What is beautiful? What is ugly? The limits of good and bad taste are revealed by the current exhibition in Vienna entitled "Bad things. Encyclopedia of bad taste".
Bad taste knows no boundaries, but at the same time, "beautiful", "ugly", "good" and "bad" are also and above all subjective and the subject of endless conversations that we never get to the bottom of.
Exhibition at the Vienna Exhibition Center Hofmobiliendepot deals precisely with the question of what is beautiful and what is ugly, and shows the (apparent) limits of bad taste. Visitors can also participate in the exhibition and bring what they consider to be a tasteless product, which the organizers display.
For an easier show: on display are a salt shaker in the shape of a naked woman, slippers with a sewn-on penis, Russian roulette for children in the form of a gun that shoots sweets, or children's shoes with a portrait of President Obama.
The exhibition shows 500 such exhibits and thematizes the question of what is tasteful in art and what is not. The concept of the exhibition is based on the publication "Good and bad taste in craft” of the art historian Gustav E. Pazaurek from 1912. In it, he produced a complex catalog of all kinds of bad taste criteria. Absurd, kitschy and bizarre exhibits can be viewed in Vienna from February 19th until July 6th, 2014.
