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Throughout history, there have been some truly great artists who have created some of the world’s most stunning works using unrivalled skill with light and colour and line and space. But, less well known to most of us, they’ve also produced some seriously bad art.

We’re also not talking about paintings that depict the grotesque images of human life like Picasso and Dali, but rather works that can be described as sloppy, unimaginative, and just plain bad.

And it makes us mere mortals feel so much better knowing that even the most skilled artists have off days.

Perhaps the best starting point for a look at just how bad it can be is one of the world’s best – Vincent Van Gogh. The Dutch post-impressionist is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of art and is said to have created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings.

A true master then. Except for his Young Man with Cornflower (1890), which is sorry to say, something you’d expect in the men’s toilette at an old-age home.

As Artnet eloquently put it: “The artist’s intention was to capture the subject’s sunbaked complexion and radiant smile—the je ne sais quoi of the eternal, as Van Gogh described it. But what he turned out was a green-eyed, spotty-cheeked, pointy-eared creature, his discoloured lips clamping down on a cornflower stem.”

And if you think Van Gogh might have just had one bad day, feast your eyes on the grotesque-looking Madame Roulin and Her Baby (1888).

Speaking of grotesque and awful, Pablo Picasso is another artist well known for pushing the boundaries of conventional beauty, but Fillette à la corbeille fleurie (1905) seems to have even disgusted one-time owner Gertrude Stein, who bemoaned the painting of a girl with “feet like a monkey”.

Regardless, Fillette à la corbeille fleurie sold for a cool $115 million (R2.15 billion) by Sotheby’s in 2018.

Henri Matisse’s portraits have been praised for their ‘expressive planes, which appear to reflect the subjects’ inner situations’. This is likely not the case with a portrait of his benefactors, Michael and Sarah Stein.

One of a pair, the painting of Sarah Stein looks oddly blank with the poor lady’s head stuck in between what appears to be a pair of giant scissors.

Finally, and to unequivocally prove that even the best get it wrong from time to time, we have to mention Edvard Munch. He is perhaps best known for his 1893 work, The Scream, which is often referred to as ‘one of art’s most acclaimed images’.

His 1938 work,  Angry Dog, is however worth a scream. The poor pooch depicted in the painting belonged to his neighbour and was apparently an “untamed beast” that did not endear itself to Munch. “I have myself many times on dark nights been attacked by it,” the artist wrote once. Truly, the stuff of nightmares.

So, if you’re an artist who doubts their own talent, let this be a reminder that even the masters mess up now and again.

[source:artnet]