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‘Ketchup on Canvas’ Painting Sells For Nearly $50 Million Dollars — And More on Modern ‘Art’

This is not satire

While media attention was focused on the sale of a rare Leonardo da Vinci painting, a piece of modern art being derisively described as “ketchup on canvas” just sold for nearly $50 million dollars.

During an auction at Christie’s in New York last night, de Vinci’s 500-year-old “Christ as Salvator Mundi” ended up selling for a whopping $450 million dollars, more than four times its estimated price.

However, another piece of “art,” appropriately titled Untitled, was bought for $46,437,500. As you can see, it resembles what would probably happen if a 2-year-old toddler was left on its own with a bottle of ketchup.

According to Christie’s, the “art” is “the largest example from Cy Twombly’s legendary Bacchus series.”

#AuctionUpdate Untitled, the largest example from Cy Twombly’s legendary Bacchus series, sells for $46,437,500. pic.twitter.com/xaVn0opNyG

— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) November 16, 2017

The ketchup on canvas is an example of “neo-expressionism” and was created in 2005. According to Tate Modern, the painting is supposed to symbolize Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.

“Red is the colour of wine, but also of blood, and these canvases encompass both the sensual pleasure and violent debauchery associated with the god. This contrast is echoed in the paintings’ combination of euphoric loops that soar upwards and vermilion floods of paint that ooze and cascade down the canvas.

“The unfurling gestures of these paintings were made, like Henri Matisse’s works in old age, with a brush affixed to the end of a pole, which lends them their vitality and scale.”

As we highlight in the video below, the above gibberish is an example of obscurantism, a rhetorical device modern art snobs use to disguise the fact that their “art” is actually completely meaningless.

It’s a fancy way of confusing people so that their initial discernment is temporarily suspended, making them afraid of criticizing such “art” for fear of appearing uncultured or ignorant.

In reality, their first instinct is completely correct. The vast majority of modern art is talentless trash – sometimes literally trash – and the entire industry is a scam to con pretentious idiots out of their money.

Update: This “painting” that looks like a table tennis table was recently sold for $43.8 million dollars:

Who the heck buys this sort of c*ap, and WHY?

Here’s a great video below discussing modern “art”:


Modern Art is STILL Sh*t:


Why Modern Art IS Trash:


And a bonus. Why Modern Architecture SUCKS:


Why is Modern Art so Bad?

by Brian Holdsworth

As a graphic designer, I’m pretty much expected to be a big advocate of modern art and design. Virtually everyone in my field and industry are. I, on the other hand, struggle to find that same appreciation.

Personally, I’d rather live in the kind of whimsical architectural world of Diagon Alley or Hogwarts as opposed to a modern London and I think there are a lot of people who feel the same way. There’s a reason, other than magic and adventure, that we want to escape into stories like that. We want to inhabit those worlds with their sites and sounds.

The sad part is, our ancestors actually did live in a world like that. And then, the 20th century happened. With the help of a wave of dictators who were some of modernisms most vocal advocates, movements like art nouveau and art deco gave out and we’ve been stuck with modernism ever since.

Now, because I’m so drawn to the artistic accomplishments of previous generations, it shouldn’t surprise you that I try to draw inspiration from it in the application of my own trade but in my experience, doing so often produces work that just feels cheesy and I always struggled to figure out why.

And slowly, I think I’ve come closer to answering that question and in so doing, it helped me realize what was so fundamental to true and good art that modern conventions are severely lacking in. So let me give you an example of what I mean. I love beautifully designed calligraphy. It’s just so impressive to think that someone could write something out like those illuminated texts of the middle ages.

As a graphic designer in the digital age, I don’t need to be able to pick up a pen or brush to make use of beautiful lettering like that, I can just grab a cool font and be on my way but for some reason, whenever I try to do that, it just doesn’t have the same quality as something that was done from scratch or by hand. So what’s missing?

In asking myself that question as I attempted to use these kinds of elements in my own design work, the answer that came to me is that one of them inspires us and the other does not.

When you watch someone creating a visual like that from hand, you’re witnessing the culmination of what it takes to master something. You’re witnessing human excellence and when you do, it inspires you.

When a graphic designer just types it up using a premade font and then prints it out. You’re not witnessing the same kind of thing. That mark of creative inspiration is missing. Which is why, as a graphic designer, I’ve learned, that in order to use elements like that and have the kind of impact I want, I have to signal to my audience that I did more with it than just type it up and space it out. I have to do something creative with it in order to get the kind of reaction I want… the kind of reaction we have when we see good art. And that, for me, is the key thing that’s missing from a lot of modern art.

How often have you seen a modern art exhibit and said or had someone say to you, “What’s so great about that. I could do that?” What they’re, in effect, saying is, that doesn’t inspire me. Show me something that I couldn’t do.

If you walked into a place like the Sistine Chapel and looked up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece, you would never hear someone say something like, “Meh, I could do that.” Instead, we stare until our necks hurt wondering how another human being, a creature with the same starting point as you and me, could become so great at something that they could produce something like that. It draws us out of ourselves and the limits we place on ourselves and it makes us wonder. It inspires us.

That sense of inspiration is the key ingredient that I think is missing from the philosophy that underpins modernism and the artistic movements that it inspired. The key ingredient that modernism and post modernism seem to emphasize is self expression. Which basically makes anything art, and nothing art. It means that all of those American Idol rejects who gave it their all where actually brilliant artists and not the comic relief that they were treated as because who among us can doubt the sincerity of their self expression.

True art should impress us, it should amaze us, and it should inspire us. It should make us wonder how it was possible for another human being, made of the same ingredients as me, to do something so incredible and then it should motivate me to want to realize that if I combine the same kinds of choices they did, maybe I can do something amazing too.


Why is Modern Art so Bad?

by Robert Florczak for Prager University

“The Mona Lisa”… “The Pieta”… “The Girl with a Pearl Earring.” For a score of centuries, artists enriched Western society with their works of astonishing beauty. “The Night Watch”… “The Thinker”… “The Rocky Mountains.” Master after master, from Leonardo, to Rembrandt, to Bierstadt, produced works that inspired, uplifted, and deepened us. And they did this by demanding of themselves the highest standards of excellence, improving upon the work of each previous generation of masters, and continuing to aspire to the highest quality attainable.

But something happened on the way to the 20th Century. The profound, the inspiring and the beautiful were replaced by the new, the different, and the ugly. Today the silly, the pointless, and the purely offensive are held up as the best of modern art.

Michelangelo carved his “David” out of a rock. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art just offers us a rock, — a rock — all 340 tons of it. That’s how far standards have fallen. How did this happen? How did the thousand-year ascent towards artistic perfection and excellence die out?

It didn’t. It was pushed out. Beginning in the late 19th century, a group dubbed The Impressionists rebelled against the French Academie des Beaux Arts and its demand for classical standards. Whatever their intentions, the new modernists sowed the seeds of aesthetic relativism — the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” mentality.

Today everybody loves the Impressionists. And, as with most revolutions, the first generation or so produced work of genuine merit. Monet, Renoir, and Degas still maintained elements of disciplined design and execution, but with each new generation standards declined until there were no standards. All that was left was personal expression.

The great art historian Jacob Rosenberg wrote that quality in art “is not merely a matter of personal opinion but to a high degree . . . objectively traceable.” But the idea of a universal standard of quality in art is now usually met with strong resistance if not open ridicule.

“How can art be objectively measured?” I’m challenged. In responding, I simply point to the artistic results produced by universal standards compared to what is produced by relativism. The former gave the world “The Birth of Venus” and “The Dying Gaul,” while the latter has given us “The Holy Virgin Mary,” fashioned with cow dung and pornographic images, and “Petra,” the prize-winning sculpture of a policewoman squatting and urinating — complete with a puddle of synthetic urine.

Without aesthetic standards we have no way to determine quality or inferiority. Here’s a test I give my graduate students, all talented and well educated. Please analyze this Jackson Pollock painting and explain why it is good. It is only after they give very eloquent answers that I inform them that the painting is actually a close up of my studio apron. I don’t blame them; I would probably have done the same since it’s nearly impossible to differentiate between the two.

For the complete script, visit Prageru.com

Sources: InfoWars.com; YouTube.com; YouTube.com; YouTube.com; YouTube.com