Aristotle once said, “there is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man.” While foolishness might be tucked away in the brain, it has the capacity to escape time and space because it is so detached from reality it has no direction or purpose whatsoever. When we see these pieces masquerading as contemporary art, we don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Some artists go out of their way to create controversy through their bizarre, uncomfortable, or even insipid works of art. Some pieces leap over the boundary to the ridiculous and lose the name of art forever. The tendency to exaggerate and cause a stir can succeed sometimes or utterly fail. These foolish works have transformed the aesthetics of contemporary art into something corny, devoid of meaning, desperate, and purposeless.
It is important to remember the moments where contemporary art was ripped to pieces and called a hoax that mocks the true work of artists. These works sabotaged the aesthetics of art and caused a blight on the journey all artists take to transcend history and form part of mankind’s legacy.
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5. Anyone can call themselves a Great Contemporary Artist
Two young men who are far from being called artists entered two museums in London: Saatchi Gallery and Tate Modern. Both lied down in front of one of the blank walls, closed their eyes, and held a small ball in their mouths.
The one to blame for the hoax is not the so-called-artist but the audience itself.
They might have tried to pass this off as performance, but it failed miserably because it was senseless, unjustified, without an aesthetic or true motive. This duo achieved its goal: many visitors would stop take pictures and videos and these men weren’t even part of the museum. A sophisticated setting was unnecessary, ignorance did all the work for them. Numerous spectators would gawk and admire this so called performance that had absolutely nothing to do with the museum nor the works exhibited there.
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4. Trash gets thrown out
The installation art from 2015 called, When Are We Going to Dance Tonight? was nothing more, nothing less than a party represented with empty bottles of champagne and cigarette butts strewn all over the flower. This was staged in The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, Italy by the artists Goldschmied & Chiari. The final result? They completely lost their work due to a confusion that in retrospective was entirely logical. Just like the conclusion of any great party, a pair of cleaners were simply doing their jobs and they swept away the bottles, cigarette, and party streamers. They literally took the trash out.
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3. When they call your bluff
A group of publicists, creative thinkers, publicists, and actors came together in LifeHunters and put to the test the art experts and connoisseurs of contemporary art. They were asked to value a painting of IKEA worth only US$11. The most important element of this experiment was that this painting would hang in a famous art gallery, alongside paintings valued at millions of dollars.
Many great contemporary artists are great masters, masters of buffoonery and deceit.
The artist of this painting was called IKE-Andrews and it was the only information provided to the audience, which by the way was completely false. Visitors to the gallery were asked to give their opinion on the painting and many waxed lyrical about its composition and beauty. “I believe this painting is worth at least US$2.5 million,” one of the viewers guessed. This proves that no matter the origin of the work, contemporary art has become a platform were people can strut around giving value to pieces that clearly lack any of it.
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2. An accident can be now be called art
Seventeen-year old TJ Khayatan visited the MoMA in San Francisco with his friends and decided to play a prank. He left a pair of sunglasses on the floor and stood back to watch the reaction of the visitors. What would have been considered an accident in the first place, of someone forgetting their glasses, became the most polemic piece of art in the exhibition.
Contemporary art does not demand creativity, talent, or professionalism.
Like bees to honey, people gravitated around these forgotten glasses; some even lied down on the floor to get a better angle for the photographs. This tongue-in-cheek prank continued as Khayatan posted the reactions of people on his Twitter, and he clearly showed that people think anything can become art if you attach the word “contemporary” next to it.
-1.Playing with the crossword became the most expensive work of contemprary art.
Insipid works can create a lot of confusion, and no one was more confused than a 91-year old lady who visited Neues Museum in Nuremberg and ruined a work of a contemporary artist, which included an unsolved crossword. Arthur Køpcke is the artist behind Reading-work-piece, which is a collage that included a crossword with the instruction “insert words.”
True art inspires respect, not mockery.
This visitor only complied with the instructions left behind on the collage; for her it was simply a crossword, when in fact it was an installation valued at US$90,000. After all, she did nothing wrong, she only followed instructions on this dubious piece of work masquerading as art.
What is art? We’ve all scratched our heads at this question. One thing is for certain: true art inspires respect and profound feelings, not entertainment and mocking laughter. What is funny can be graceful and light, but art will never seek to make a fool of itself.
If you are an art lover we invite you to look at these 51 paintings that will become part of your mind’s gallery. If you admire Frida Kahlo, read this guide that will teach you how to be a little bit more like her: bold, courageous, and passionate.
Reference:
Revista Código