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Artists must be allowed to make bad work

austinkleon.com

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Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#91

Post by mantas »

inglor_cz wrote: post #9
mantas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to find issues in laws with some brainstorming over a pizza. The problem is people pushing certain laws frequently don't give a damn about side effects. Why would they care about results coming out from a simulation?

It is easy to find theoretical issues through brainstorming, but weeding out the false positives is much less easy. As an example, religious conservatives will brainstorm a lot of issues that are bound to rise (according to them) from gay emancipation. In practice, these failed to manifest.

You can easily manipulate results in a lab test too by messing with the environment and cherry picking results. And focusing on different outcomes.

I'm pretty sure same religious conservatives will claim that issues they saw did come up. While the other extreme would just shrug off the same issues as non-issue. Different people value different things... More at 11.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#92

Post by Bran_son »

dagw wrote: post #89
Bran_son wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this standard, Beethoven's 9th Symphony is also no longer "relevant". The first to do something are remembered, those who come after must be significantly better or different to be recognized. If someone wants to see Caravaggio's style, they are likely to simply see Caravaggio - it's just name recognition, nothing to do with the "relevancy" of the style itself, whatever that means (Popularity? Or a self-fulfilling…

You're missing my point. People like Beethoven because it's Beethoven, they're on the whole not interested in new music that sounds a bit like Beethoven. If you're a contemporary musician and composer you're going to have a very hard time making a successful career out of composing and performing new music in the classical and romantic style.

I thought we were talking about relevancy of the style, not how difficult it is to make a living competing with Beethoven. If people still turn up in droves to perform and listen to Beethoven, that seems very "relevant" to me.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#93

Post by mk67 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #63

Visual art is overrated and misunderstood IMO. Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines, which was very important because we didn’t have any other kind of rendering engine and looking at artificial images can be pleasing. Can you imagine what seeing a nice painting of a person was like when you had never seen any other kind of artificial image in your life besides handmade ones? It was probably mind…

Ah, yes. Single-minded tech guys' take on art. Not sure what to comment here, but art has nearly nothing to do with replicating a photograph/"rendering". Photorealistic art doesn't count as art to me at all.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#94

Post by dahart »

evandijk70 wrote: post #11
mantas wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers and doctors and nurses... Eh... Maybe not so fast...

For doctors looking to innovate, there are actually a lot of ways to fail fast and safely if you introduce a new drug. First, establish that a drug binds to the target in laboratory conditions (relatively quick). After that, test the drug in an animal model. After that, proceed to clinical trials, which are phased (phase I, II, III) to first establish whether a dosage exists that is safe (Phase I), what an effective…

Doctors? This sounds more like the activity of a Pharmaceutical company?

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#95

Post by falcolas »

dghf wrote: post #21
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #17

"Must be allowed to” sounds like a weasel word. It is not illegal to make bad work. I doubt any contract an artist signs usually has a clause against producing bad work either. That phrase may sound sophisticated and provocative but it means nothing, at least to me.

It seems pretty clear to me, especially with the context provided in the article itself: don't judge an artist solely by the last thing they made; don't write them off just because they're going through a bad patch.

At the same time, artists of every kind have to contend with the fact that this is currently a golden age for art. We are confronted with more art of every kind than we could ever consume. The cost for moving on has never been lower.

So while an artist should be allowed to have down periods, it also shouldn't be surprising if people move on. We're not looking for needles in haystacks anymore, we're looking for needles in a stack of needles. There may be value in coveting needles and hay from a particular artist, but that's an intensely personal decision to make.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#96

Post by williamcotton »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #90
mc32 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unique to art, nor does it speak to its importance. You could easily find someone who stares at ants for hours on end. What does it prove? I think we have to understand its meaning and impact on a societal level and determine its usefulness or uselessness[1]. Not all art is useful and not all art is useless but some are one or the other. [1]Very broadly defined and not focused on economic value, though being…

Art really shouldn't be measured on a useful or useless scale. How would we even determine adequate metrics for that? If we look at impact we'd need to consider The Bodyguard Soundtrack as high musical art.

"And IIIIiiiiiiieeeeeiiiiiee..."

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#98

Post by laratied »

antiterra wrote: post #76
pfannkuchen wrote: post #63

Visual art is overrated and misunderstood IMO. Artists of the past were basically human rendering engines, which was very important because we didn’t have any other kind of rendering engine and looking at artificial images can be pleasing. Can you imagine what seeing a nice painting of a person was like when you had never seen any other kind of artificial image in your life besides handmade ones? It was probably mind…

I think it’s likely you’re projecting your personal experience onto others. I knew someone who was obsessed with the Red Room by Matisse. He was in no way pretentious or academic in inclination, but something about the actual painting itself entranced him and he could disappear into it for long periods of time. I honestly don’t know what was so powerful about it for him, but he was clearly having a genuine experience…

Picasso was worth $250 million at his death in 1973 dollars. 1.6 billion in 2022 dollars from selling his own paintings.

Painters at one point were rock stars. Just like today's rock stars are social media stars and not a group of guys playing guitar/bass/drum/vocals.

Artistic mediums have their moment in time and then become niche, historical and retro once their time has passed.

Marble sculpture is no less amazing than in times past. That mediums time in the sun though passed a long time ago.

Just like if you go to an art gallery that arranges the paintings in period rooms, it completely obvious when photography became an up and coming medium and its effect on painting at the time.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#99

Post by leetrout »

In case someone wants to skip a click:

> Artists must be allowed to go through bad periods! They must be allowed to do bad work! They must be allowed to get in a mess! They must be allowed to have dud experiments! They must also be allowed to have periods where they repeat themselves in a rather aimless, fruitless way before they can pick up and go on. The kind of attention that they get now, the kind of atmosphere of excitement which attends today the creation of works of art, the way that everything is done too much in the public eye, it’s really too much. The pressures are of a kind which are anti-creative.

I think the same applies to developing technology. Certainly resonates with me and the phases I go through.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#100

Post by MichaelZuo »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #82
MichaelZuo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of it must have been uploaded onto the internet. Are you sure there aren't any examples you can link?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/contemporary-classical-painti... However, I've not got a horse in this "classical is overrated" race.

Thanks for the link.
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