sempernap
Ok, I have to ask: is the world's ugliest vase an actual title or more like a personal evaluation?
I like to think of it as an accurate critical statement, although I admit I haven’t seen every vase in the world. Its actual title is the Londonderry Vase.
The problem is that it’s so much worse in person -- like it’s really impossible to convey the ugliness through photographs. You have to get the combined effect of scale, decor, and form all at once, and you can usually only ever get two of those in one place. For example, this is the photo on the ARTIC’s website:
Now, that’s to me some very unattractive decor, but I will admit that plenty of people have probably seen uglier (the birds-on-picklesgarlands near the top I actually quite like). The paint and texture are awkwardly sectioned off from each other, the painted parts aren’t very visually unified, and there’s a lot of very strange negative space, but plenty of objects d’art are weirdly painted. The shape, while clunky, is a classically recognizable shape.
What you can’t tell from that photograph is that in the gallery it’s four and a half feet tall and mounted on a two foot tall plinth.
It’s fucking enormous. So what looks like delicate detail work in the first photo turns out to be a fairly large visual presentation when you add in scale. Also, there’s a real cognitive dissonance in the concept of a “vase” being taller than a fourth grader. But it’s hard to see the true appearance of the vase in any photo that shows scale. It just looks like a big fake architectural vase with some paint on it, and from a distance even the awkwardness of form isn’t that evident.
It’s only when you stand in front of it and it looms over you, enormous and detailed and horrifying, that you truly come to understand its innate hideousness. It’s so ugly it’s admirable because you couldn’t do that intentionally, which means it’s in earnest. It’s artless in its hideousness, which lends it a certain charm.
If you go to the Art Institute, please don’t miss out on this unique experience, in gallery 218.
