Mikhail Simkin has a
"true art, or fake" quiz on his website,
reverent.org. It doesn't test your knowledge of art forgery. Instead, it tests whether you can spot the difference between what critics call true art (which will cost you thousands of dollars to buy) and fake art (produced by a non-artist, which will cost you nothing). I got a 58%.
Below are two images from the quiz. One is a Mark Rothko masterpiece. The other is Mikhail Simkin non-art. I think they both look nice, and would happily hang either one on my wall.
Comments
I got 2 and 3 wrong. 2 because it looked like it could be done in paint. 3 looked like it had more time taken to make it, so I voted real.
I think that just proves what I already knew. I don't know anything about art. Fake or real.
But the only thing that anyone really needs to know about art is if they like the piece they are looking at. (And then decide if they like it enough to pay the price that's attached to it.)
actually i just went by what looked like it was made on a computer as well...
"Non-art" doesn't have to be made in MS Paint btw. Look on eBay and you'll find page after page of "non-art", some of which required serious technical skill to create. It's mainly sold to companies and interior decorators I think.
I'm here to tell you, my sister and my best friend are serious artists, that by these standards of Mikhail Simkin, are non-artists, however, the stuff they both create is BY FAR better than the cr@p being passed off as art these days... just 'cause they aren't known or not making money by it under their names, doesn't make them "non-artists". BTW, the same can be said for musicians as well...
As I interpret it, 'non-art' is where someone with no actual interest in producing art says, 'hey, the shit that's getting sold for millions, i can do better than that' and starts running off shite to flog to companies and whatnot - to anyone who wants to look tasteful without actually having any taste. (A subset is where a skilled draughtsman who has little real interest in producing art figures out that airbrushed nudes, say, or pictures of cowboys set against lurid sunsets, or tacky saccharine christs sell well in certain market sectors which share a lack of taste with the market previously described; one such is the sef-styled 'painter of light' whose name I will not even dignify with typing here. Google him up if you must.)
I've never heard of any such artist 'making it real', as it were (though some make a lot of money, like He Who Shall Not Be Named); Warhol, Cauty, Hirst and others of their ilk come close, but their subversion of that kind of attitude and their actual artistic intent mean that they are not really comparable. Though not all agree:)
Whatever: a 'non-artist' is not - most emphatically not! - just an unknown artist. Just as an artist is not just someone who can draw.
Not sure I'd place Banksy in the same league though! 😊 Fun though his stuff is...
Especially if it requires an expert to determine if a work is "art."
There's a lot of shit art out there, but what holds most of it up is ignorance about art (ironically enough). Like there's a lot of crap literature out there, which largely finds a readership with people who don't know literature and thus are happy with shite. It's Sturgeon's Revelation redux.
The thing is, those who are ignorant about art generally lump the good stuff in with the rubbish because they can't see the difference. But it's not a question of needing 'experts' to say what art is, it's a matter of learning a little bit about the subject.
I know that. BUT in this quiz, all of the non-art appeared to be created in MS Paint. That's not to say all non-art IS made in paint, it's just saying that the person who made the quiz made all his non-art in paint, so it was easy to tell. If that makes sense.