PHIL 280

PHIL 280: Philosophy of Art
Instructor: Jennifer Welchman

Course Description

In 1994, some Bostonians held an impromptu exhibition of engagingly bad art collected from local streets and thrift shops. This was the basis for the Museum of Bad Art [MOBA], dedicated to collecting and exhibiting “Art too Bad to be Ignored.” Like any museum, MOBA has rigorous standards. MOBA does not accept paint-by-number pictures, commercial art produced for tourists, or anything it considers “kitsch.” In so doing, MOBA’s activities invite a host of questions: what makes bad art bad? Is bad art actually art at all? What’s wrong with “kitsch”? And what entitles one to judge a work of art ‘bad’?

 

[Please note: This course focuses on concepts used in critical debates about art, not art history or connoisseurship (subjects of courses offered by Art & Design.) And be warned, though we will discuss some exemplary art works, for our purposes, bad and borderline art is just as interesting and important. So you should expect to be seeing, reading, and hearing examples of really poor and sometimes questionable ‘art.’]