Art That You Hate

Salvador Dali

Could you be more specific, R1?

Oh dear. The title should read "got" instead of "go".

Yeah no to the dripping clocks etc of Dali.

How can you not like melting clocks? That painting was a work of genius.

Andy Warhol murdered modern art and sold its corpse to the bankers

I like your feisty comment, R6.

Norman Rockwell

I understand why Dali is important and why some people may like his work. But something about his paintings is scary and creepy to me.

All street art that isn’t traditional graff

An Old Man and His Grandson by Domenico Ghirlandaio

Yeah, yeah. The little boy loves his grandfather despite the man's hideous nose. Whoopee. That doesn't change the fact that I don't want to look at that hideous nose. Only beautiful people in paintings, please.

I don't hate it, but Keith Haring's art is overrated, IMO. So, when I see it, I have a bad reaction to it.

A Woman with a Dog by Fragonard

Just too frivolous and decadent for my liking.

Thanks to all posters. Please keep them coming.

Most conceptual art. Just not my thing at all.

I also hate Georgia O'Keefe and Mark Rothko. I really hate that Edouard Manet painting with the homely naked woman on a picnic.

I understand, R12. The art you've posted just looks like many variations on a successful formula.

Ah, Monet! How I loathe him. What a sap!

I hate Renoir paintings, especially female figures (no, I'm not a frau-hater). Those little dabby brushstrokes and cheesy subjects.

I so much prefer the work of his contemporaries: Cezanne, Manet, etc.

Anything painted by Jon McNaughton.

Is this meant to be a companion thread to that “Who’s the Bad Art Friend” thread that I’ve been ignoring for a week?

I do like the Annie Leibovitz photograph of Keith Haring, though.

Jackson Pollock

Wolf Girl by Kiki Smith

Jasper Johns and his flags.

That is a true discovery, R23. Thanks.

Thomas Kinkade's mass market paintings repel me. They are invariably kitschy, garish, and saccharine. I used to have a co-worker who collected his crap. She's a tacky bitch, so that's no surprise.

Norman Rockwell, another painter of idealistic or sentimental themes, I can understand. Kinkade just sucks.

I completely agree, R22. Pollock is overrated. No matter how many colors he used, it's all paint drippings — a gimmick that does not involve real craftsmanship or artistry.

Norman Rockwell is a respected artist. He can draw, can use color, can compose. This Rockewell drawing actually looks like a Toulouse-Lautrec or even a Gaugin, IMO.

Even something heinous like Chick Tracts. If you look at the actual drawings, there's some skill there.

Basquiat. Retard scrawls. The Millennials going overboard with their bizarre worship of anything black ("We're woke!"). The Emperor's new clothes.

R28: I think Rockwell is underrated. He was dismissed by art critics in his lifetime. They thought he was too sentimental, particularly his covers for The Saturday Evening Post, That's unfair because he also excelled at painting subjects of a serious nature. Respect for his work came later in his career.

I’m disappointed by the Michelle Obama portrait because the technique and overall effect is interesting, but actual resemblance to the subject is lacking.

Balthus - for obvious reasons.

Anything Damien Hirst

Works by Klimt scare me — they seem to be a harbinger of the awful excesses of of postwar life, dissolution, and the horrendous fate awaiting Austrian and German Jews.

Another vote for Jasper Johns. His art looks like something you would buy at Target and then use to furnish the leasing office at an apartment complex or a three star hotel room.

.,.,

Paul Cadmus' paintings.

Coarse, vulgar, people drawn as ugly caricatures. Cringeworthy. Surely he wasn't able to make a living selling paintings like "Coney Island".

Have you seen his Seven Deadly Sins in the Met, r37? I think his work is grotesque but I still like it.

I like Lucien Freud generally but not this painting of him and Caroline Blackwood

R38, when the subject is the Seven Deadly Sins, then grotesqueness is appropriate. I agree that he showed talent and inventiveness when he came up with the Sins paintings. I just think he could have made social commentary in paintings like "Coney Island" with a lot more subtlety, but that obviously wasn't his style. I feel like I'm being hit with a sledgehammer. He got the last laugh because the "Coney Island" painting is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I wonder how much they paid for it.

This is hilarious. Sometimes the link at R40 links to "Paul Cadmus" paintings and sometimes it just links to "Paul" paintings at the Met.

Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Damien Hirst - such grotesque, ugly images. And stupid “Banksy.”

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

No way. Banksy is awesome. ^^^^^^^

Anything by Lens Dunham’s dad Carroll.

Yikes, OP’s example is scary!

Seems like Cadmus and Lucian Freud achieved something that they intended. Both can draw. I get the creeps looking at Hieronymus Bosch, but he was talented and got his point across.

I actually like Cadmus’ grotesques - he always has one or two hot guys in there amidst the more unfortunates - Coney Island is no exception.

Jamie Wyeth. Riding on the coattails of his father Andrew.

Andrew Wyeth. Technically skilled, but riding on the coattails of his father N.C.

N.C. Wyeth was the real genius in that clan.

Modern art and the ridiculous critics that rave about it

[quote]Art That You Hate

Vandelay.

R13, that looks like The Senatrice in a Marie Antoinette wig

At least Cadmus brought the homoeroticism

[quote) "Jackson Pollock"

Ha! R22 & R27. I have a (much smaller) copy of "Autumn Rhythm (number 30) on my bedroom wall.

And speaking of "overrated", I'll add anything by Damien Hirst. He's not an artist anyway, so much as he's a businessman.

Here are my least favorite painters, as seen and despised by me in museums around the globe, in ascending order of despicability:

James Tissot

Elihu Vedder

Frédéric Bazille

William Holman Hunt

Thomas Hart Benton

In today's world art is whatever sells

R34 - tastes sure vary - that portrait by Klimt is probably my favorite painting of all time.

Basquiat

Art Treacher's Fish & Chips

This, the only good thing about it is Trump would need to be dead for this to take place.

I don’t care for the icons of the Orthodox churches. They’re primitive and flat and almost cartoonish.

R22 another vote for Jackson Pollock - not apparent talent or skill on display

R26 for that pretty little cottage to be shedding that much light onto the ground in front of it and from all the windows the way it does in that Kinkade painting, it would have to be lit entirely with modern high power LEDs. So tradtional! "Painter of Light" my ass indeed!

The Impressionists. All of them.

The Old Masters. All of them.

Marc Chagall. I can't say I hate it, I just find it distasteful, unoriginal, and absolutely bereft of any redeeming features or factors. That is just a gut reaction, as I'm not a student of art or an art critic. I grant that my opinion is probably in the minority, but I simply cannot find anything about any example of his work that inspires anything creative in my craven mind.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

R65, I really don't understand why "I and the Village" is Chagall's most famous painting. Its artistic merit is lost on me.

Sorry about R66. I've been drinking cooking sherry again.

"Brunette Odalisque" by François Boucher. For the same reasons as Fragonard --- too "refined", too frivolous, too decadent, (too fat). Generally speaking, I like much of the baroque architecture, the elaborate clothing, etc. of the time period but this painting is an example of the worst aspects.

I don't like the ideal of feminine beauty that many Northern European artists had during the Renaissance.

The Judgement of Paris by Lucas Cranach

This. I’m not even sure what you call it:

^^scroll down a little.

Yikes, R71. Those paintings can give you nightmares.

Banksy has scammed everyone. It’s always fun to see when a landlord paints over or sells a wall and outrages the community. You know he’s jumped the shark when you see people buy Etsy stencils to paint their own. There are several of those in my neighbourhood. It’s just become trite now.

I hate anything non-figurative. FWUUUUUUCK the abstract expressionists. Most 1960s-70s pop-art. And also conceptual art. And performance art, goddamnit!

I generally love everything from ancient art, to world folk art/non-Western, to the European masters, up to and including many of the Modernists. I especially love German expressionistic painting post WWI, midcentury British printmaking, and American WPA-style social realism. But when artists hide lack of talent behind word salad artist statements - and get too clever and self-aware for their own good, ANNNND expect other people to fall for it - which they often do - well, fuck that noise, says I!

Funny enough, I'm a big fan of "lowbrow" art, pop-surrealism cartoons, illustration, etc - perhaps not the height of sophistication, but at least it is honest, and doesn't put on airs. Literally just reveling in pure sensory delights, without the need for a goddamn master's thesis to enjoy or understand it.

Do you like Glenn Barr’s art, r75?

Hunter’s finger paintings.

The Mona Lisa - the original basic bitch!

This painting is just bizarre. Virgin and Child by Jean Fouquet

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Lucian Freud

So honest, so brave.

I like Kandinsky and I don't think it's pretentious (his paintings).

[quote] For the same reasons as Fragonard --- too "refined", too frivolous, too decadent, (too fat).

R69, I like your post. Fragonard is something they teach you in school. I guess it (the swing, etc.) was a good example of that type of painting, i.e., "textbook," literally and figuratively.

I think it's well-done (the Swing) and I do enjoy it.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles by Jeff Koons

The kind of kitsch that makes me cringe.

Linkletter.

I've seen that sculpture in person, R83, I forgot where I saw it. I don't understand the point of it. MJ was over-the-top. I think Koons was trying to take that extravagance and magnify it (?). What he created was actually very static and stagnant. The real MJ with Bubbles was more of a spectacle than the gold-gilded Koons sculpture. Not sure what Koons was trying to express.

Robert Ryman

Ellsworth Kelly

Clifford Styll

Agnes Martin

Margaret Keane is the absolute WORST:

Show me some love, fellas!

The MJ and Bubbles sculpture is at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, r85

Thanks, R89. I've never been to the Broad in LA. The Broad Museum opened in 2015 and I've never been there. I must have seen it in San Francisco or while it was traveling.

[quote] Three of the Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture were made. One was sold at Sotheby's on 15 May 2001, when it was auctioned off to the record price of 5.6 million dollars.[1] The artist's proof is owned by the Broad Art Foundation of businessman and art collector Eli Broad and is displayed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (It is now at The Broad Museum in Downtown Los Angeles). The two other versions are in Oslo in the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art[4] and in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[5]

Someone upthread already mentioned Thomas Kinkade, but I would also like to add:

This old cunt, P. Buckley Moss. She paints stupid ass pictures of Amish people and Canadian geese.

I worked in framing 20 years ago and the people who would bring prints in from either of these two were the *worst* to deal with. They would take forever to decide upon mats and frames. Yet they would all wind up choosing the same fucking colors and frames. I always wanted to just tell them straight to their faces, "look, I've got 20 of these pieces on the shelves in the back, I already know what color mats and frames you're going to settle upon!"

Another one would be Peter Max. Especially when he started selling prints of his work on QVC. He would have his staffers - probably some minimum wage workers in a warehouse - embellish each of these prints with a few smears of paint to make it look like Max himself did it.

I woul

Pip & Pop

Mark Kostabi - a fraud and a douchebag.

R91, I worked in a frame shop, ahem ... art gallery, years ago as well. In retrospect, the gallery's main income came from doing elaborate (expensive) mats and frames on cheesy prints (brought in from outside the gallery). The owner kept telling me how much money / commission I was supposed to be making selling the art in the gallery. I was paid pretty much minimum wage due to all these commissions I was supposed to be making.

I was also supposed to help people choose out their mats / frames, in addition to all this selling I was supposed to be doing. (Foot traffic was low and the owner funneled all the best customers to his son.)

The highest-paid employee was the guy in back who actually cut the mats and pieced together the frames. He was actually cool and did deserve the highest pay. We went to lunch a couple of times and, in retrospect, I appreciate that he told me how much $ he was making b/c he definitely didn't have to tell me.

I was also a cigarette smoker then and would smoke outside the shop. The shop owner was a bitter ex-smoker and resented that I could still smoke.

Anyway, I quit that job pretty quickly.

Oh my, R92. It does grab your attention though.

Hunt Slonem and his fucking rabbits.

R93 interesting article. After reading it, I cam to the conclusion Kostabi is "on the spectrum", especially this bit;

[quote]Asked who the real Mark Kostabi is, the veteran dealer and longtime friend struggles to come up with an answer. “Mark isn’t like a regular person,” says Barnes in a way that conveys both awe and pity. “He thinks more like a computer than a human. He doesn’t show any weakness. If you said, ‘I just broke up with someone,’ he wouldn’t understand what you were talking about.”

Not so much a douche bag as autistic

Just about every work where the saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words" requires reversal to make any sense of it at all.

The Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture is really too much, R85. I can't imagine having it in your home and having to look at it every day. Just too creepy.

I do like Koons' balloon dogs. That's the right kind of kitsch --- slick and fun and whimsical.

Kullervo's curse by Akseli Gallen-Kallela

I just hate everything about his head, really.

R82, you like the Boucher painting at R69? How standards of sexiness have changed. Maybe the Odalisque's Rubenesque figure would appeal more to straight guys than to me, a gay man. There's something about the way her fleshy rear end is posed that's a little too sexually provocative, a little too vulgar. Another thing that really bugs me about Boucher is that he draws women's faces in a stylized way and they all look very similar --- big eyes, bow lips, eg . compare the Odalisque at R69 to Diana After the Hunt, which is linked below. Why not draw individuals?

True, Fragonard and Boucher are mentioned in all art history books but their aesthetic sense is not my favorite.

Wow, R100. Like something out of a horror movie.

[quote] [R82], you like the Boucher painting at [R69]?

R101, no, I don't like the Boucher at R69. I can understand why you don't like it. I was just saying that I do like Fragonard's Swing painting despite similarities, frivolity.

R79 is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Yayoi Kusama

Rodin's the Thinker. I don't understand why it's considered a great piece of art.

Rodin's thinker is usually displayed as a self-standing monumental piece, but it was designed as part of the Gates of Hell.

[quote]Rodin's the Thinker. I don't understand why it's considered a great piece of art.

Because he's a hot man who looks like he's sitting on a toilet.

I love almost all of these, except for the Trump garbage.

R55 Frédéric Bazille makes me wet.

R106 He appeals to the sentimental.

Julian Schnabel's work looks dumberer every day.

The boys are hot in R110, but Bazille's complete failure to grasp the basic principles of proportion, perspective, coloring, and anything else is on full display there. No figure looks to be in the same picture as the other figures; no figure's body parts all look as if they belonged to the same body. It looks like a paint-by-number mashup. Meanwhile Eakins was doing that subject like a real artist.

My first visit to the Tate I dashed to see an original Salvatore Dali. It was so small!

I don’t care for Van Gogh. I was offered free tickets to that immersion show the other night and passed. I know.

The Thinker makes much more sense as a work of art in context — as Dante contemplating the horrors of Hell — than just a guy, you know, thinking.

As a painter of boys bathing, Bazille has nothing on Henry Scott Tuke

R114 One artist was looking towards the past, the other the future. It's a question of taste. Bazille's sensuality and experimentalism weren't for everyone.

I think most austrian dataloungers will agree with me: The covid memorial in Graz.

This lovely:

"We Come in Peace" by Huma Bhabha.

It's in the sculpture garden of the Hirshorn Museum in Washington D.C. I sure hope it's a temporary installation.

R120 You've already got a covid memorial? Now that's efficiency!

R121 wins

witch on a turd

Speaking of turds...

Koons.

I've seen a few exhibitions of his works and I get what he's aiming for - I just don't think he lands it very often. It's a fine line between parody and celebrating something that one finds revolting and I just don't think the styles or media he's working in helps him make those point clearly.

I will say he's a handsome guy and apparently has a nice cock, but he seems like a gigantic douche.

Koons said (re: MJ and Bubbles):

[quote] I wanted to create him in a very god-like icon manner. But I always liked the radicality of Michael Jackson; that he would do absolutely anything that was necessary to be able to communicate with people. Koons has stated that he was also inspired by the triangular composition of Michelangelo's Pietà. Koons claims that he wanted to depict Jackson as a new redemptive figure who enables people to discover their own cultural mythology.

I think he missed the mark, based on his own terms. The whole thing is just flat, IMO.

Showcase on stand (Scarabattola), late 17th century, Italian, Rome

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Something about the look of this cabinet irks me. Baroque gone bad.

The paintings with the kids with the big eyes always freaked me out.

R129 thats quite cool actually. I'd grab it if I saw it at auction for a price I could afford

I completely agree R131 I love things that are both beautifully made and completely nuts like that. If I had the money I’d flank it with a pair of my favorite Memphis displays and fill then with Cabinet of Curiosities oddities.

Bravo, r6

The commercialization of art has fucked art

Evening dress designed by Christian Lacroix for Jean Patou, 1987. Tacky disaster. The dress is in the Costume Institute at the Met.

Third Class Carriage by Daumier. Too much depressing realness.

Italian Eugene De Blaas was highly acclaimed by the British academy in his day. His work is beyond hideous.

Why is it hideous to you?

I despise pre-Raphaelite art!

I don't really mind that, R138. I'm just not crazy about the subdued color palette.

I really hate this Rococo étagère by Alexander Roux from the 1850s. It looks like it was designed by a gay man who's lost his mind.

[quote]I love almost all of these, except for the Trump garbage.

I concur, R109, but without the qualifier 'almost' for everything sans the Trump garbage. Besides that, and kitsch like the card-playing dogs/Presidents, I cannot recall any art that I could not appreciate on the merits in which it was intended. Even OP's homely portrait, which belongs to the categories of 'folk' or 'naive' art, which share a degree of overlap.

That doesn't mean that I would select any or every piece of art to exhibit in my house, but that I like them for what they are. Ugly or startling art are among my favorites; I love art that challenges me.

This painting of Elizabeth Farren by Sir Thomas Lawrence. There's so many things about this painting that bug me --- the hair, the furs, her pose and facial expression. Too precious and contrived. It looks like it should be on the cover of a trashy historical romance novel.

Abstract: Rothko, Kandinsky, Miro, Pollock, etc.

Neo-expressionism: Basquiat, Schnabel (exception: his broken plate art), Baskin, Bosman, Slonem, etc.

Cubism/Fauvism: Picasso, Braque, Metzinger, etc.

Naive: Keane, Rousseau, Delacroix, etc.

Delacroix was a naive painter? I thought he was a Romantic artist. I think his "Death of Sardanapalus" is a bit much.

Botero.

[quote]Delacroix was a naive painter?

R143 "Michel Delacroix (born 1933) is a French painter in the "naif" style." (Wikipedia, Michel Delacroix)

I don't hate Vincent van Gogh, but I never really seem to "get into" his paintings. The craftsmanship and artistry are undeniable, but for some reason, they just don't grab me.

Same goes for Mondriaan: His works seem so pedestrian in today's light, but his stuff was groundbreaking back in the early 20th century.

I don't much like the works of Henri Matisse.

R143 The caffeine's kicked in. Eugene Delacroix is indeed an artist of the Romanticism/Romantic school. Michel Delacroix (no relation) is the naif artist.

[quote]I don't much like the works of Henri Matisse.

Is this a joke?