art students -- describe some of your peers' lamest artworks

Back when I was a struggling young studio art (photography) at a pretty well known institution a girl in one of my 400 level classes did this ridiculous series of dogs in a shelter. It was so stupid and shallow. The first thing my 6th grade photography teacher taught me was to avoid dogs and babies unless its a paying job (like some sh*tty calendar). Anyway it was terrible and of course it got way more attention than my much more deserving prints.

I feel bad about this because I liked this girl a lot, but it was pretty terrible. (background, I think that art should have appeal beyond the knee-jerk. most people at my school disagree with me)

She made a hanging installation (all precut plastic pieces, with binder rings, she didn't MAKE anything) that had all kinds of random slang on it. It was in silver, white, black, and red. It was supposed to have something to do with 'white' America taking over 'black' culture. It made NO sense, it was ugly as hell, and she couldn't even explain it well (which might have made up for the slipshod presentation) There was one other student who stuck up for her, and the rest of us were there 40 MINUTES AFTER CLASS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OVER because they kept trying to defend it. Even the teacher was like "This sucks"

That class was such a failure. What a waste of $800 a credit.

I am going to ignore the question a little, and share my peer's lamest critique...
The artwork itself was fine - pretty basic expressionistic portraits of the girl, her family, and her boyfriend - But the critique of them was ridiculous. The girl had an ongoing habit on trying to control the conditions of her critiques in odd ways. In this case she announced that the critique was going to be run like an episode of "The Weakest Link", and preceded to ask people trivia questions (about subjects such as Harry Potter and Tori Amos) and whoever got the questions right were then asked a question about her paintings, or something, I dont remember exactly...It was hard to pay attention with compulsively rolling eyes...I just remember that there was a lot more discussion of the rules of "The Weakest Link" than of the paintings, and at one point she went off on a monologue about how unnattractive she was, until the professor volunteered somewhat intoxicatedly (It was the last crit of the quarter, and someone had brought wine) that she was, in his oppinion, quite an attractive girl.
This is why I enjoy any movie that satarizes art school. It really is rather difficult to over do it.

Now the real question is how many people here have no problem criticizing these pieces of art yet go home everyday and flip on their MTV or bow down to cheesy 80's metal.

Words of Wisdom are of the Wise-The Wise Man.

circa 1983...

this one student's senior show had his paintings displayed but he incorporated a performance in which he climbed a ladder, ripped up a photo of Breshnev, descended and then smashed a mirror. as if this wasn't enough, a soundtrack of whales mating played in the background.

i don't recall what the paintings looked like. ha.

i have to get in on this.

I am currently going to art school and have seen more then enough *beep* being presented durring crits. One of my favorites was last year in my begining screenprinting class. This girl screenprinted a jamaican flag on a mirror and with negative space there was some slang...something to the effect of "im jammin" or "hangin out" or somthing completely stupid.

well anyway durring the critique all of her friends in the class tried to stand up for it, when finally the teacher spoke up and said "it looks like you won this at a carnival"

i felt so bad for her but i could not stop laughing b/c it was so true!

This one is a musical fiasco. I was at a student run multimedia festival. The opening act was your typical garage type Nirvana wannabees...or so I thought. It was much worse. The entire act consisted of two of the bandmembers crouching on the ground with their guitars (ala Jimmi Hendrix) and violently strumming to create a constant noice that sounded like the volume cranked up on a TV without a signal. The lead "singer" did nothing more than scream into the microphone, roll on the ground, and combinations of the two. At one point, a fourth band member went on stage and broke a piece of styrofoam over his head. I understood what they were going for, but it came off really lame (try swinging a piece of styrofoam in the air--it catches wind, so the guy had a hell of a time actually getting it to break on the other fellow's head). To top it all off, the thing went on non stop for twenty minutes! Sucked big time

The guy currently sitting next to me does photo-realistic paintings of American Gas Stations (we're all Northern Irish). He has no reason for it, no justification that stands up and is aggressively defensive in group critiques.

I wouldn't, perhaps, mind so much if he wasn't a beanie-hat wearing, pretentious bollox who drains the life out of our little workspace and gets his thuggish six foot friend in to help him put up his paintings (in case I've encroached on his space and he needs to defend himself).

A boy last year was painting cartoon people raping each other, but he seems to have grown out of it.

And then there's the guy painting (badly) pictures of the burning towers on 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. He didn't even try and explain those ones.