History Main / TrueArtIsIncomprehensible

* The ''Series/{{Batman}}'' episode "Pop Goes the Joker" parodied this at great length and with gusto. [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker The Joker]] enters an art contest along with several other artists, each of whom seems almost as crazy as him, including an artist who paints with his feet, and a ''monkey'' who flings paint balloons at the canvas. In the end, the Joker carefully mixes paints, does all sorts of preparations, and finishes with a single stroke with an imaginary paintbrush. He presents a blank canvas to the judges, labeling it "Death of a Mauve Bat." The BrainlessBeauty contest organizer asks where the bat is, and the Joker says, "Alas, it is dead." The organizer remarks to a skeptical judge that, obviously, it's "a commentary on the emptiness of modern life." [[spoiler:The Joker wins.]]

'''Hobbes:''' [[GrammarNazi You misspelled]] [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/weltanschauung 'weltanshauung']].

!This trope is [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=16816239240.39703400 under discussion]] in the Administrivia/TropeRepairShop.

* Thanks to the random generation nature of the dwarf-created artwork in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', this will probably make up a good quarter of any art you see. While Dwarves primarily focus on famous events, or their interpretations of said events, the rest of the time they will make various effigies (sometimes [[ShapedLikeItself effigies within effigies]]) of random objects, such as cheese. Sometimes, due to [[GoodBadBugs bugs]], Dwarves can make truly [[MindScrew mind-bending]] pieces such as [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Planepacked Planepacked]].
-->"[[EpilepticTrees Drunk dwarves tend to claim]] planepacked was the result of packing an entire plane of existence full of dwarven engineering to punish it for the lack of cheese, [[AuthorAppeal which planepacked's creator was craving]]."

* ''[[Series/{{Blackadder}} The Black Adder]]'': One of the acts Prince Edmund hires for The Feast of Saint Leonard's Day is "The Jumping Jews of Jerusalem", a group of Jewish men who go on stage and jump in place for several minutes. After the performance is over the leader admits he doesn't think the audience understood the act.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'', this is what [[EmoTeen Chidori's]] sketches are like. She even says to Junpei that he wouldn't understand them. [[spoiler:However, after her HeroicSacrifice you see that she completely changed her style, [[HeartwarmingMoment filling her sketchbook with drawings of Junpei.]]]]

* By the end of the ''Literature/HorusHeresy'' novel ''Fulgrim'', the troop of artisans and "remembrancers" accompanying the Emperor's Children have gone from masters of their craft, to overly-meticulous perfectionists, to debaucherous madmen whose art confuses, disgusts or outright PAINS those who don't share their views, landing it in this trope. Some examples: a painting of the resplendent and physically near-perfect Primarch Fulgrim himself, crafted with a combination of paints, gold flecks, [[NauseaFuel feces, vomit, spoiled food]] and [[HumanResources the skin, blood and viscera of a man the artist killed in a rage]]; a musical sung by possibly the most beautifully-voiced woman in the entire Imperium backed up by an orchestra that is made of various musical instruments that seem to be random pipes and synthesizers welded together; and a marble sculpture of the Emperor in full regalia, perfect down to the micrometer. Fulgrim wasn't pleased with [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking that last one]], because it not only surpassed his OWN attempts, it was also unveiled ''after'' the rest of the fleet had succumbed to the corruption of [[SenseFreak Slaaneshi demons]] which prompted all of the above. He "finished" the work, impaling the sculptor to the statue with a power sword. The musical was so incomprehensible and discordant it ended up [[DemonicPossession summoning Daemonettes from the warp]] who went on to slaughter the chorus, the singer, and the musicians, ''as the audience was cheering ever louder''.

* {{Convers|ationalTroping}}ed in ''Amazing ComicBook/SpiderMan'' #22, where Peter Parker exclaims "If that's art then I'm glad I'm a science major" upon seeing a gallery of pop art (one of which is just a painting of a toe with a band-aid on it), while a hippie nearby says "I wish I could draw like that". Franchise/SpiderMan co-creator SteveDitko also voiced his disdain for pop-art in issues of ''The ComicBook/BlueBeetle'' and ''ComicBook/TheQuestion'', even creating a villain named [[StrawCharacter Boris Ebar]], an art critic and liberal politician who used pop art to spread decadence. Ditko's reasoning for Ebar's motivation was that he, hippies, and liberals weren't "manly" enough to appreciate traditional art.

* {{Parodied|Trope}} in the Creator/CarlBarks Scrooge [=McDuck=] story "Hound of the Whiskervilles", where Scrooge gets big in modern art by painting his clan's tartan.
* This trope is why ''ComicStrip/{{Rudi}}'''s buddy Freddy accidentally destroys one art installation, thinking it was the buffet. Also, a woman at said vernissage:
--> '''Woman''': What a great piece of art! I could look at it all the time!\\
'''Rudi''': (thinking) I don't have the heart to tell her [[MistakenForExhibit it's just a mirror]].

* This seems to be an omnipresent rule in the Bravo {{Reality|TV}} show ''Work of Art: The Next Great Artist''.

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* Parodied in ''Manga/GAGeijutsukaArtDesignClass''. Noda, who's [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} already in her own little world]], declares "You don't need drawing techniques for modern art, you just need taste." This is proven when a solid black rectangle drawn in pencil is able to be viewed as "art" by everybody except for [[DeadpanSnarker Namiko]].

* Moriya of ''Manga/{{Bakuman}}'' seems to have this view, as a {{Foil}} to Shiratori, who believes that manga should be for everyone. Moriya believes in placing an emphasis on quality and artistic value without pandering to the masses, and as such, writes works that are difficult to understand, and [[ViewersAreMorons thus considered too complex for publication]].

* The entirety of the movie ''Film/ArtSchoolConfidential''. The realist artist is flunking out, everyone else's art looks like something you'd see on a drug trip, and the guy with the highest mark hasn't taken an art class in his life.
* The film adaptation of ''Film/GhostWorld'': The art film ("Mirror. Father. Mirror.") that Enid's teacher shows to the class as an example of her work is hilariously awful, whilst the actual, looks-like-a-person drawings Enid creates are lumped in with the boy who traces his favourite [[UltraSuperDeathGoreFestChainsawer3000 video game]] characters in felt-tip pen. Then they're passed over for another girl's wire coathanger sculpture. Ditto the tampon-in-a-teacup "found art" that is lauded as being genius.

* The indie film ''Film/TheArtistsCircle'' pokes fun at this trope. The artist pounds a long steel rod into the floor of a warehouse, and critics flock to discuss its inner meaning. As the discussion continues, the artist keeps working on his "masterpiece", until the critics are completely encircled in upright rods like a cage. The artist then walks away.
* Played for comedy in ''Film/Contraband2012'', where a few million dollars in counterfeit cash is covered up with a paint-spattered tarp... that is actually a Jackson Pollock painting worth ''tens'' of millions of dollars.

* Parodied by Creator/CSLewis in ''Literature/ThePilgrimsRegress''. Glugly, a "poet" who has been mute since birth, entertains an audience of jaded aesthetes by making silly poses and nonsense sounds. The onlookers (except for the naive young protagonist) praise her work as highly rational and abstract.

* Then there's Creator/KurtVonnegut's character Rabo Karabekian. In ''Literature/BreakfastOfChampions'', we meet him having painted a painting that consists solely of a green field with two strips of orange, meant to signify one or another Christian saint. In ''Deadeye Dick'' he paints a barn door-sized painting of a green figure eight on its side with one orange stripe, and gives it the title "The Temptation of Saint Anthony". In "Bluebeard," his wife confronts him about his struggling art career and asks why he doesn't draw 'correctly'. Karabekian, takes a small chunk of charcoal, looks briefly at their children sitting in another room, and draws a perfect portrait of them in a few minutes on the wall. He then says to her, "Because it's too fucking easy."
* In ''Literature/{{Dexter}} By Design'', Dexter and his wife, Rita, visit an art exhibit while in Paris. The Art consists of videos of a woman cutting her own leg off. Dexter finds it mildly interesting though he worries Rita will be distressed. Rita insists on staying and viewing "real" art, all the while refusing to believe the videos, or the displayed leg bone, are real. When the artist hobbles out on one leg and touches the leg bone, Rita faints. The plot of the book also revolves around the antagonist's artistic efforts.
* Parodied in ''Literature/TakeThePlugOut'' by Ephraim Kishon (also known as ''Take the plug out, the kettle's boiling''). An art critic is going over to an artist, who has decided to make himself a cup of tea and has plonked the kettle on a stool. [[MistakenForExhibit The art critic mistakes this for the actual artwork.]]

* Used to disturbing effect by Creator/DeanKoontz in ''Literature/FromTheCornerOfHisEye'', which follows the career of an oddly-sympathetic psychopathic killer. The serial killer purchases all manner of disturbing modern art -- including a number of paintings that consist of a single spot of color--because it supposedly represents human alienation. He finds the representational art of one of the protagonists sneeringly bad for daring to depict anything positive about society.
* Creator/WoodyAllen parodies this in comic essay "The Irish Genius", which is about the fictional poet Sean O'Shawn, who was considered to be the "most incomprehensible and hence the finest" poet of his time. The understanding of his work "requires an intimate knowledge of his life, which, according to scholars, not even he had."
* By the end of the ''Literature/HorusHeresy'' novel ''Fulgrim'', the troop of artisans and "remembrancers" accompanying the Emperor's Children have gone from masters of their craft, to overly-meticulous perfectionists, to debaucherous madmen whose art confuses, disgusts or outright PAINS those who don't share their views, landing it in this trope. Some examples: a painting of the resplendent and physically near-perfect Primarch Fulgrim himself, crafted with a combination of paints, gold flecks, [[NauseaFuel feces, vomit, spoiled food]] and [[HumanResources the skin, blood and viscera of a man the artist killed in a rage]]; a musical sung by possibly the most beautifully-voiced woman in the entire Imperium backed up by an orchestra that is made of various musical instruments that seem to be random pipes and synthesizers welded together; and a marble sculpture of the Emperor in full regalia, perfect down to the micrometer. Fulgrim wasn't pleased with [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking that last one]], because it not only surpassed his OWN attempts, it was also unveiled ''after'' the rest of the fleet had succumbed to the corruption of [[SenseFreak Slaaneshi demons]] which prompted all of the above. He "finished" the work, impaling the sculptor to the statue with a power sword. The musical was so incomprehensible and discordant it ended up [[DemonicPossession summoning Daemonettes from the warp]] who went on to slaughter the chorus, the singer, and the musicians, ''as the audience was cheering ever louder''.
* Creator/DaveBarry has snarkily documented some real-life cases of this: an empty room with the light wired to turn on and off by itself, a literal pile of trash that was thrown out by the janitor and meticulously reconstructed by the artist's fans, [[NobodyPoops cans of an artist's poop]] that he successfully sold to an art museum, and many similar "works" of "art."

* Spoofed in ''Series/{{Reno 911}}'' when the sheriff's department is called to a modern art museum to remove a painting deemed "offensive." The problem, however, is that all the paintings are so abstract, they can't tell which is the one people complained about. They end up taking four armfuls of them, missing the very ''non''-abstract work that was flagged.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** Spoofed in the 1979 serial "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E2CityOfDeath City of Death]]", when the TARDIS materializes inside a Paris art gallery and is mistaken by a pair of art lovers (Creator/EleanorBron and Creator/JohnCleese in [[TheCameo cameos]]) for an exhibit. After the pair give an approving post-modern critique which boils down to "it's art because it shouldn't be here, but is", the Doctor and Romana rush into the TARDIS and it dematerializes, further impressing the two art lovers.
** Parodied again in the episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E11TheLodger The Lodger]]". The Doctor, pretending to be human, creates an elaborate and crazy sciency device out of household items--and when the landlord of the place he's staying freaks out, the Doctor tries to pass it off as modern art.
--->'''The Doctor:''' It's art! A statement on modern society! "Ooh, Ain't Modern Society Awful?"
** And again, although with more subtlety in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E10TheGirlWhoWaited The Girl Who Waited]]". They land in an alien building, and Rory deduces its an art gallery based on a sculpture, the Mona Lisa and a blue bubbling thing. Rory just says "And, er, whatever ''that'' is." Justified since it ''is'' an alien art gallery.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'':
** The Series VI episode "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVILegion Legion]]": Rimmer is attempting to impress the titular Legion -- who has created several works that Kryten's connoisseur chip identifies as masterpieces:
-->'''Rimmer''': ''(about a small, cubic object on the wall)'' Now this three-dimensional sculpture in particular is quite exquisite. Its simplicity, its bold, stark lines... pray, what do you call it?\\
'''Legion''': ''(bemused)'' The light switch.\\
'''Rimmer''': ''(embarrassed)'' The light switch.\\
'''Legion''': Yes.\\
'''Rimmer''': I couldn't buy it off you, then.\\
'''Legion''': Not really -- I need it to turn the lights on and off.
** In another episode, Lister mentions a field trip to Paris as a teenager where he got drunk and vomited down from the top of the Eiffel Tower. The contents of his stomach landed on the blank canvas of a street artist who sold it off as a Creator/JacksonPollock.
* ''Franchise/LawAndOrder'':
** Played deadly straight in an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrder'' -- a talented-but-traditional artist (i.e. one who painted stuff that actually looked like other stuff) couldn't sell his paintings because they weren't in the zeitgeist. He eventually snapped and murdered the patron of a modern artist whose work was not only incomprehensible, but actively misogynistic as well, but was racking in loads of cash because it was 'daring'.
** Also played straight in ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit''. A woman is praising an artist for the "primal" nature of the red "artwork" on a wall. [[spoiler: It's the victim's blood running down the wall.]]
* Frequently spoofed in ''Series/{{Spaced}}'':
** Brian Topp epitomizes this trope, as well as being evidence of TrueArtIsAngsty. Ironically, for most of the series he's not particularly successful, and when he's not angsty, his work is actually comprehensible. Unfortunately for him, it appears that {{Wangst}} is his entire muse; he can't paint unless he's miserable.
** A particularly biting satire appears in the episode "Art", which features Vulva, Brian's former, more successful (and even ''more'' pretentious) collaborator, and his modern drama installation -- it's two hours of completely incomprehensible gibberish, featuring lots of shouting, frozen poses, weird music and some guy in glasses jumping about with a vacuum cleaner attached to his belt. Memorable for this exchange:
--->''[Vulva freezes; the audience thinks he's finished and begin to applaud]''\\
'''Vulva''': It's not finished!\\
''[Applause stops; Vulva remains standing still for a few more seconds]''\\
'''Vulva''': It's finished.\\
''[The audience applauds again]''
** "Art" also features an aversion when Daisy, inspired by the Vulva, tries to do the exact same thing, only with her it involves dressing as a clown and screeching "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!" as loud as she can. It's a dismal failure, no one goes to see it, which prompts Tim to comment in surprise that this modern art thing isn't as easy as it looks.
** One episode features an installation that Brian has been frantically preparing for. We see the audience's reaction, and they comment approvingly on how he manages to isolate the lonely despair of modern life. Then we see what it is; it's mostly what Brian prepared except with the unintended addition of Brian himself, lying unconscious in a pool of green paint having accidentally knocked himself out when the tin fell from a ladder onto his head.
** Brian takes Twist to an exhibit of an artist's white paintings... which turn out to be a number of canvases of varying sizes which are blank white. Brian, obviously, is in awe of them, and Twist "insightfully" declares them to be "samey", to which Brian ecstatically agrees.
* Spoofed in ''Series/ThePrisoner1967'' when Number 6 builds a boat, but, before escaping, enters its rearranged components in an art competition as an abstract sculpture called "Freedom". It wins..

* ''Series/MurphyBrown'':
** An episode features Murphy betting with Miles she could pass off one of her toddler son Avery's fingerpaints as an abstract art piece (by "self-taught artist A. Veret") to discredit a pair of pretentious art critics she was doing a piece on. One of them immediately starts trashing the "painting" calling it "amateurish" and with no value, only for the other critic to jump in to its defence and they end up getting into a huge argument. Murphy is about to reveal the ruse when the painting ends up being sold at a very high value to a guy who had not even ''seen'' the painting: he assumed it was a very important piece of art due to two prominent art critics arguing about it and Murphy doing a piece about it. Murphy tells the guy it was a child's fingerpainting but he just tells Murphy she doesn't "get it". Eventually she gives up and goes off to get "A. Veret" some more art supplies.
** Another episode has Eldin (who spent the better part of the series painting an elaborate mural in Murphy's apartment) exhibiting one of his paintings in a museum, but was upset that the patrons were more interested in the unveiling ([[MistakenForExhibit mistaking it for performance art]]) than the work itself.
* The ''Series/{{Batman}}'' episode "Pop Goes the Joker" parodied this at great length and with gusto. [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker The Joker]] enters an art contest along with several other artists, each of whom seems almost as crazy as him, including an artist who paints with his feet, and a ''monkey'' who flings paint balloons at the canvas. In the end, the Joker carefully mixes paints, does all sorts of preparations, and finishes with a single stroke with an imaginary paintbrush. He presents a blank canvas to the judges, labeling it "Death of a Mauve Bat." The BrainlessBeauty contest organizer asks where the bat is, and the Joker says, "Alas, it is dead." The organizer remarks to a skeptical judge that, obviously, it's "a commentary on the emptiness of modern life." [[spoiler:The Joker wins.]]
* Averted in ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'': Barney intentionally makes a horrendous performance involving him acting like a robot and playing a recorder terribly, and everyone (except for his friends, who were being polite) walks out. Granted, he wanted to show Lily (who performed in a pretentious play at the start of the episode) that [[HardTruthAesop you can't fake politeness and compliments if you hate the play]], and intentionally based it around everything Lily hates (such as the repeating the word "moist" for half an hour, or spraying her repeatedly with a water gun).
* ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'':
** In one episode, Elaine's love interest is the hospitalized artist Roy, whose work consists entirely of triangles. When he takes a turn for the worse George decides to spend a recent windfall on the triangles, counting on [[DeadArtistsAreBetter the increase in value that would come with the artist's death]]. However, his spending so much money on Roy's work inspires him to live again.
** In another episode, George is pressured into buying a piece of art by Jerry's girlfriend, which is just a bunch of squares. "It's a bunch of lines! You're telling me you couldn't paint this?"
** In the same episode ("The Letter"), Kramer has posed for a portrait for Nina (Jerry's artist girlfriend, played by Catherine Keener). True to the trope, the requisite pretentious and snobby art patron couple decide, after much deliberation (they find the portrait simultaneously "hideous" and "exquisite"), to purchase it from her.
* Done in an episode of ''Series/GetSmart''. Agent Smart goes on a long discussion about a painting that looks like a corner of an empty room with a small black dot on it. He says the painting is an allegory for an individual's sense of insignificance in an indifferent world, pointing to the dot as representing mankind. Then the dot flies off. There's also the heap of junk entitled "A Heap of Junk".
* On an episode of the crime series ''Series/{{Monk}}'', Monk is mocked by a formal art class for his paintings, as they are painted in accordance to his particular compulsions and tics. After an art collector buys one of his paintings, he thinks he's brilliant, though others have a hard time agreeing with him, and even going so far as to offer his therapist a painting in exchange for a session. [[spoiler:It turns out the "art collector" was just a man who wanted the canvas, as the paint could be washed off for the real target--the canvases were made of the exact same paper they print money on. Counterfeit to the max, '80s style!]]
--> '''Teacher:''' [[spoiler:[relieved] He really ''does'' suck!]]
* Wickedly parodied on ''Series/TheRedGreenShow'', when Red offers some simple criteria for viewers to tell if something they see is art or not: ''If I can do it, it's not art.''
* Parodied on ''Series/TwoTwoSeven''. When Mary is cleaning an art gallery for a friend's opening, she leaves her cleaning products on a tray and forgets about them. When a high-brow critic starts praising a certain art piece, everyone assumes he's talking about a gorgeous painting by Mary's friend. But no! He's [[MistakenForExhibit extolling the genius of Mary's cleaning tray]], and encourages her to produce more "pieces" in that vein. Mary's career as an ''artiste'' skyrockets, but when she's interviewed on the Arsenio Hall Show with her mentor, the questions lead her to realize that she's no artist. Telling the pompous critic off, she declares that her friend was the true artist all along.
* In the ''Series/{{Columbo}}'' episode "Playback," Columbo [[MistakenForExhibit mistakes a ventilator shaft for a piece of modern art]] while in an art gallery.
* Played several ways in an episode of ''Series/NewTricks'' in which the team are called in to deal with a case involving art fraud, and are seconded an officer from the Fraud Squad who is an expert on art to help them out. Most of the works that appear are more traditional forms of art, but at one point Brian raises the typical complaint of modern art that it's all just meaningless lines and colours. In response, the art expert -- who, in another inversion, is not at all pompous and pretentious but a genuinely likable and friendly young woman who is sincerely passionate about art -- puts up an obscurist modern piece on the wall and gives him a few helpful pointers on how he might approach reading it. Once he finds a way to interpret the work on his terms, Brian finds himself quite moved by the painting. The actual forger, however, does raise the "it's all just a game to humour pretentious people" defense once he's been rumbled.
* Parodied in ''Series/GilmoreGirls''. Rory is reporting on an art exhibit that has rather bizarre art. She goes to get a drink at a water cooler and girls come up and tell her that the water cooler is their friend's piece of art and that it represents his soul. They were kidding, though.
* ''Series/TheTomGreenShow'': Tom secretly takes a self-composed piece of modern art into a museum and places it on an empty space on the wall. Before long, he's vandalizing his own work while a tour group watches. Not long after that, he's fleeing the museum guards.
* An episode of ''Series/{{Bones}}'' involves a dead artist. The artist's works consists of old cars that have been sent through a scrap yard compactor. His agent even has the work of art that the artist was found in declared art (stalling the case) because it was a piece of art and, more so, the artist had made a comment about eventually merging himself with a piece of his art (i.e., get crushed into one of the cars).

* ''Series/MalcolmInTheMiddle'':
** Hilariously spoofed in the episode "Burning Man". Through an elaborate sequence of events, Malcolm and his entire family (minus Dewey) end up taking a vacation to the Burning Man festival in their RV. While there, Hal sets up the space around the RV as a mini-suburban home (with attached lawn and barbecue). The other Burning Man attendees think he's doing performance art and begin to crowd around to watch him, much to Hal's annoyance.
** Another episode subverted the randomness that post-Pollock drip art tends to have, with Hal flinging paint at a 7-foot-tall, landscape-oriented canvas. His family assumed it was all random until the finishing touches went on (with ''inches'' of paint under them), at which point [[TakeOurWordForIt everyone who saw it deemed it beautiful]].
* Played with in an episode of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine''. Weyoun examines a somewhat abstract painting done by Gul Dukat's daughter Tora Ziyal, but has to ask Major Kira if it's any good because he has no sense of aesthetics to begin with.
* ''Series/BoyMeetsWorld'':
** An episode has the Matthews in an art museum. They see a very stylized statue that does not really resemble anything. Normally BookDumb Eric interprets it as two monkeys fighting over a coconut from their father and the realization that half a coconut is not enough for either son. This {{Aesop}}, of course, relates perfectly to the plot of the preceding episode and the relationship between the two Matthews brothers and their father and seems to be his commentary on their lives... then we see that the title of the statue is "Monkeys with Coconut".
** Another episode - one in which Topanga hadn't quite shed her {{Cloudcuckoolander}} personality - had Topanga making Corey watch as she painted her face with "tribal" makeup and then performed various incomprehensible yoga (or possibly ''tai chi'') poses while playing weird New Age music on her stereo. Her name for this performance-art bit was "Donut in the Sky."
* Ian Hislop of ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' does not seem to be a fan of modern art. He referenced that year's winner of the Turner Prize, in the most mocking tone of voice ever, as, "a recreation of a scene from a Buster Keaton movie... now this has already been done, by Buster Keaton, but he's done it again, so it's art. And he's done it very slowly, so it's very good art."
* Played for laughs on ''Series/FamilyMatters''. Laura is working on a bust of Carl for her art class, but at the last minute, Steve Urkel breaks the nose before the bust can dry, and his attempts at fixing it only mess up the rest of the bust, until he gives up and draws a big goofy-looking smiley face on the front of the former bust. Laura's art teacher then walks over and sees it, praises it as deep, and asks Laura what it's called. Laura makes up the title "Man in Turmoil" on the spot, and the teacher loves it and gives her an A.
* This is at least alluded to in ''Series/SixFeetUnder'' after Claire goes to art school, and also lampshaded. One art installation includes a photograph of the back of a man with a typical children's drawing of a house and family carved into his skin, and another includes a plastic pyramid big enough to crawl into. Some seem to think these things are great, while others make remarks about how they don't really get it and are a little skeptical about whether there is truly anything to get. There is also one episode early on in which a celebrated photographer includes in his exhibition a candid photo of his sister's boyfriend peeing against a wall. The sister's boyfriend is understandably unimpressed.
* Lampshaded again in the 'Recycling' episode of ''Series/NedsDeclassifiedSchoolSurvivalGuide'', in which resident [[BlackandNerdy geek]] Cookie's milk jugs are mistaken for priceless, brilliant art. [[HilarityEnsues It doesn't go well]].
* This seems to be an omnipresent rule in the Bravo {{Reality|TV}} show ''Work of Art: The Next Great Artist''.
* In one episode of ''Series/OneFootInTheGrave'' Victor acquires what he thinks is an abstract painting, but is actually just an old piece of board covered in bird droppings.

* ''Series/TheGoodWife'': A second season episode has the main characters on an event, on which an incomprehensible play is performed. The title of the play is ''The Cow Without a Country'', and basically consists of the main character trying to find a cow, often repeating the phrase "Where are you, moo-cow?" in the process. To be fair, the audience only gets glimpses of the plot of the play, but judging by the look and feel of the play, it certainly qualifies. Moreover, before the play, a poem is recited about workers, trains and buses with lots of [[SayingSoundEffectsOutLoud spoken sound effects]], and a complete lack of coherency and consistency.
* In one episode of ''Series/TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir'', Will joins a poetry club just to meet a girl. They then ask him to name a poet he likes, and he makes one up on the spot named Raphael De La Ghetto. But, then they ask him to recite a poem. He comes up with one (that qualifies as incomprehensible mostly), and then they ask him to bring the poet to a meeting.
* It's one of the principle pillars of ''Series/{{Frasier}}'', giving many opportunities for humiliating Frasier and Niles, and laughs from Dad, and Roz and Daphne. '''ZeroContextExample'''

* ''[[Series/{{Blackadder}} The Black Adder]]'': One of the acts Prince Edmund hires for The Feast of Saint Leonard's Day is "The Jumping Jews of Jerusalem", a group of Jewish men who go on stage and jump in place for several minutes. After the performance is over the leader admits he doesn't think the audience understood the act.

* The way that incomprehensibility is downright expected in electronica videos is cleverly subverted by Music/DaftPunk's videos for "Revolution 909" (incidentally, a song named after the aforementioned "Revolution 9" by the Beatles) and "Burnin'". Another Daft Punk video that ''looks'' like it fits the trope but then subverts it: "Around The World". At first it seems to be people in inexplicable costumes dancing... [[spoiler:until you realize they're actually moving in time to the song. Each costume is a different instrument - the babyheads are the bass, the skeletons are the guitar, the mummies are the drums, the girls in swimsuits are the keyboards, and the robots are the vocals.]]
* Music/BlueManGroup is in part an AffectionateParody of the modern art scene's tendency towards this trope, but the creators were actually frustrated early on that they were being regarded as performance artists because of the genre's reputation for pretension and hype. Today, however, it's become far more successful and beloved than most straight practitioners could ever dream.

* Parodied by ''ComicStrip/NonSequitur''. An empty frame is hanging in an art gallery. An art critic sees this and goes into this whole "this is brilliant!" spiel that includes words to the effect of "true art is dead". [[spoiler:[[MistakenForExhibit Then a maintenance guy comes along and hangs a sign in the frame saying "Exhibit Coming Soon".]]]]

* The entire point of Creator/TimberlakeWertenbaker's play ''Three Birds Alighting on a Field''. It's a satirical look at the art industry where the first scene is an auctioneer selling a giant piece of blank canvas (entitled "No Illusion") for 1,200,000 Pounds UK.
* Lampshaded by Creator/GilbertAndSullivan in ''Theatre/{{Patience}}'': "If this young man expresses himself / In terms too deep for me / Why, what a most exceptionally deep young man / This deep young man must be." Acted out in the scene where Grovesnor desperately tries to repulse the Aesthetic Ladies by reciting shallow doggerel, only to be congratulated on his consummate artistry.

* ''Theatre/PassingStrange'' is all about a young man's pursuit of artistic freedom ([[ItsALongStory among other things]]), and that pursuit takes him to Berlin in act two, where he joins up with Nowhaus, a collective of artists whose two major beliefs seem to be this and TrueArtIsAngsty.
* The second half of ''Theatre/SundayInTheParkWithGeorge,'' centers around an artist whose work is quite obscure but very expensive to make, being mostly lasers projected onto the walls or a shapeless statue (depending on your production.) The artist, faced with people trying to (or refusing to try to) understand his work, and the risk of being declared outmoded before his time, eventually decides to screw over other's opinions or current trends, and ''create.''

* ''The Gas Heart'' by Dada playwright and poet Tristan Tzara, whose characters are the features of the human face, who repeat nonsensical phrases over and over or question each other to no ends. Tzara describes the play as "[[{{Troll}} the only and greatest three-act hoax of the century]]; it will satisfy only industrialized imbeciles who believe in the existence of men of genius."
* In Friedrich Durrenmatt's play ''Portrait of a Planet'', a painter tells the story of his artistic evolution. He started with realistic paintings, moved on to color compositions, then circles and triangles, then empty canvas, then frames without canvas. However, when he even left out the frames, no one would by his "paintings" anymore, and he was sent to an asylum.

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou''. Sho Minamimoto piles up a bunch of trash heaps and often acts as if they're all masterpieces. However, similar to Dada himself, it wasn't supposed to be real art, but rather ''a mockery of the concept of art'' which fits in with Minamimoto's view that there's no such thing as beauty in the world. In addition, one Reaper who is assigned to move the pile of trash says, "I just don't get modern art."
* Subverted in ''VideoGame/{{Opoona}}''. There are actual [[https://web.archive.org/web/20100313015820/http://delstar.org:80/opoona/net_tv_guide.htm television programs]] (in game) that explains Landroll's art movements.
* Parodied in ''VideoGame/GrimFandango'', with the Beat poetry at the Blue Coffin club in Rubacava. Manny can try his hand at reciting poetry [[WordSaladLyrics by stringing random verses together]]; getting applause depends less on the content of your verse and more on convincing the crowd that you're [[InWithTheInCrowd one of them]]. At one point, Manny recites a poem and gets jeered, then the club's owner follows, reciting exactly the same poem, and ''she'' gets applauded.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'', this is what [[EmoTeen Chidori's]] sketches are like. She even says to Junpei that he wouldn't understand them. [[spoiler:However, after her HeroicSacrifice you see that she completely changed her style, [[HeartwarmingMoment filling her sketchbook with drawings of Junpei.]]]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Startopia}}'' allows the player to purchase and display sculptures portraying the cultural values or depicting the heroes of each of the game's alien species. The art of TheGreys is a pair of cubes and a tetrahedron balanced on top of each other. Naturally, it is the most popular work, in-universe.

* Thanks to the random generation nature of the dwarf-created artwork in ''VideoGame/DwarfFortress'', this will probably make up a good quarter of any art you see. While Dwarves primarily focus on famous events, or their interpretations of said events, the rest of the time they will make various effigies (sometimes [[ShapedLikeItself effigies within effigies]]) of random objects, such as cheese. Sometimes, due to [[GoodBadBugs bugs]], Dwarves can make truly [[MindScrew mind-bending]] pieces such as [[http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Planepacked Planepacked]].
-->"[[EpilepticTrees Drunk dwarves tend to claim]] planepacked was the result of packing an entire plane of existence full of dwarven engineering to punish it for the lack of cheese, [[AuthorAppeal which planepacked's creator was craving]]."

* Parodied by The [[DadaComics Twisp & Catsby strips]] from ''Webcomic/PennyArcade''. You dare to criticize? Well, they're [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/24 not ''for'' you]].
* ''Webcomic/{{Starslip}}'':
** Much of the art featured on the ''Fuseli'' was created by aliens, so it presumably makes sense to its native culture, but it's still incomprehensible to humans: for example, one strip features Vanderbeam waxing eloquent about a painting's brilliant use of ultraviolet light. And there's also "The Spine of the Cosmos", supposedly the greatest artistic work in the universe, [[BrownNote capable of driving those who truly understand it mad]]: [[spoiler:it's a three-foot-tall, wiggly spike.]] When the strip's BigBad paralyzes the Terran fleet with a broadcast of the spine in its proper context, Vanderbeam alone is unaffected -- rationalizing that since he's only looking at a ''picture'' of the Spine rather than the Spine itself, its context was changed to "a metadiscussion on the commodification of power". Vanderbeam's plan to save the fleet is to recontextualize the artwork enough that it loses any meaning in the previous context, which ultimately culminates in an oddly artistic RuleOfFunny moment: [[spoiler:"''Wear it like a haaaaat!''"]]
** Cutter Edgewise, drunkard ex-pirate pilot of the Fuseli, normally displays a virulent disdain for Vanderbeam's standard methods of artistic assessment. Nonetheless, he unexpectedly comes to Vanderbeam's rescue when he ''should'' be paralyzed by the Spine. He alludes, in a mildly confused manner, that he was, in fact, paralyzed by the Spine, but when Vanderbeam was talking to himself about why he was unaffected, Cutter happened to be in earshot, and Vanderbeam's longwinded rambling managed to connect-in other words, once someone (unknowingly) pointed out the altered context of the piece, Cutter was able to shake off the memory or the effects or whatever of what he originally thought he was looking at. As a bit of GeniusBonus to all this, note that Vanderbeam's justification is eerily similar to the standard interpretation of Rene Margritte's ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images The Treachery of Images]]'' (a painting of a tobacco pipe).
* In the ''Webcomic/{{Loserz}}'' strip [[https://web.archive.org/web/20160613183926/http://the-qlc.com/loserz/go/234 "Damn Squares"]], Jodie's final exam project for her art class is a straightforward depiction of a robot fighting an amazon warrior, and get's a reluctant B minus from her unimpressed art teacher for it. Another student's far more abstract project is a series of differently colored rectangles called "The Depths of My Soul"; this nets him an A double plus and a college scholarship.

* ''Webcomic/{{Weregeek}}'' shows [[https://web.archive.org/web/20230208235611/http://www.weregeek.com/2008/07/04/ how]] it happens and [[https://web.archive.org/web/20221206103841/http://www.weregeek.com/2008/07/07/ how]] it ''works''. Yeah, roleplayers [[DarkerAndEdgier not tied to heroic style]] are pretty cynical people, don't ye know?
--> '''Abbie:''' Art school... It all comes down to your Bluff check!

* In ''WebComic/BrokenPlotDevice'', [[DeadpanSnarker Max]] goes on a rant about such so-called art, ending with [[https://web.archive.org/web/20130612142447/http://www.brokenplotdevice.com/2010/11/05/it-does-feel-a-bit-drafty-in-here/ "The king...is naked."]]

* Parodied in ''Webcomic/MyMilkToof'' when Lardee makes some art for Carrot. [[http://mymilktoof.blogspot.com/2012/02/things-for-carrot-4.html ickle doesn't get it]].
* In ''Webcomic/SandraAndWoo'', [[http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2012/08/23/0405-the-archer/ Larisa exploits this view to pass off three contradictory explanations of a painting.]]
* Frequently used in ''Webcomic/DarwinCarmichaelIsGoingToHell'' with Matt, who embodies this trope. None of his art, such as "Untitled Series #12" a.k.a. "[[http://dcisgoingtohell.com/029-matt-throws-a-party-part-ii/ I Stuck My Head Up My Ass and This Is What I Found]]" makes any sense to anyone in-universe. After Ella and Skittles go on a raid randomly stealing street musicians' instruments, Matt decides to "take credit" for the jumbled mess they leave.

* [[Website/TVTropes This Very Wiki]] has [[SelfDemonstrating/TrueArt a page]] demonstrating the idea of true art being incomprehensible.
* WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick:
** Parodied in her review of ''Film/{{Showgirls}}''. The movie was so awful that it must be an art film. The Chick insists it's brilliant, even though neither she nor anyone else can understand it.
** Alluded to in her review of ''Film/FreddyGotFingered,'' where she notes Creator/RogerEbert's theory that it might one day be seen as neo-surrealist dadaist cinema.
---> "In fact the film has gained something of a {{cult}} following and has a little bit of a renaissance based on the I-can't-tell-if-they're-being-hipster ironic belief that this film is a counter-cultural art piece. Not SoBadItsGood, so bad it's ''art.''"

* WebVideo/TheCinemaSnob tends to look more favorably on exploitation flicks if they are pretentious and hard to follow (for instance, in his review of ''Film/DeathBedTheBedThatEats'', he beings to wonder if it's okay for him to ''like'' the film, considering how surreal and artsy it is).
* Are We Cool Yet? from the Website/SCPFoundation universe. A group of reality-bending art terrorists who create dangerous and insane things for attention.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
** Parodied when Marge takes art classes. Her teacher is an overwhelmingly enthusiastic artist who has a tendency to shout "Marvellous! Another triumph!" when he sees the handyman giving a coat of paint to a stair rail.
** Also parodied in "Mom and Pop Art": Homer gets all pissed off while trying to build a barbecue grill, then a modern artist sees Homer's construction, which turned out to be a pile of twisted junk and bricks held together with cement, praises it as "the greatest expression of anger and wrath ever seen by modern art", and soon Homer starts attracting entire crowds to art museums with his "conceptual sculptures". And just to make things worse, within 5 minutes the jury finds another "artistic genius", one of them says "I'd like to see something a little bit more... ''kitsch''", and Homer reinvents his "art style" by ''flooding'' the entirety of Springfield. What's even weirder is that when Homer tries to ''fake'' it, the art critics don't believe him.

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'' has Doug taking an art class, where his dog Porkchop chases a raccoon across the back of his canvas and it ends up covered in paint paw prints. After Doug absentmindedly puts the canvas up backwards thanks to his crush Patty walking by, the prints become a sensation in the art world. Later on the art critics ask him to paint something else but it is taken away from him after a single stroke; the critics declare the resultant squiggly line another masterpiece. Not to mention Doug's older sister Judy, and pretty much anything she and her classmates at the Moody School for the Gifted come up with. Amusingly, the real "famous artist" invited to judge everyone's paintings immediately declares Patti's painting of her grandmother to be the one he likes the most, saying that [[ThreeChordsAndTheTruth heart is what's really important]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Dilbert}}'' took the engineer's method; he asked some people what they like in art and concluded that a picture of a big blue duck would satisfy everyone. He was right and Blue Duck monopolized the art industry. Not really incomprehensible but it didn't have any meaning. Ended with an impassioned and amazingly deep speech about the true nature of art, whether it be simple pleasure to the greatest number or a way of humans to express their raw emotion in their own way. This being Dilbert, everybody gets bored after five words.
* Parodied on ''WesternAnimation/CloneHigh USA.'' Joan of Arc has a secret crush on Abe, so she enters a movie into a film festival to show him how she feels. But, of course, the movie is such a confusing mix-mash of French art-house movie cliches that no one understands it (except, of course for clone Sigmund Freud).
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague''
** In the Christmas episode, the Flash responds to an alarm from a modern art museum, and finds the empty building full of piles of scrap:
--->'''The Flash:''' Whoa! Somebody did a number on this place.\\
'''Ultra-Humanite:''' Actually... I hadn't even started.
** [[WickedCultured The Humanite]] is there to trash the place ''because'' it's full of incomprehensible art which offends his sensibilities.
* In the episode "The Ultimate Thrill" of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', a criminal named Roxy Rocket steals a priceless and fabulously critically acclaimed work of art that has just been bought by Wayne Enterprises. The picture in question is quite small, drab-colored, and consists of a red blob over several brown boxes.

* The ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad!'' episode "Lincoln Lover" briefly features an incomprehensible play about Abraham Lincoln, wherein an obese man dressed in underpants and a stovepipe hat tosses joints of meat around the stage while reciting advertising slogans.

* There's the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode with the independent film festival. Cartman famously criticizes indie films as all being about "gay cowboys eating pudding." Such a movie is indeed one of several weird films we see when Stan and Wendy attend the festival.
* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'':
** In the episode "Wacky Deli", Ralph Bighead ends his cartoon series ''WesternAnimation/MeetTheFatheads'' (based on his own parents) so he can leave animation to create what he believes is true art (without keeping in mind that masterpieces are subjective). He finds out he has to create a new animated show to get out of his contract and has Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt create it, hoping their lack of experience would result in a messy disaster that wouldn't get past a pilot episode. However, ''JustForFun/WackyDelly'', the show they create, [[SpringtimeForHitler turns out to do the complete opposite]]. Ralph stops at nothing to eradicate what he believes to be nothing but popular schlock that's ruining his chance to be a "serious" artist, but his sabotage only makes the show inexplicably ''more'' popular. Rocko convinces him that as long as it's his own creation, its art and Ralph finally puts passion into it. It soon has [[JumpingTheShark jumped the shark]], people hate it, and it gets cancelled. Ralph then declares he will show them true art and spends the next several years sculpting his "masterpiece", a gigantic still life of a bowl of fruit. Even then, he learns that people ''still'' remember him not as an artist, but as the guy who "ruined" the "Wacky Delly" show.
** In "Junk Junkies", Heffer adds his "G.I. Jimbo" to the items that Rocko is selling to pay his debt to the pizza guy. Rocko says that no one will want to buy it, since the figure is broken and melted "after surviving eight tours of duty on the kitchen stove". However, one customer says he must have it and offers $500 for the brilliant masterpiece... which happens to be just enough to pay off the debt.
* On one of the few occasions where Linda sees what her sons ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'' have built, Phineas, Ferb, and Candace had gone somewhere else, so Linda didn't realize that it was Phineas and Ferb who built the contraption.
-->'''Linda''': ''(looking at the contraption)'' I'll never understand this modern art.
* Comes up, appropriately, in the ''WesternAnimation/DanVs'' episode "Art". Dan's car is painted and covered with plastic frogs by a famous artist, which the crowd lauds as a masterpiece. In order to take his revenge, Dan and his friend Chris sneak into the museum and vandalize the artist's latest show, but this is hailed as a stroke of genius. In the end, Dan finds that the artist uses a slot machine-like device to tell him what to make, and when he tries to expose him, the artist's art factory winds up destroyed. This inspires the artist to make a simple statue of Dan (title "Unnamed Jerk"), but the same crowd who loved the car claim the statue "doesn't mean anything," and they walk away.

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* Played for comedy in ''Film/{{Contraband}}'', where a few million dollars in counterfeit cash is covered up with a paint-spattered tarp... that is actually a Jackson Pollock painting worth ''tens'' of millions of dollars.

* ''Series/TheMuppetShow'':
** Some of the Great Gonzo's acts early on were like this, such as smashing up a car with a sledgehammer while the orchestra played "The Anvil Chorus", eating a car tire to "The Flight of the Bumblebee", or trying to disarm a bomb while reciting Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias". Lampshaded in one episode when guest Creator/PeterSellers wanted to squeeze two chickens under his arms while reciting the opening soliloquy from ''Theatre/RichardIII''. Kermit told Sellers that he couldn't do that act because "Gonzo tried that last week."
** Another episode had Floyd Pepper writing a new theme song. When Kermit says he's sure he'll like it, Floyd tells him he won't.
--->'''Floyd''': You won't understand it, man. No one does. If I didn't know I was a genius, ''I'' wouldn't listen to the garbage I write.

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* Played for laughs on ''Series/FamilyMatters''. Laura is working on a bust of Carl for her art class, but at the last minute, [[ExtravertedNerd Steve Urkel]] breaks the nose before the bust can dry, and his attempts at fixing it only mess up the rest of the bust, until he gives up and draws a big goofy-looking smiley face on the front of the former bust. Laura's art teacher then walks over and sees it, praises it as deep, and asks Laura what it's called. Laura makes up the title "Man in Turmoil" on the spot, and the teacher loves it and gives her an A.

** An episode features Murphy betting with Miles she could pass off one of her toddler son Avery's fingerpaints as an abstract art piece (by "self-taught artist A. Veret") to discredit a pair of pretentious art critics she was doing a piece on. One of them immediately starts trashing the "painting" calling it "amateurish" and with no value, only for the other critic to jump in to its defence and they both end up getting into a huge argument. Murphy is about to reveal the ruse when the painting ends up being sold at a very high value to a guy who had not even ''seen'' the painting: he assumed it was a very important piece of art due to two prominent art critics arguing about it and Murphy doing a piece about it. Murphy tells the guy it was a child's fingerpainting but he just tells Murphy she doesn't "get it". Eventually she gives up and goes off to get "A. Veret" some more art supplies.

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[[caption-width-right:350:Comic by [[https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147239071/dont-get-art-you-might-be-looking-at-it-wrong Malaka Gharib]]

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* ''Webcomic/FlyingManAndFriends'' is pretty incomprehensible as is, but incomprehensible art is mentioned directly in [[http://www.flyingmanandfriends.com/?p=234 this strip]].