The Hobgoblins of Bad Art

Unless I find myself ducking under a Serra prop piece, I rarely experience vulnerability in front of artworks—except, I realize, when they are very bad. Most of us have had the experience of walking into a show of work that trips over its mental malapropisms or is askew, like make-up applied by a child, or smells suspiciously fishy, as though it’s been left behind the artist’s fridge for ages and only pulled out for this untimely viewing; most of us have encountered atrocious work and felt a vicarious sense of shame on behalf of the artist. But the hobgoblins of bad art actually sneer at me; they threaten me. It’s as though they might attack me at any moment. Or are perhaps attacking me even as I look at them, infecting me like the bacteria that descend silently to feed on sweaty clothes and which are detectable only by their exhalations.

I feel shame for the artist in question. Yet there is something else: probability ensures that I too will be in this artist’s shoes one day—everyone is bound to lay a stinker at least once in his or her life. I am witnessing my own fate, and this certainty eats at me like those bacteria. That I write rather than make visual art in no way protects me from knowing that in all likelihood I will one day try to pass off a bit of old laundry as a new and finished effort. Bad art wakes me from the dream of invulnerability, reminding me of the terror that spreads from chest to fingertips every time I offer some piece of myself up for public scrutiny.