Modern "Art"

 So yesterday, Kim du Toit wrote a post about how a whole bunch of art collectors/dealers/people were fooled by forgeries created by some Chinese guy in Long Island.  He wrote the post after watching a documentary on the forgeries, how they were created, and how ego and pride allowed a whole bunch of people to get suckered.

But there's also the fact that the forgeries were all modern "art".  I won't say that Mr. du Toit and I are alike, but the one thing we do have in common is our absolute loathing of modern "art".  And our love for the M1911A.  And curvaceous women.  OK, so we have quite a few things in common.  But still, you get the point.

His post came to mind when I read this article about a couple who accidentally painted over a $500,000 painting.  How could this be?  Well, it was modern "art", so.....

A South Korean couple mistakenly tarnished a half-million dollar American artwork when they painted over it, as seen in a cringeworthy clip.

“They thought they were allowed to do that as participatory art and made a mistake,” said Kang Wook, head of the exhibition at Seoul’s Lotte World Mall, where the accidental vandalism took place, Reuters reported. The damaged 95-by-275-inch untitled piece was painted by Paris-based artist JonOne, a k a Harlem-born John Andrew Perello, before a live audience in 2016 — and is valued at a whopping $500,000.

1) If that painting is actually worth $500,000, then I'm Howard Hughes.  You could make a better painting by eating a pound of Skittles and some ExLax and squatting over a canvas.

2) If people think that the artwork is such that they're allowed to add to it, then maybe you shouldn't call it art at all.  Nobody except the mentally ill thinks that they're allowed to paint over the Mona Lisa.  Nobody except the demonic would take a chisel to Michelangelo's Pieta.  Nobody takes a brush to a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt.  But splotches of paint thrown on a wall?  I can see exactly why they thought they could do this.  And to make things worse....

Arranged in front of the abstract opus were the paint cans and brushes used in its creation. They’re considered part of the piece, which may have given the aforementioned pair the wrong impression.

They left actual paint and actual brushes in front of a piece of so-called "art" that looks like a thousand kindergarteners had a food fight, and didn't expect this to happen?

The "art" gallery is run by idiots and fools for multiple reasons, and the people who pay to see said "art" prove P.T. Barnum right every single day.

As an aside, if you asked me to name my favorite painter, I couldn't.  While I can enjoy a painting, I've always been much more in tune with music as my favorite art form.  So I can go on and one about Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain or why Tchaikovsky wasn't as popular as Rossini, but when it comes to paintings I can just say that damn near any "art" created on a canvas after 1940 is pretty much garbage.  I'd rather see Bob Ross do a painting on PBS than see anything from Jackson Pollock.  If I wanted to see the end result of a dude with a speedball and a set of paints, well, I woiuldn't want to see that, so I don't waste my time on Jackson Pollock.