The age-old question — what is art? — gets a satirical tweak in the new movie Untitled, which studies the type of character who might be more prevalent in the art world than most would like to admit.

The latest film from director Jonathan Parker (Bartleby) probes the world of modern conceptual art through its main character, Adrian (Adam Goldberg), an avant-garde musician whose band performs works of dissonant sounds that more often draw chuckles than claps from even the most culturally savvy listeners.

So Adrian takes a cynical and dismissive view of the entire modern-art community, snickering at the success of his brother, whose vapid paintings sell to corporate clients by the dozen, while maintaining his own work is brilliant but misunderstood. Eventually, he finds some happiness when a gallery owner (Marley Shelton) falls for both Adrian and his music.

Parker Film Company/Samuel Goldwyn Films

Adam Goldberg appears as Adrian and Marley Shelton as Madeleine in Untitled.

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“You begin to kind of embrace your own shortcomings as an identity, so that’s better than nothing. In a very general sense, I think there’s a lot of people like that,” Goldberg said by phone from Los Angeles. “Everybody has a bit of vanity and everyone likes to see themselves represented in some fashion, even if it’s in a satirical way. I think there’s something a little liberating about it.”

Goldberg, 39, said he grew up around the world of contemporary art with parents who frequented galleries, and he has friends who still are involved in that realm.

In 2003, he directed a film called I Love Your Work that deals with some of the same notions of art and celebrity that his character confronts in Untitled.

“As I got older, I became not necessarily as interested in that aspect of the arts so much, but my feeling about contemporary art, or art that is challenging in some way, is that it can be very moving and can be very arbitrary,” he said. “It really is in the eye of the beholder.”

Goldberg (Saving Private Ryan, 2 Days in Paris) said that on the surface, conceptual art has a level of self-obsession and narrow audience appeal that makes it a target for satire.

“The idea was to try and be as authentic, of a certain ilk, as possible. There was no way really to out-weird the actual scenes,” he said. “There’s a satirical element to the film, there’s no question. But I also think there’s this thing of saying, ‘Here it is.’ You almost don’t have to go beyond what exists. Any time you show any kind of very insulated sort of self-reflexive movement, it’s going to automatically appear funny in a way.”

One of the most enjoyable aspects of filming for Goldberg and his co-stars was creating the avant-garde musical sequences, which feature Adrian and his bandmates creating non-melodic “musical” sounds out of kicking buckets, blowing into glass and popping bubble wrap.

The musical numbers were written in part by Pulizer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who composed the score for the film and remained a consultant throughout production. Lang recorded a few samples for Goldberg and the rest of the actors to imitate on-screen.

“When it came time to actually do it, without an insane amount of rehearsal, there was just no way to play the stuff as it was recorded,” said Goldberg, a musician himself who records under the name LANDy. “We would just do a couple of free-for-all takes. What you see is some sort of combination of what I was playing and what was recorded.”

That held true for the first of the film’s two major performance sequences. For the second, the filmmakers scrapped the playback idea entirely and left it up to the actors to improvise using the bizarre collection of instruments at their disposal.

Looking back, however, Goldberg admits the lack of preparation and rehearsal time might have actually been beneficial.

“We got together before the take and figured out what we were gonna do,” Goldberg said. “I kind of took the role of composer. It just kind of became this organic thing that was based on the stuff that we had listened to. You didn’t know what was going to happen. It was nerve-wracking because we didn’t have a plan set in stone.”

Goldberg liked playing a character who harbors perpetual resentment at his own lack of appreciation from art aficionados, especially compared to his brother. Yet, he admits, Adrian’s distaste for all things mainstream means he wouldn’t find happiness even if he were more successful.

“That is absolutely what that character is about,” Goldberg said. “If he’s appreciated, then he’s doing something wrong and he isn’t an artist. He’s always allowed to fight and complain if he’s not successful, which gives him purpose. He’s constantly attempting to prove a point instead, rather than actually expressing himself. He’s kind of in a no-win situation.”

Untitled is currently playing at the Magnolia in Dallas and the Angelika Plano.

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com.