can do better than those photographers that prep and plan.
I find the unplanned, transient, and incidental more beautiful yet.
I find it funny that people have such strong opinions about art when almost no one cares about it.
Art is burdened by the idea of the beautiful.
No one asks television to be beautiful. The best shows are rudimentary spectacles of violence, horror, and clumsy titillation.
Into the Badlands isn't about beauty. Nor is Brooklyn 99.
Yet they are compelling to watch. Ugly and beauty has nothing to do with it.
"Ugly art is boring art."
Perhaps most, but certainly not all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hieronymus_Bosch_-_Triptych_of_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_(detail)_-_WGA2526.jpg
OBAT BIUS CHOROFORM DI BOGOR
OBAT BIUS CHLOROPHYLL DI BOGOR
OBAT LIQUID SEX DI BOGOR
OBAT BIUS TRIVAM DI BOGOR
OBAT SLEEPING BEAUTY DI BOGOR
CHLOROFORM DI TANGERANG
CHLOROPHYLL DI TANGERANG
LIQUID SEX DI TANGERANG
TRIVAM DI TANGERANG
SLEEPING BEAUTY DI TANGERANG
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