MovieChat Forums > Art School Confidential (2006) Discussion > art students -- describe some of your pe...

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

posted 19 years ago by cheepnis
148 replies | jump to latest

Here's one...

I went to C.U. Boulder during the whole Jon Benet fiasco. Anyone could reserve the wall down the hallway of the art building to display their work. In the middle of the investigation, a classmate painted the entire hallway flourescent yellow, put 3 photocopies of Jon Benet's photo from Newsweek on the wall, and stenciled in 2-foot tall letters: "Daddy's Little H**ker".

The sad thing is, that display garnered more attention than anything else produced all year. All of the gossip TV shows were there and the "artist" just ate the attention up. He had nothing worthwhile to say, but just spent every interview grinning from ear to ear. He even videotaped the shows and made us watch for his critique.

(Paul, if you ever read this, I still think you are a no-talent loser!)

[–] davidemartin 19 years ago

I studied art at Rockford College in the mid-70s. The lamest piece I recall was "Audobomb" by Connie Gage. Connie was one of the painting instructor's favorites. The piece in question involved a large canvas, haphazardly splashed paint, and a dead bird or two glued to the surface. I have no idea what she was trying to say. A visiting prof from U.Chicago looked at Connie's work and said "The girl should be discouraged."
(PS, when last seen, Connie was now a receptionist at a New Age music studio and not wanting anyone to know she had been an Art Major.)

[–] penfreak6 19 years ago

Great topic!

I'm in art college to, and boy have I seen some lousy stuff in my time. My Sophomore year some kid decided to get a carton of eggs and just spray paint them gold... Something about how being an artist is like being a package of golden eggs. *barf!* Oh corse everyone loved it. A+++....

Art school can be so discouraging because of stuff like this. I actually agree that art can be found anywhere, and that anything can be art... but honestly, it takes an artist to pull that kind of meaning out of something. It' so much the fault of the institutions though. If they actually taught real art skills, a lot of the hacks would realize that none of this is for them, and would actually find something they like to do... Its a real disservice to the untalented to let them jackoff for 4 or 5 years.

Don't stay someplace that sucks guys. There are great art schools out there that don't put up with this kind of thing. Stuff like this is exactly why I left the first college I went to.

Oldphan

[–] aluminum_foil 19 years ago

My current school had some students' work on display by the admissions office. They were obviously drawings of still lifes done in class. One of them was a large framed pencil drawing of a still life in the lower left with lots of open space above and to the right. In the upper right, there appeared to be a second drawing of some object suspended from above. I don't know if both objects were truly in the same room as the artist, but his inability to take advantage of negative space made it look like he just slapped that second object on there to fill in some empty spot in the picture. The kicker is... he was trying to sell this thing for about $300.

[–] cheepnis 19 years ago

I've got to share one more...

I had an advanced painting class at 8am. Of course no one liked getting up that early, but most of us did and were there most of the time. One guy came to maybe two classes all semester, and never on time, and never for very long. Well, it comes time for our final, and we're supposed to show the body of work we've created over the past 4 months, and he shows up late with a cassette and boom box. When it comes time for him, he says, "I know I haven't been here much, but I've just started playing the guitar and my band has really been coming together, so, even though it's not really painting, I brought some of my music, because I think it's art, too." He procedes to play a demo tape of some really bad jr. high garage band quality music which just leaves most of us rolling our eyes. He didn't even bother staying for anyone else's critique, but the instructor said he was going to give him and A because obviously he had spent a lot of time being creative, even if it wasn't related to the class.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] halfwayintelligent 19 years ago

Now if both those artists could get together and collaborate, then you'd really have something terrible.

[–] nona_pinkfinger 19 years ago

Yes, they'd have offspring who'd need decades of therapy.

[–] GuyIncognito 19 years ago

God bless this thread. Carry on.
---
You know I'm right.

[–] cheepnis 19 years ago

I want to hear more!

[–] playgroundtwist 19 years ago

This is the best thread ever on IMDB! I need more stories!

[–] Treize_Khushrenada 19 years ago

I'm in art college, but my WORST experience with bad art occured in high school. I don't even need to go into detail because there ISN'T any detail:
For the art show a girl decided to reveal a series of BLANK STRETCHED CANVASES. Everyone ranted and raved over it like fools. No one, and I mean no one, even bothered to look at my 36"x48" oil painting of Ocean Drive, which I had spent 2 years on (and it still isn't even done, really). It's not the greatest painting but it was my first oil painting so I was nearly in tears.
I never, ever, ever want to see anything like this again.

[–] cheepnis 19 years ago

let's hear more -- I don't want this thread to die!

[–] javajuly 19 years ago

Agreed--great thread! I went to a 2-year-college whose Fine Arts Dept is about as f'ked up as it gets--trust me on this. Not just because of the whole 'art snob'
thing but because there was A LOT of backstabbing and power plays and illicit
behavior behind the scenes. I lost my former best friend because she worked
there and she ultimately chose the backstabbing over our friendship. I was
really heartsick over it several years back but now I'm just glad I'm away from
that whole lame scene.

As for some of the artwork, this girl I knew (this is going back around the
early 90s, when I studied photography there) copied our prof's idea of photographing cow skulls and sepia-toning the prints. It's not the idea that's
as lame as the fact she was copying our instructor--and later I found out she
was sleeping with him too.

It's important to save the frog

[–] omg_thats_so_kelly 18 years ago

A couple of weeks ago I started a fashion and textiles course, and over the summer we were sent an assignment; "Wish You Were Here: Design a postcard based on one aspect of your summer holiday." On our first day we had to look at everyones postcard they had made, and this one girl had told me she had to go to hospital over the holiday to have some teeth pulled out. When her postcard was held up, it was seriously one of the funniest things I have ever seen. She had stuck four of her teeth to the postcard, covered them in bright red paint, to make it look like blood, then around the edge it said, "Wish You Was Here." Body parts, fake blood and bad grammer. Nice.

[–] demonicmatt 18 years ago

There's a girl in my class at art college who has no talent whatsoever, I mean literally, no talent. I wonder how she even got in. All of her drawings and paintings have no detail whatsoever, they look like something a kindergartener would do, in fact, I'd expect better from a kindergartener. It just shows how any old hack can call themselves an artist and get into art school. I'm just hoping she won't be able to get into university with that crap. It suprises me no end that she got into second year, how the hell did her interview go? did she bribe them or what? it makes me not want to bother.

[–] cdjunkee-1 18 years ago

My major is social work not art. but I have a few friends who major in art. one evening there was a display of a high school classe's pictures/painting set up in a suite. whoever did the best work got a huge scholarship to attend our school next semester. one young man did a black and white montage of a bike on its side in some grass... the title of the "work"? .... ( I am not kidding) was "Where's my bike?" needless to say me and my friend were cracking up as the Art teachers applauded the young man's "raw talent!!!". the real kicker was though that he was not going to be attending our school but was going elsewhere. my friend whispered in my ear "where's my bike? maybe its up his ass!" I couldn't agree with her more.

"If you don't believe in the existence of evil, you've got a lot to learn."
-Apt Pupil

[–] nobedevil 18 years ago

great topic.

i was an english major in school but i hung around with a lot of kids from the art department and saw a lot of crap.

one girl's final project was to hang ziploc bags full of water all over. i asked her what it was supposed to mean and she just started sputtering and called me dumb and stormed off. everyone was saying how brilliant it was, but nobody could explain why or what the point of it was.

another girl's project was a video on a loop in which a girl kills a bunch of men while "workin' 9 to 5" played. i laughed out loud when i saw it.

and recently a girl i unfortunately kind of know got a show in a gallery. it was a bunch of fabric chicken bodies with doll's heads hanging from the ceiling in a circle around the room, with a little pile of detergent between each one. when she was asked what it was all about, she said "chicken dolls are funny."

ah, art.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] Nevermind49 18 years ago

Another-
An over-rated student i shared a class with and who the teacher(the title is generous) adored,spent 6 weeks producing a final project that consisted of a bright orange canvas covered with glued stuffed wollen gloves making hand jesters. The teacher called it inspiring! And criticised my work for being unworthy and to abstract in expression. The examiner disagreed and 'glove girl' failed. Her empty pedastole was inspiring!! :)

[–] cactusheart 18 years ago

Man, I'd have to say: a blank page.....And what's more was the reason behind the blank page being blank.

And it went down ALMOST EXACTLY the same as ASC, virtually word for word!!

The scene where everyone turns in their self-portrait to be publicly graded in class, and it was the pretentious, pedantic self-satisfied shag-head's turn. (Malkovitch) looked at his "work" and asked "What's the meaning of this? It's a blank page!" And *beep*-head spouted off some tripe about being a person of independent thought and a non-conformist and how expectations stifle his creative thoughtstream (or some kind of rubbish like that)....AND THE INSTRUCTOR BOUGHT IT!!!!!! WTF??!?!?!?? My jaw hit the floor!!! OUTRAGEOUS!!! And when I saw it in the movie, I was like a pressure cooker!!! "OMG! OMG! THAT REALLY HAPPENED TO ME!!!"

As far as ACTUAL TANGIBLE lame artwork *lol* it'd actually be one of my old instructors....He was so full of himself, I don't know how the jerk EATS.

Anyway, he photographed an extreme close-up of his EYE...tweaked the colors to make it look like an Andy Warhol's vomit and blew it up to movie poster size. He presented it in class with an expression on his face like "prepare to be amazed"....There was silence, but not the awe-struck kind he must've been expecting. One of the guys sitting in the back of the classroom remarked to another guy "Dude! His baggy eye looks like the skin on my (rhymes with walls)!" He didn't mean to say it loudly, but since it was an otherwise silent room, pretty much everyone heard it and laughed...TOTALLY ruining the "poignancy" intended for the moment and leaving the instructor looking more than a little embarassed!!! *LOL*

-"humanity is a condition that must be overcome"

[–] alindon18 18 years ago

A painting of the twin towers with a plane crashing into one, while satan laughs in the background. This was about a week after 9/11.

[–] nebartist 18 years ago

This girl I went to school with was about to do her senior show about 2 weeks before she started to do her pieces for the show. She phot coppied pictures out of a magazine in black and white and colored them in with water colors. It was mostly lame because she put no thought into the work and only did it because she had to have something done.

[–] silentbobtwin 18 years ago

Jeez, awesome topic, I have about a hundred stories like this, but I'll share one for now.

1) Bondage of Time: For my studio class we had to do a project about time. It could be duration, a specific time, about time, whatever. So this girl sits in the stairwell with a million clocks surrounding her and she's tied up by wrist watches and there was an hour glass. She timed it so that she would break free just after the last grain of sand drops in the hour glass. Then she just walked out the door. That was it. Everyone told her how trite it was. She spent an hour trying to defend what she did, but we weren't having it.

[–] demonicmatt 18 years ago

Instead of this being a lame artwork someone in a class of mine did, this is a lame work I saw in a gallery. The work consisted of a ten minute film of a potato floating around in a tank full of fish, the work was called "Fish and chips". That was it, all it was was a film of a potato floating around in water. I couldn't believe it.