So bad, it's good

DEDHAM -- Within earshot of flushing toilets, under the unflinching surveillance of a fake security camera, and accompanied by cheese curls and brightly-colored Kool-Aid, the Museum of Bad Art's newest exhibit, ``Hackneyed Portraits," opened earlier this month.

``When I heard the Hockney show was closing [at the MFA] , we thought we'd pick up some of the slack," said curator Michael Frank.

The ``Hackneyed" collection is just the latest example of the Dedham museum's tongue-in-cheek approach to the high falutin art world -- a place where visitors from across the country come to chuckle, snort, and appreciate art that has failed in such distinctive, often comical, ways , it is almost masterful.

For more than a decade, the Museum of Bad Art -- a one-room gallery nestled in the basement of the Dedham Community Theatre -- has stood as an irreverent suburban echo of the fine arts scene in Boston. For a certain kind of tourist, the museum's collection of trash night finds and flea market bargains has become a must-see destination and a temple of outsider art.

It all started in 1993 when antique s dealer Scott Wilson picked up a painting on trash night, planning to take the frame and toss the canvas. But there was just something about it. An old woman peers at the viewer with a faintly cross look on her face, her blue skirt swirling in the wind under a yellow sky. It was bad. Or was it?

Today, the painting -- ``Lucy in the Field With Flowers" -- is ``the crown of the collection, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, but in a strange parallel universe -- as if these two paintings are joined by a kind of cosmic pipe through space-time," Charles Brown , a Florida resident who visited the museum when he was in the area this spring for a wedding, wrote in an e-mail.

In another classic, a meticulous pointillist piece called ``Sunday on the Pot with George," a John Ashcroft look-alike sits in a diaper.

The museum's new ``Hackneyed" exhibit follows the credo that some bad art -- pieces that amuse or horrify, for example, or elicit other strong responses -- are worth showcasing in their own right. It includes some new works (there's an official $6.50 price limit on all new acquisitions) as well as some old classics.

In ``Self Portrait as a Drain Pipe," a sickly green-toned painting, a woman's face melds with the curves of a u-shaped sink trap. A Chagall-inspired dream teems with symbolism, from the sword-wielding shirtless cowboy in chaps to the lion with an apparent lazy eye that anchors ``March Madness." In another, a mysterious blue - and brown-eyed woman with ashen, lavender skin rises from the depths of a pond.

But no matter how bizarre, silly, or puzzling the piece, the curators refrain from taking cheap shots. They deploy the same language you might read on any museum placard, though with an impish slant. The stately ``Queen of the Chocolate Chip" holds a cookie in her hand, her royal gowns flowing incongruously around her. The museum's curators' take?

``A comment on the incongruity of royalism at the close of the second millennium. The formality of the pose contrasts with the laissez faire attitude of Her Majesty, caught mid chew. . ."

``At the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, we see something that's been acclaimed or critically appraised. At the Museum of Bad Art, there's no doubt that people are not intimidated by the art so they react to it in funny ways," said Garen Daly , chairman of the board of directors and ``director of everything else." When Daly owned the movie theater where the museum is housed, ``I'd hear people laughing, saying `that's incredible,' `it's so bad.' That's one of the things this art does. Too often art is too rarified."

Just as some art work can leave viewers puzzled about what makes it great, the question of what makes something ``bad" can be just as tricky.

Louise Sacco , interim executive director, noted that the museum only accepts about 10 percent of the work that is submitted.

The rejects are ``not art, or they're not that bad, or they're just boring," she said. ``We don't want things that are deliberately bad. What we're looking for is sincerity. Pieces that speak to us, where something has really gone wrong."

Steven J. Cohen , an associate professor at the Pratt Institute in New York, said in an e-mail that there's a disconnect between ``the art that is studied and revered in museums and universities and the art that people actually buy and hang on their walls."

``The stuff that MOBA displays and collects are a hoot, to be sure. . . although -- and I feel a little embarrassed to say this -- some of the stuff they have I really do like and would actually consider to be good art within the context of outsider art," he wrote. Bad art, he said, is something that is both a joke and still serious.

It's something that is obvious to many of the museum's visitors.

``Our whole family was riveted all Christmas day, looking at and discussing the bad art, and howling with laughter," wrote Katie Jackman , of Iowa in an e-mail. ``The thing about these artists that distinguishes them from the rest of us is that the skill to do good art is there, but they bombed out. Observing their silliness is an enjoyable distraction from the turmoil of life."

Earlier this month, when the museum's 400 -piece collection was moved from the nooks and crannies of the Dedham theater to a more climate-controlled storage space, volunteers beheld the ``badness" of some of the pieces for the first time in years.

Sandy Tsai dabbed at mold and mildew on a fluorescent mixed media piece with the text ``Whatever is wrong!!! I PUKE. Therefore I am!"

``It's hard to tell what's dirt," she said, dabbing away, ``and what's not."

The Museum of Bad Art, 580 High Street, Dedham, is open whenever the theater is open. Admission is free. For more information, visit: www.museumofbadart.org.

Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com.