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Artists must be allowed to make bad work

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Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#101

Post by laratied »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #86
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…

Gross take. I generally loathe impressionist work for a number of reasons I won't get into here, but that doesn't change the fact that standing in a gallery in front of Monet's "Woman with a parasol" you can -feel- a light see breeze and smell salt. A powerful and (correctly) celebrated work done after the advent of photography.

Gauguin is the best example to me. I could never understand why anyone would think his childish looking paintings were so great until I seen some of his masterpieces in person.

The amount of colors is just flooring and mind bending.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#102

Post by dcow »

dsign wrote: post #72

This has been coming to my mind in the context of fiction writing. Today, the writer's gold standard is publication. In fact, many readers say they won't read anything that hasn't been "published" by a publisher. But the incentive of a publisher is money and sales, which means they will search for things that sell in volume, or handicap the writer's work so that "it sells." And how the publisher guesses if something…

This interesting (and I might personally add destructive) thing is happening in the romance genre where authors are going back and doctoring up all their prose from the 90s and 00s to address "consent issues" as the current cultural zeitgeist understands consent. It's not that I'm not okay with people's definition of consent changing and with writing new works to be acceptable under the new definition. And I even quite like well-integrated examples of affirmative consent in romantic literature, because a good author can weave it in ever so subtly and naturally when working with a blank slate. But this need to go back and "fix" the older works really kills me. If I could buy the older edition from the publisher that would be one thing, but in the age of digital publishing the new edition just clobbers the older ones, sometimes forcibly in your library or collection. I think there's value to being able to read literature from the 90s and understand what that time period was like, culturally. Or even works set historically back in previous centuries. I think it's important to be able to read old works and critique them, etc. I would even go as far as to say that it's okay to write modern works that lack strict adherence to affirmative consent so that they can be critiqued regardless (this might make them unpopular to the masses as pleasure reading, but it makes them interesting as social commentary). It really breaks the illusion for me when you're reading a scene from an older work and you encounter a section that was clearly doctored, or which just doesn't fit with the time period the story is set in. It's just not realistic in any way and I don't think it benefits the catalog of writing we have today to expect that authors go back and "fix" their work from 20 years ago that's suddenly become controversial by today's standards.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#103

Post by EoinB »

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…

Oh wow, what an uninformed opinion. Not surprising, sadly, given that so many in tech are so one-dimensional.

Perhaps a course in art history would help you understand that visual art has never been solely about image reproduction. Even cave paintings were allegorical. My goodness.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#104

Post by nathan_compton »

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…

Absolutely bizarre opinion, friend.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#105

Post by ckolkey »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

Thats great, thank you for sharing it.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#106

Post by AlwaysRock »

epiccoleman wrote: post #84

I have a page for quotes in Notion. There are only a few, I try to save it for really good ones. But this quote from Ira Glass made the cut: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential,…

Made into a nice little video here: https://vimeo.com/85040589

Hugely useful if you are starting to get into something new or are young and frustrated that your X isnt as good as you think it should be.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#107

Post by cat_plus_plus »

At least for photography, it's important to not take yourself too seriously. You might see something amazing, and every single shot ends up out of focus, or overexposed or with garbage bag in the foreground ruining the mood. In some ways, dedicated cameras are intentionally glitchy to achieve artistic effects, so sometimes they glitch in ways you have not intended. I would imagine that in the same ways a violin is not intended to be as precise as a digital music player and oil paints are not intended to be as true to reality as a smartphone photo. The point is to keep going without overthinking and let good stuff come once in a while by serendipity, while you gain experience to gradually increase average quality. If I was a novelist with a writer block, I would try to come up with a parody of my own writing and see if some comic relief helps me relax. Sometimes I take trippy photos through a water bottle when I am bored and can't think of anything else to do.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#108

Post by shadowfoxx »

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 donno, this comment feels like saying, "Machines have really destroyed our relative reaction to the Olympics. Who cares how far someone can throw a heavy ball when a cannon can do it much better and more accurately."

When the reality is that people are still very much interested in the extent of human prowess AND other folks (often overlapping) are interested in the extent of mechanical prowess (We call those folks engineers and they are much closer to Art enjoyers than not).

There's no doubt that Photography had an affect on "Peoples" idea of "What is Art" or "What do I value in visual Art" but... so does everything? Being extremely wealthy or extremely impoverished can destroy a relationship to Art. Its not so linear as, "All people care about is the ability to render images realistically"

I feel like I could type a novel around this concept but I'll leave these seeds planted, for now.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#109

Post by AlwaysRock »

This has always been the case and always will be. Unfortently most people feel like they have to put everything online right away now. Most art is bad and doesnt need to go out into the world.

The most creative I've ever been was when I was writing new work every day. MOST, maybe as much as 95%, of what I was creating was just okay. 4% was something that could be developed into something good. 1% was actually good.

That meant in 100 days of writing 95 of those days I would feel like a failure if my measure of success was creating something good or useable. I had to shift my thinking so creating something was the measure of success and creating something good only came from creating a lot and seeing what actually stood out.

If I was putting all of that work online right away I'm positive the negative feedback, or entire lack of feedback, would have been discouraging and I would have stopped.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#110

Post by NickC25 »

Of course they should. There are countless fantastic musicians, for example, who have albums that have both great tracks and filler tracks on them. Just because someone has demonstrated greatness (even consistently) doesn't mean that every track that comes out of their studio is destined to top the charts or win some sort of award.

Even the best athletes have "bad days at the office" (just yesterday, the #1 tennis player in the world lost to a guy ranked #133). Why should artists of any given medium?

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