Basic Trope: Something that's not intended to be artistic is interpreted as such.
- Straight: Bob is at the dump disposing of a Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project Gone Horribly Wrong. An art collector offers him $500 for what basically amounts to a broken sink and a labyrinth of PVC piping. And at the museum, everyone is awed by it.
- Exaggerated: The art collector buys an old fast-food wrapper Bob crumpled up and threw away, and he's regarded by all who see it as being on par with Michelangelo.
- Downplayed:
- Bob manages to sell some paintings, but he doesn't consider them to be True Art or even his best work. The art collector he sells them to, and the people who come to the museum, think they're awesome.
- Bob himself sees his Do It Your Self Plumbing Project as symbolizing his struggle with urban problems.
- Justified: The art collector has a thing for outsider art, and sees artistic potential everywhere.
- Inverted: Bob creates a painting or a sculpture, which is not interpreted as True Art, but as garbage.
- Subverted:
- The broken sink is not well-received at the gallery opening.
- Bob deliberately made a sculpture of of various items, and acts false modest when it is well received.
- Double Subverted: But then some wealthy whackos take interest in it.
- Parodied:
- The museum is filled with random junk collected at the junkyard featured as works of art.
- Bob is pantsed at the museum, which a nearby art critic considers artistic.
- Zig Zagged: As current art trends tend to change over time, so does people's opinion about Bob's broken sink. At first, it's considered art, then junk, then art again and so on...
- Averted: Bob's broken sink is regarded the way Bob thought of it: as trash.
- Enforced: Surreal Automatism.
- Lampshaded: "Oh, that? That's not art. That's just a Do-It-Yourself Project gone horribly, horribly wrong."
- Invoked: Bob, seeing an eccentric art collector on his way to throw out his do it yourself plumbing project, attempts to convince the man that his project is truly a work of art.
- Exploited: Bob does so (in the Invoked entry) to make a few extra bucks.
- Defied:
- The art collector sees the project as trash and shows no interest in it.
- Once the art collector shows interest in Bob's "masterpiece", Bob immediately clears up the misunderstanding and continues to throw the thing away.
- Discussed: "Oh yeah? Well I liked the Do-It-Yourself Plumbing Project before it was cool."
- Conversed: "I bet Bob is going to try to pass that junk off as art later on"
- Deconstructed: At the same time as Bob is selling his "masterpiece", we see Charlie, an actual starving artist, holding a good (but not amazing) painting out for judgment and being completely ignored.
- Reconstructed: Charlie is able to determine why people like Bob's "art", and is able to replicate the idea and make money from his new pieces.
- Played For Drama: Bob is married to Alice, a struggling artist. He supports her, but isn't very artistic himself. Then one day, he is seen scrapping a broken sink, and becomes an overnight sensation in the art world. Alice is jealous that Bob gets famous without even trying, and her artwork that she pours her heart and soul into is barely acknowledged as being art.
Oh this? That's not a modern art sculpture, it's just my old VHS collection in a heap.
