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A list of artists you believe “couldn’t draw” is not a definition of modern art. Your qualifiers undermine your statement that modern art is worthless. I’m more on the same page with you than you think. But, you simply can’t lump all of these artists together. Picasso, Pollock, Kandinsky, Miro, Mondrian, Klee, for example, sure as hell could draw; have you seen their early work? There’s no scam going on—this is a ridiculous assertion. They simply rejected their early styles, arrived at new ones and found admirers. Where’s the deception. I get queasy looking at a Thomas Kincaid, but I wouldn’t for a second accuse him of pulling a scam simply because he found an audience. Also, it is wrong to speak about modern art as if it were monolithic. It simply isn’t—there never was a unified aesthetic and scholars can’t even agree upon a definition of “modernism.” It’s a knee jerk reaction to dismiss anything you don’t like as “modern art” unless you can provide a comprehensive definition of modernism that everyone else seems to be struggling with. The problem IMO is that art history scholars think that they’re scientists and hence believe they can impose a nifty taxonomy upon all this cultural stuff that simply cannot be categorized. Also, I assume that you don’t believe that art museums are sanctified spaces and that curators are high priests. Its all marketing, sometimes offensive sometimes palatable, but where’s the scam?

Its all marketing, sometimes offensive sometimes palatable, but where’s the scam?

It's a scam in this way. You can't make money as a "regular" artist, so you come up with a schtick and hope that a speculative bubble develops. I was reading an article somewhere recently where the author recommended dumping your "modern art" because the bubble is about to break.

I'm an illustrator by trade and not by training. I skipped "art school" because, well, it was the 70s. And I'm glad that I did. To me, the "modern art" phenomenon is in the same precarious position as other 20th century oddities such as Marxism, Freudianism and Darwinism. Two down and two to go.

I do like some "modern art" like some of Dali's work and some modern realists. I even like impressionism and other related movements. But Picasso, Pollock and Rothko? Forget it.