“Art too bad to be ignored”

“The pieces in the MOBA collection range from the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush. What they all have in common is a special quality that sets them apart in one way or another from the merely incompetent.”

http://www.museumofbadart.org/collection/

The latest Triple A online Visual Arts workshop is in full swing and participants have been visiting the Museum of Bad Art to make some selections, and then explain their choices.

The exercise clearly relates to Theory of Knowledge, aesthetics, taste, culture, and the questions that are raised when making judgements about something when there is so little contextual information.

Sometimes it’s a ‘gut’ feeling – ‘I hate it!’ or ‘I love it!’ – and sometimes a long explanation justifies the final decision that the piece is not actually bad art at all – its good art and it has no place on the Museum of Bad Art!

Asking students to choose the best (or the worst) from the MOBA collection, and explain their reasons, can also be an exciting and productive exercise for visual arts and ToK classes. (How do we make judgments about art? What constitutes a valid judgment? etc)