Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Why does modern art suck?

Because the "artists" are.

Sheesh!

we're in the post-modern era now, and moving forward.

it's pretty clear that the old sayin' has merit: "whatever thou doest is the whole of the law." (and that applies to art as well).

They have moved from quality to shock value and political statement.

Yes, something happened on the way to the 20th century, the camera became more and more common starting in the 19th century. Before the camera, the highest standard of art was what we now call photo realistic, but when that can be captured so easily by a camera, artists had to come up with other notions such as impressionism, abstraction, minimalism, and cubism that circumvent the camera.

Anyone remember Piss Indian and Piss Christ, andrew serrano got natl endowment of the arts govt money to create despicable trash.

I like some modern art. Much of it just sucks.
Same for a lot of modern things.
But a lot of old stuff sucks too.
Good stuff can be had in "different"..........but "different' doesn't automatically make it good.

Not a fan of impressionism.

art isn't always what we think it is, is it?

a starving artist certainly dances to the sound of a different drummer.

and art like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Women are the only works of art!!!

Art is a reflection of our society. In what I would consider the pinnacle of western art, the art, music and architecture represented not the shortcoming of mankind, but a striving for better and to leave a legacy for future generations.

Todays art represents the opposite, and sadly represents a goodly portion of our society.

"good" art brings a good, or even higher price.

bad art, not so much.

is art for sale?

Just as poems should rhyme, art should actually look realistic.

Modern art now (in my opinion) has nothing whatsoever to do with the art itself. Rather it is what the artist was feeling, experiencing, suffering, fill in the blanks at the time of its creation.

Case in point, at the Crystal Bridges Museum In Bentonville, AR (supposedly one of the most modern and up and coming museums in the US based almost solely on its “Green” footprint) there Is a 5’ x 5’ canvas painted completely gray. Supposedly the artist had a sad story or childhood. The interpretation is the art I guess.

Any time I view art I expect it to say something to me. When I look at most modern art, all it says to me is WTH? I do not need an artist explaining his work. It either speaks to me or it does not.

The answer is complex, I think this long article goes into depth on that very question:

https://www.artrenewal.org/Article/Title/art-scam

"Our 20th century has marked a period that celebrated the bizarre, the novel and the outrageous for its own sake. The defining parameter of greatness to Modernism is "has it ever been done before," "is it totally original where there is no derivation from any former schools of art," "does it outrage," "does it expand the definition of what can be called art?" I propose to you today that if everything is art then nothing is art. If I call a table a chair have I expanded the definition of the word table? Would this make me brilliant? If I call a hat a shirt have I expanded the definition of hat? If I call a nail a hammer, have I expanded the definition of the word nail? Am I now a genius? If I call screeching car wheels great music have I expanded the definition of music?

Or in reality have I perpetrated a fraud on the people who wanted to buy tables, hats, nails and music and instead got chairs, shirts, hammers and a headache.

Modernists have not expanded the definition of art at all. What they have done is attempted to destroy art, created icons that represent this destruction, and then called these icons the thing that they have destroyed i.e. works of art. A urinal or an empty canvas, hung on the wall of a museum, are especially pure examples of this. They are not works of art but symbols of the victory of the Huns, who have sacked the bastions and forums of our culture. It would be like saying that the Roman Forum today is far greater architecture than it was when all the buildings and streets were intact."

.....

"Modern and post-modern art is nihilistic and anti-human. It denigrates humanity along with our hopes, dreams, desires and the real world in which we live. All reference to any of these things is forbidden in the canonistic halls of modernist ideology. We can see that their hallowed halls are a hollow shell, a vacuous vacant vault that locks their devotees away from life and humanity, while stripping mankind of his dignity. It ultimately bores the overwhelming majority of its would be audience who can find nothing with which to relate.

It has been called exciting and "avant-garde," but the sad truth is that it is incredibly humdrum and monotonous. Whether you glue together pieces of plastic or shards of glass, assemble metal scraps or piles of feathers. Whether you dribble little dollops of colors or drag fat uneven slashes of black. Whether you compile a mountain of paper or wrap the statue of liberty. The effect is always the same: meaningless primitivism. Modernism is art about art. It endlessly asks the question ad nauseam: what is art? What is art? They believe that only those things that expand the boundaries of art are good; all else is bad. It is art about art. Whereas, all of the great art in history is art about life."

...........

"If someone with intelligence takes the time to understand advanced mathematics and physics, computer science, or biogenetics, there is something there to understand. If you take the time to understand Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Colorfield, Pop-art, Op-art etc. you will find a clever con game perpetrated by a sophisticated gang of public relations experts that figured out a great tactic to make millions.

The underlying philosophy is totally without merit, and amounts to nothing more than a misuse of language, which is sufficiently complex as to be usable in the wrong hands to justify nearly anything. If you read their discussions of what makes a Rothko or a de Kooning or Jackson Pollock painting great, you discover an enigma wrapped in a paradox and embedded in a quandary. With looping cadences of illogical chaotic thought, usually vocalized by individuals with flowery credentials next to their name, the average listeners, who lack self-confidence in their understanding of the arts and are intimidated by their inability to understand, usually meekly back away. Or they protect themselves by proclaiming that they do fully understand, so that they too may feel part of the anointed. The effect of "prestige suggestion" could never be seen more clearly. Many of us here have said it countless times before, but apparently it needs to be said yet again.

The emperor has no clothes!"

it's just awful when good art gets set at price too high to sell.
is it ego? too much pride?
not knowlegeable of the market?
greed?
wishful thinking?
good art, priced right, literally flies off the shelves, right?
unseen value by the rank & file?
if i couldn't sell it for more than i paid for it, why buy it in the first place?