You got a scene of a half-occupied cafe patio, a generic grocery store item and some old, bored woman.
These belong in the canon of the greatest artworks ever!
No they don’t.
Though folks have been forever going apeshit over these five artworks, they seem to be more about hype than about artistic merit and substance.
5. Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, 1948 In 2006, the eight-by-four-foot drip painting on fiberboard sold for $140 million, making it the second-most expensive auction- or private-sold painting. What a waste of cashola for some frenetic and improvised compilation of hippie browns and yellows.
4. Vincent Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night Bro, we’re in 1880s France, one of the most amazing time-place moments in Earth’s history. Instead of hitting up a trendy bar to pick up chicks or hanging with one of the Impressionists in his or her studio, let’s post up in front of this half-empty sidewalk cafe in Arles — which has little ambience and has probably stop serving — and paint this college dorm room-friendly sucker. Party!
3. James McNeill Whistler’s Whistler’s Mother (a.k.a. Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1) We just want to write, “Why is this so revered?” and call it a day, but our editor wouldn’t be down with that. Instead, we’ll borrow some words from Monte J. Cook’s blog, which sums up how we feel about the 1871 oil on canvas that’s taking up space at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay: “Poor Whistler’s mother, she’s so grumpy because her overrated no-talent son is taking FOR-ever to paint her stupid picture. Why is it taking so long, anyhow, he’s only using like three colors.”
2. Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans Warhol’s work is fine. It’s also the definition of “don’t believe the hype.” This includes Pop Art’s opening salvo that Warhol put together in 1962. At the time, its blatant reliance on consumerism left an impact. Today, it’s an art piece whose relevance has gone poof.
1. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) Last Supper is pretty tight, but this so-called masterpiece for its time is whatevs, even after trying the “you gotta see it in person” thing. (Art Attack peeped it in person at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. It’s indeed whatevs.) Plus, as a friend once said, “She’s not even hot” — hey, he said it, not us — which would make the fringe theory that the subject is actually da Vinci in drag more plausible, not to mention a more interesting art piece.
This article appears in May 24-30, 2012.
