(Untitled): Isn’t Art Just So Fucking Wacky?

Adam Goldberg is a brooding and failing experimental composer; his
brother is a successful painter of institutional art. Goldberg makes
crap that nobody likes: unlistenable avant-garde skronk-as-slapstick
(his pieces involve, among other things, the sound of him kicking a
bucket hanging on a string). His brother makes crap that lots of people
like: gentle, inoffensive pastel abstracts that are all but designed
for hotel and hospital lobbies. Neither is happy; both want to continue
making crap yet be regarded as geniuses. They must have the deepest
sympathies of this film’s director and screenwriters.

(Untitled) attempts to satirize the modern art world with a
parade of tired caricatures (the shut-in outsider “artist,” the brash
and flashy Damien Hirst proxy, the gallery owner with the impossible
outfits) and hammy isn’t-art-just-so-fucking-wacky? sight
gags. (For an actually funny, sharp satire of modern art, you might
try, oh, just off the top of my head, Pecker by John
Waters.)

Meanwhile, some unlikely love triangle plays out between the
brothers and the impossibly outfitted gallery owner, but the characters
are so flat and underdeveloped that it registers only enough to bore.
About the only character you feel for is the Russian opera singer
Goldberg hires to perform in one of his pieces, who cracks
midrehearsal, “Who’s writing this shit? It’s stupid! It’s shit!” Sing
it, lady.

The dialogue—and this is the kind of short-on-plot,
long-on-talking indie film that lives or dies by the wit of its
dialogue—is not only dull and unfunny but loaded with the sort of
clichés that first-year art-school students should be ashamed to
speak even stoned at 1:00 a.m. in their dorm rooms: “Is the marketplace
the measure of artistic merit?” “What’s the difference between art and
entertainment?” The marketplace should take care of this film just
fine, as one thing art and entertainment have in common is that neither
can be found in (Untitled).