Today, museums of "bad art" abound. One of the original was founded in Dedham, Massachusetts. Its subject was interesting enough that it now has mushroomed to include branches in Somerville, Brookline, and South Weymouth.

Not to be outdone, the Australian continent has one-upped museums of bad art in the United States. It boasts a museum of not just "Bad Art" but "Particularly Bad Art" (MOBA). It is located in Melbourne.

Artwork shown in this museum must fit one of the following criteria: (1) There must be a lack of technical skill. (2) It must be devoid of taste. (3) The artist must be uneducated. (4) The viewer must intuitively feel that the artwork is bad.

How would a viewer even know if an artwork is less than it should be? Ellen Winner, author of How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration (2019), did research regarding this question. She investigated whether subjects could differentiate between abstract art executed by skilled artists compared to that painted by children or, yes, even animals. Her results indicated that even those unfamiliar with abstract art could recognize works done by expert artists as better compared to those in the other two categories. This suggested to the author that the participants in the study perceived and appreciated the proficiency of the professional artists. This indicates that those uninitiated to art have an inherent feeling as to whether an artwork has been executed skillfully.

Other researchers investigated viewers' responses to art under specific circumstances (Gerry Cupchik and colleagues, 2009). The research subjects observed art in an aesthetic versus a pragmatic way while examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The aesthetic approach entailed asking the subjects to evaluate the paintings in a personal manner in order to experience the feelings they evoked. The pragmatic method, on the other hand, involved looking at the paintings objectively (rather than personally) to evaluate the content.

The aesthetic method led to stimulation in the bilateral anterior insula, which is linked to emotion. The pragmatic approach resulted in activation in the fusiform gyrus, which is known to be active during object identification. Thus, how we approach art (aesthetic or pragmatic) may impact our perception of it, whether good or bad.

In summary, there is a complex interplay of psychological and neurological processes in the appreciation of art. This challenges the conventional understanding of what constitutes "good" or "bad" art by highlighting the subjective nature of aesthetic experience and the possibility that a pragmatic approach can also affect the viewer’s perception. Simply stated, it is in a nuanced way that our brains process and respond to various forms of artistic expression.

References

Winner, E. (2019). How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration. Oxford University Press.

Cupchik, G. C., Vartanian, O., Crawley, A., & Mikulis, D. J. (2009). Viewing artworks: contributions of cognitive control and perceptual facilitation to aesthetic experience. Brain and Cognition, 70, 84–91. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2009.01.003

Museum of Bad Art (MOBA): Art too Bad to Be Ignored.