What acclaimed piece of art (music, play, TV, movie, painting, book, whatever) of the 20th century is just bad beyond belief to you?

The musical Rent is so far and away atrocious in every way, but it won a Tony and other awards. Musical theater geeks all seem to love it. I just don't understand. It's horrible.

Most Philip Roth novels, at least the ones I've read, are sexist, weird but not in a good way, and filled with turgid prose. Roth sucks.

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What are some of yous?

swollen, distended

I've turned over a new leaf, and am trying to see the good in everything: even daveT's music and jalfrezi's taste in music

Ray Zee's head on Phat Mack's body.

/thread.

I love it when I'm on a roll. I'll be back; I have plenty more.

The Birth of the World painting [1925] by the Catalonian-Spanish artist Joan Miro (1893-1983). Miro deserved to be strangled to death after producing such a piece of garbage. The loathsome fact that many still fawn over this supercilious trailer-trash painting shows how degenerate the art world can be.

I don't love it but I don't hate it....I like some of Miro's work

Yoko Ono screaming. I see music reviewers praising this as some kind of music or performance art. I'm not sure if they're serious or if it's some collective joke that's over my head.

I actually like some of Yoko's work.

'worst' and 'art' are a highly subjective discussion...

I think hating something enough to report its existence here hinges on the fact that it is widely accepted as art by a vast majority of others than ones self... otherwise it would just cease to exist in memory.

I think a lot of 'RAP' music falls into this category and while I can not point to any particular piece that is worse than another, some of it is creatively horrible, and in this way, it seems to be praised merely because it is 'non conforming'.

Just because a piece has a niche social message (which is debatable itself) or because something is 'different' or 'mocks' established norms, doesn't make it clever, creative or redeeming... nor does it exclude it (not speaking specifically about RAP music here).

I actually have a Piece of art that is a contemporary of Miro by Alexander Calder... they are similar and of the same era and movement. I love the piece (here in the background on top of the cabinet). I prefer Miro, but affording a piece of his art can be daunting.

The naked black lady looks to be a fine piece as well. She seems upset though.

I did a jigsaw of Miro's painting The Tilled Field awhile back, have always liked him. Have a coffee table book of his stuff too.

And I got a little mad reading about Dom's Roth hate, but I'll just say Roth's Roth >>> Dom wroth and leave it at that.

Dom wisely put "acclaimed piece of art" in the OP. That is the main reason I choose that particular painting by Miro for castigation, it is at the MoMA (exhibit or permanently I don't know) so it is very much acclaimed. It is also in a book I have on the 100 greatest paintings in the Western World. It is no such thing, IMO. That does not mean Miro didn't produce many worthwhile and varied works of art. I choose THAT particular painting, for the reason I just gave - And also because Miro, in an excellent piece of charlatanism, picked a perfect title for that painting. Salvador Dali couldn't have done better.

Art is what you can get away with, Andy Warhol famously said. And he was a master of his own saying. Warhol was, mostly, a charlatan; an unoriginal hack - like a bad writer that can only copy others.

but he did it so well!

Indeed he did.

Bon Jovi blows.

the grateful dead

the english patient

Is Bon Jovi really acclaimed?

T.S. Eliot
D.H. Lawrence
The Doors
Anything by Oliver Stone

It's not that they celebrate the pedestrian, it's that they pretend it is interesting.

music:

I've never made this one a huge secret, but I never could get into Led Zeppelin or the Doors. If I was in a cover band, it would be paying my bills, but man, I really can't get into these bands to the level that a lot of people do.

Led Zep isn't bad, just not my cup of tea. The Doors are awful and I really don't get it.

TV:

Aside from the obvious?

movie:

Well, most things that won an Oscar is probably on this list.

Look at this list from the 1990s. So few have had a lasting legacy compared to the competitors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academ..._Picture#1990s

The same goes for the 1980s.

Obligatory Seinfeld link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5qalNX5G94

painting:

I don't judge paintings until I see them in person.

With that said, I've seen my fair share of Jackson Pollock, and it doesn't do it for me. I actually like abstract art.

book:

A lot of fantasy and sci-fi falls under this. I just don't want to read about a pflop'm, gorph, rotting trees and read si'lly for'm's' of sp'eking.

"Dragons of Pern" gets my vote for most unreadable story. I really tried, at the insistence of others, multiple times.

whatever:

"Whatever" is how I feel about the arts in general, but The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living should have never been made.

[...]

Do you greatly dislike Johnny Cash? Him and Morrison have a similar cadence, imo.

The incoherent screaming in LA Woman presages the existential angst of Folsom Prison Blues, imo. No other way to describe it: Blatant ripoff.

Album sales does not equate to great acclaim. It just means he was popular.

From Clive James
I still haven’t forgiven C. S. Lewis for going on all those long walks with J. R. R. Tolkien and failing to strangle him, thus to save us from hundreds of pages dripping with the wizardly wisdom of Gandalf and from the kind of movie in which Orlando Bloom defiantly flexes his delicate jaw at thousands of computer-generated orcs. In fact it would have been ever better if C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien could have strangled each other, so that we could also have been saved from the Chronicles of Narnia.

Doors gets in the top 50 all time greatest in many lists, and JM gets top 50 singers on many lists.

Critical acclaim is for stuff like "English Country Tunes" by Finissy, not rock and roll.