Is There a Such Thing as Bad Art?
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Woman in a Blue Blouse, c. 1906, oil on canvas
Can art be objectively bad?
Ah, the perennial question, which might also be phrased: is there such thing as good taste? Or is it an illusion peddled by a group of people who have somewhat exclusive access to it (that is elite education, hard to access institutions, family pedigree), allowing them to maintain an in group and an out group?
Hm. I do think some art is (much) better than other art, but before we dive into that allow me an exploration of taste:
Perhaps it won’t surprise you to say that one man’s trash is another’s treasure. And who's to say one man’s opinion is more valuable than another’s?
Generally, art that has been considered “bad” or in “bad taste” trades in the lowbrow, cheap, and everyday. Garish colors (but again, “garish” might be a matter of perception), manufactured materials, and the vulgar are all hallmarks of so-called bad taste.
It’s no mistake that many female artists have been given this designation, as their materials often embraced materials of their everyday lives, either by circumstance (they had access to baby diapers or curtains because of their domestic responsibilities) or by politics (they realized textile art was associated with women, so they employed it to make a point).
Some (women) artists that have been deemed “bad” or in “bad taste”:
Florine Stettheimer (so much pink!)
Judy Chicago, and other feminist artists (like the Pattern & Decoration movement, which purposely employed the sentimental and domestic in their work)
Outsider artists like Nellie Mae Rowe, Clementine Hunter, and Pearl Blauvelt who had no access to formal training as artists
These artists are now celebrated. And to drive the objective-good-taste-doesn’t-exist point home, some things have once been in good taste, but now are considered too sentimental, too trite, and therefore… bad. Examples might be:
Fragonard
Putti (those fat angel babies)
Most of the Rococo (think curlicues and lots of gilding)
Renoir (okay, jury is still out on Renoir, but personally I think 🤮 )
To make matters even more complicated, nowadays the predominant idea of what bad taste is has itself been deployed as art, arguably making it good taste. (So maybe good taste is just art that can explain itself?)
Lisa Yuskavage, for example, who paints the slinky, sultry, tacky interiors of a 1970s porno variety, populating her paintings with exaggerated (primarily female) nudes is represented by one of the biggest galleries on earth.
Her work is tasteless, but that’s the point—so can we really call it bad?
So, I haven’t exactly answered your question, which might just answer your question.
If you want to learn to develop your taste (whatever that taste is!), I can help. Sign up for the LTH Collecting newsletter and get guidance on navigating the art world as a new collector.
Lisa Yuskavage, Pink Studio (Rendezvous), 2021, oil on linen
Florine Stettheimer, The Cathedrals of Art, 1942, oil on canvas