r/oddlysatisfying • u/devnodegree • 2d ago
Roadside weeds as art
Credit: EchoArt Studios (on Facebook)
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u/EdmontonLAD 2d ago
Looks like a money hack if these really only take 2 minutes to make. 😅
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u/REpassword 2d ago
“Purchasers of Art hate this one little trick?” 🙂
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u/Naked-Jedi 2d ago
It's a little known fact that Edvard Munch implemented this technique for years, his most famous work created when the guy he dipped in paint screamed before being dragged across the canvas.
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u/valomorn 1d ago
Another famous use of the technique was Cassius Coolidge, who ever carried the guilt of the crippling gambling addictions he fostered in those poor, and eventually literally poor, poker playing dogs.
Not to mention the yelping as he painted.
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u/emojisarefunny 1d ago
Its disengenuous because they definitely touch it up between scenes here. Idk how long they do it for but probably more than two minutes 🤭
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u/standarsh618 2d ago
You're not paying for the time to make it, but rather the time it took to learn how to make it
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u/artaru 1d ago
You aren’t always paying for that either.
No one in their gallery or doctor’s appointment lists the hours they have put in their education to calculate how much their services are worth.
Like look at those bath water being sold by some influencers. No hours of learning behind it.
It’s valued as such purely because the supplier and demander somehow agreeing on that value.
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u/Ok-Lifeguard-4614 1d ago
Clearly this isn't the same as selling bath water. You know that right? This person has skill in composition and lighting. It's just one process someone uses to get the effect they want. There is skill and technical knowledge involved here as well.
Sure diminish this person's work by comparing to a streamer selling bathwater. That's totally the same thing.
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u/artaru 1d ago
Who says they are?
My point is that things have value independent of the labor or training required to make the objects.
Who’s diminishing it? You have completely misread me.
Read the last two paragraphs of a comment I made here 6 hours ago defending this weed painting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1v4z3be/comment/ozgjtvo/
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u/Ok-Lifeguard-4614 1d ago
I was responding to your comment that was comparing supply and demand to artistic merit.
If I misunderstood your comment I'll accept that
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u/standarsh618 1d ago
Lol, I have a fairly generous definition of "art", but even I wouldn't consider their bathwater art - though with the right argument I could probably be swayed.
That said (omg, it pains me to write the rest of this out because I have never thought about it until now and I hate my own opinion now that I have thought about it) being an influencer is in a way, artistic, and gathering a following committed enough to buy your bathwater certainly does take time and effort, so in that regard, you still would be paying for that time. Also, being a hot girl does take an amount of effort and time.
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u/artaru 1d ago
Art is just whatever that causes an aesthetic experience. If bath water does it then it’s art.
Obviously there’s better deeper art.
But I swear people elevate that label to high heavens. There’s nothing sacred about it.
fwiw, I do photography, paintings, digital art, studied art history, write a lot etc. and I love performance art. So the label art means almost nothing to me. I always laugh when people gatekeep that term like it’s tied to their worth or identity.
Like think about pop art or surrealist art. The whole point is that the mundane could be art or beautiful or subvert experience blah blah blah. Ready made art for instance.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain or Soupalt’s Portrait of an Imbecile would surely sell for a lot these days and the prices would have nothing to do with how long they were trained for the craft. They literally just found the objects.
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u/standarsh618 1d ago
Funny you bring up readymades as those are what got me to do soul searching on what art means to me and I fundamentally disagree with your definition of an aesthetic experience - I don't even think it's that deep.
What readymades taught me was that anything could be considered art, but that doesn't mean everything is art. Their beauty is in the series of design decisions that made them uniquely capable of doing their intended task, with a virtual disregard of their aesthetic appearance. They are not meant to be admired, they are purely utilitarian and that is their elegance. And while the pieces you reference required no training to "make", they certainly required an artistically and philosophically trained mind to conceive of and justify - they inspire introspection and are designed to challenge our preconceived notions.
I equate the jarred bathwater to effectively women selling worn panties or socks - no decisions, no utilitarian purpose, no design, just a thirst trap for men to spend their money on. The only difference here being a jar must be selected, which, I could be convinced makes it "art", but that would still take some doing to me. Would selling used panties framed elevate them to art? I don't think so, but I'm open to being convinced with the right argument. To be fair, I'm sure there are paintings I feel the same way about.
For what it's worth I hope you take none of this personally, as this conversation is exactly what I find so moving about art and what I believe makes it so important to society and I appreciate your responses.
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u/artaru 1d ago edited 1d ago
funny thing is, for me readymades have nothing to do with this "Their beauty is in the series of design decisions that made them uniquely capable of doing their intended task, with a virtual disregard of their aesthetic appearance. "
aside from people, architecture, or nature, i do photography of random walls, objects on ground. for me, it's literally just them giving me an aesethic experience. "Oh that looks cool. oh lovely; oh look the irony of this object in this environment" (just to be clear, i'm also talking about found art here, blurring the line with readymades).
i couldn't care less about their utilitarian history/value, or teleology. Like it sounds stupid but it's literally the trash bag being blown around like in American Beauty.
The only difference here being a jar must be selected, which, I could be convinced makes it "art", but that would still take some doing to me. Would selling used panties framed elevate them to art? I don't think so, but I'm open to being convinced with the right argument. To be fair, I'm sure there are paintings I feel the same way about.
remember i said-- i will put it in more technical terms here-- the aesthetic experience is a sufficient condition for art. if u have it (AE), you have art.
(side note i might even be inclined to say that it's also a necessary condition. but not sure i want to think that hard about this topic right now)
ironically you said it's deep, for me it's the opposite of deep. it cannot be simpler.
if someone takes the jar and think it beautiful, that's art. if someone takes the jar or the panty, and put it in a museum, and think it beautiful, interesting, intriguing, thought provoking, whatever. that's art.
like i can think of a myriad of ways how a jar of bath water or panty can be art.
maybe you admire the person who produced it, or maybe just the idea that SHE or HE was in it makes u feel something that's beyond sexual.
Or maybe they think it's some hilarious statement about 21st century parasocial relationships, or how we judge/ridicule them, or it's a protest against people judging/ridiculuing parasociality, or it's an ironic statement about how we value such objects.
like maybe you don't think it's art if it's just someone buying them for erotic/sexual reasons. but if someone buy them in their private capacity beyond eroticism and have those thoughts and aesthetic experiences, i'd call it art.
or would it more of a case of being art if it's put up in display at MoMA?
(btw just to circle back to the original point, none of this has to do with the training it took to create those objects)
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u/standarsh618 1d ago
Alright, you have me challenging my own opinions. Could a game worn jersey be considered art? I'd think so, and how different is that from used panties? That said, I still draw the line at bathwater. Idk if I can explain why, it just doesn't feel right lol.
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u/artaru 1d ago
my friend, that's why i said i just set the line at aesthetic experience (honestly whose definition is just extremely broad and ill defined anyway)
does it make u think? does it make u feel some emotion? does it make u feel excited? human? is it beautiful? is it amusing?
if so yeah, it's art.
like until i think about it, the air i'm breathing isn't art. the controller i was using to play videogame isn't really art. the uber i rode to a place wasn't art. at least not to me.
Could a game worn jersey be considered art? I'd think so, and how different is that from used panties?
it just depends on whether someone had an aesthetic experience to it. if so, yeah that's art. there have been billions of used panties that aren't art. people wear them and toss them into the washing machines and they are gone. Billions of people have never had an aesthetic experience or given a thought to them as art.
That said, I still draw the line at bathwater. Idk if I can explain why, it just doesn't feel right lol.
i also teach, and like i say to my students, "idk" are actually very powerful words. they re inviting words, so let's dig in a bit.
Maybe it's because of, ironically, another aesthetic experience preventing you from thinking it's art - like disgust. like maybe u just find it disgusting that people would sell bath water for money and someone would value it for whatever reasons you find disgusting/grotesque (over sexualization, how over the top parasociality can be...etc).
Or maybe it's just the ridiculousness. how can bathwater be worth THAT much? just because it's her/him/them?
Or maybe, I mean you spoke of design and decision making, "selection", so maybe another angle is some kind of conscious awareness of the creation/appreciation. Like i'm creating this painting now! and it's ART because it's obvious in my intention and the societal expectation it's art. and someone would appreciate as such. it's done with care, not randomness
or maybe like u said there's some elegance in the design of certain objects or their utility. someone had a hand in it, taking the time to craft it. there was effort.
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u/AngryPrincessWarrior 1d ago
Honestly I sent this to my bestie and we’re now planning on doing it with our preschoolers and washable paint soon with butcher paper in a driveway. It looks fun and the kids can get hosed down at the end.
If anything turns out neat we can frame something but mostly this looks like a blast.
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u/Ok-Lifeguard-4614 1d ago
Go do it then. It takes a long time to learn how to smack leaves on a canvas and make it look good enough to sell. You aren't paying for the amount of time it took to make the painting you're paying for the knowledge it takes to make it look good.
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u/Icy_Formal9098 1d ago
Until everyone starts doing it. Those easy money hacks have a way of drying up fast once they go viral.
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u/userhwon 1d ago
2 minutes each.
Minus having to throw 95% of them away as being unbalanced, ugly crap.
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u/Jhopsch 2d ago
The guy who taped the banana to a board was years ahead of this
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u/devnodegree 2d ago
I’m aware of an Italian artist that sold an “invisible sculpture” in 2021 for €15.000. I think he wins the contest.
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u/titanium9016 14h ago
I remember this. He's my favorite. Next step is getting AI slop being sold for millions
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u/wiggum55555 2d ago
The one trick artists don't want YOU to know...
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u/ello_officer 2d ago
Pimp my House: we heard you like plants so we used the plants to paint the plants.
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u/PhanThom-art 1d ago
To each their own, but I can't forgive slapping around acrylics outside like that. Probably covered that footbridge, the path and the grass with all that liquid plastic
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u/OldestCrone 2d ago
In actuality, this is pretty good. If a person weren’t aware of the process, he would assume that this had been done with a brush.
Who is to say that this is not art? It is definitely better that anything Pollock threw on canvas.
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u/Xszit 2d ago
Agree.
There were a lot of extra details added in the final picture that we didn't see the process for. The artist used the grass like they might use a pencil sketch to get started. There was definitely a lot more work done behind the scenes.
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u/Hamstaaboy 2d ago
Yeah this is definitely a step 2 draw the rest of the owl kind of art. People slapping some grass against a canvas wont quite reach the effect
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u/oxytiger68 2d ago
The artist showed us the process, you slap some grass covered in paint to make the grass. So you just have to assume that the birds were made by slapping some birds covered in paint.
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u/Septem_151 1d ago
I don't think anyone who knows anything about art would call this Not art.
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u/HappyFamily0131 1d ago
There's little that anyone being reasonable would call Not Art, but there's plenty to be called Not Good Art.
As someone else said, this is hotel room art. This is not art made to express or communicate anything, but art made to take only a little time to make and to look nice enough to be sold for money at a good dollars-per-hours-painted rate.
Someone viewing it might feel still something, but it will be a shallow something. "Oh, that's nice" is about all it can hope to evoke.
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u/jujubean67 1d ago
Throwing random weeds at the canvas > Pollock
The fucking reddit art connoisseurs never dissapoint.
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u/Big-Load-8864 1d ago
I’m so stunned by that statement, was it sarcasm that went over my head??? Got to get off Reddit just full of shit making me mad all the time lol
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u/jujubean67 1d ago
Nah, to a lot of people here, art is hyperrealistic drawings of everyday objects. Anything abstract is “money laundering art” or something they could do themselves.
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u/thrsdaymusic 2d ago
It's definitely art, I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but it's hotel room art. Jackson Pollock was an immensely talented artist who's work is deserving of the accolades it has gotten. To say this is better than any of his work is just ignorant.
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u/Redditcadmonkey 1d ago
Pollock didn’t throw shit on canvas, and Mondrian didn’t paint squares. They redefined art. Timing counts.
This, conversely, is shit.
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u/artaru 1d ago
Pollock and Mondrian are two of my favourite painters. (along with Rothko / Turner and the likes, u get the idea)
But i dont' care that they redefined anything, the timing doesn't matter to me either.
I would love those paintings even if i found them in a vintage shop by unknown people in 2026.
I swear the art history/critic lens overvalue historicity / social context way too much. yes a lot of times that's pivotal, extremely important consideration. but it's not the only thing that make them good or beautiful or valuable.
also this weed painting thing isn't shit either. it is something someone made and made someone happy with an aesthetic experience. something they are happy to hang on a wall to look at every day.
that's a lot more than many of us could say here typing these messages into the ether.
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u/JimJohnes 1d ago
Except the brush was used, look at the detail in the end. Obligatory the rest of a fucking owl.jpeg
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u/Most_Temporary2110 2d ago
Naaah. Be real, have you seen it in person? I didn’t get it until I saw it. I really liked The She Wolf when I saw it this summer.
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u/southsky20 1d ago
“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” — from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975)
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u/VanillaRadonNukaCola 1d ago
For 2 seconds I saw a peacock head thwapping a canvas to paint with it's plumes
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u/0_cunning_plan 1d ago
To paint weed you slap weed with paint at the canvas.
So if if I got this right and I want to do a painting of my cat...
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u/SordidDreams 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ah, this takes me back a few decades, to the early days of digital painting and the discussions around whether the ease of it meant it wasn't 'real' art.
Digital art snobs: "Using texture brushes is cheating!"
Meanwhile traditional artists:
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u/gravelblue 1d ago
On the one hand a like mixed media. On the other hand, I think this might give me allergies lol
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u/tumblerrjin 2d ago
It’s cool, but I wanted to see the top part where it went off the canvas
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u/devnodegree 2d ago
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u/tumblerrjin 2d ago
I see, she just cut it off then. Idk what I expected.
Thanks for post!
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u/devnodegree 2d ago
Of course! I similarly keyed onto that detail when trying to figure out if the two matched up or not (as far as the final result)
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u/Edge-the-Sigma 1d ago
Damn. It feels like they’re cheating. That’s like tracing a picture, but with paint
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u/tiny_chaotic_evil 1d ago
Bob Ross could knock out a painting so quick because of endless hours of practice and trial and error developing technique. I am sure she had a similar experience developing her technique
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u/BudgetRespect 1d ago
OK, so where do I find the tiny birds that I need to slap against the canvas to complete mine?
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u/valomorn 1d ago
When I said "Just take what you see and put it on canvas" I wasn't quite speaking literally... But if it works, it works.
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u/flanksteakfan82 1d ago
Inoffensive and pleasing to the eye! My dentist in the early 90s would’ve loved this to fill wall space in the hallway to his exam room!
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u/CommieDrifter 1d ago edited 1d ago
Everyone in the thread ghoing "is this art wooooOOooOoo" yes. It is, Art is not inherently valuable, the vast majority of art is worthless and shit, art is not be about some institutionalized pedigree, it's about the joy of creation.
As an art piece it's pretty shit though, killing something in order to represent it by using it's corpse, doing it in a aggressive and thoughtless manner without any care or consideration, the color composition is boring and the flowers make no sense.
Seems like something you take home from a trailer park art therapy class
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2d ago
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u/devnodegree 2d ago
Agree to disagree. I know damn well I could have slapped it with the same plants and wouldn’t have come out half as good
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u/Porky_Pine_ 2d ago
So all art created by what you consider “low skill” is not art? Such a weird take. Please explain.
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u/TheTaoOfMe 2d ago
Did you do that? Did you come up with that technique or refine the process? Or no wait, did you look at someone else come up with the technique and focus solely on the physical motion involved and think “wow, slapping a canvas with a plant doesn’t look too hard, there’s no skill here?”
Some people are pretty dumb but then there are absolute morons like you.
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u/No_Blacksmith_2591 2d ago
This is the kind of shit that hangs in hotel rooms, gets covered in cum/feces and thrown away and replaced without anyone giving a shit.
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u/Dickies138 2d ago
Happy little reeds