[the_af]

I didn't know this piece or the artist. Went through the few examples in Wikipedia of his art and it's almost all like this, minimalist blocks or stripes of color. Definitely not my thing.

Why does it matter? To me, because it's different for a masterful artist to purposefully create something minimalist (e.g. Picasso) when you know they could make something technically complex if they wished so, vs an artist for which there's no evidence they could create anything else but a few blobs of color.

In the second case, why are they not in the Bad Art Museum? Is it because of financial success of the art piece? Seems odd.

(I'm not trying to dictate anything universal or what others should think, it's just my own preferences and musings about art and artists).

[microtherion]

Some time ago, I attended the memorial service for a skilled painter (not exactly a household name, though), and one of the stories told about him was that he visited the municipal museum, where there was a new exhibit of a newly acquired abstract expressionist painting (I believe by Mark Rothko), which just consisted of painted rectangles.

He studied the painting for some time, and then asked to see the director of the museum, to inform him that the painting was hung upside down! When asked why he would think that, he pointed out that wet paint does not flow upward…

So it is indeed possible for a connaisseur to distinguish interesting details in a painting like this.

[the_af]

Excellent anecdote! Thanks for sharing.

Isn't this more evidence that it's arbitrary to decide something is "bad art" vs "good modern art" (of the pop/avant garde variety)?