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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

#141

Post by badpun »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #116
shadowfoxx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this really betrays history, even contemporary history. We could point to a number of contemporary artists that are worth millions of dollars for whatever they are known for - you might even consider them 'rockstars', regardless of how myopic I find the term - but headlines that make it onto the "4 big websites" is not the same thing as being irrelevant. For every "Picasso" you can cherry-pick from hist…

> People walking into whatever temple for whatever God they were visiting would be just as bored by the marble back then as you are of marble now. What gives you this idea? You don’t think that constant exposure to having one’s human recognition instinct stimulated artificially has a tolerance effect? Isn’t it a bit strange that people put so much effort and resources into e.g. statues despite finding them as boring…

The statues were there for religious or social reasons, were funded by people in power in those societies, and helped them stay in power.

On the other hand, the statues were often painted, so they looked more interesting than the bare marble we see now.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#142

Post by aigoochamna »

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,…

This brought another quote to mind for me,

> "You know, the whole thing about perfectionism.. perfectionism is very dangerous, because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in— it's actually kind of tragic because it means you sacrifice how gorgeous and perfect it is in your head for what it really is." -- David Foster Wallace

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#143

Post by mtalantikite »

epiccoleman wrote: post #133
mtalantikite wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story, as I'm sure many people with musical or other artistic talents, but who don't come from families that have artists in them do. I finally decided to get back to studying music with a private teacher after nearly 20 years away from it and it's great. Try out some teachers near you and just commit to spending 30-60 minutes a day practicing. You'll spend a bunch of time in that in between phase th…

It's impossible to overstate how amazingly effective having a teacher can be. I recently started taking guitar lessons again after over a decade of noodling (I took lessons in high school, and kept playing, but never sought instruction after leaving home for college). It is crazy how quickly I've improved in the last few months. Some of it is mechanical stuff, some of it is knowledge stuff, but I think the biggest th…

For sure. Just having someone to keep you on track and to lend their ears to your playing is a beautiful thing. And in most cases with a teacher that's been doing it for a while, whatever problems you're encountering they've probably hit with a bunch of other students in the past. My teacher has been teaching for 50 years, so he knows where to point you. It's up to you to show up to your instrument and do the thing though.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#144

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#145

Post by artimaeis »

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,…

Zen Pencils covered this quote, it's remained one of my favorites:

https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#146

Post by Animats »

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,…

> "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners".

Then they went to a bad school. Chuck Jones, the animator, wrote in his biography that when he went to art school, he was told "Everyone has ten thousand bad drawings in them. Our job is to get them out of you as fast as possible."

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#147

Post by [deleted] »

dagw wrote: post #70
MichaelZuo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe classical style visual art is overrated. My local art gallery, the AGO, had a large exhibition on Caravaggio a few years ago and I remember seeing the shocked expressions on the majority of the visitors.

had a large exhibition on Caravaggio What is interesting and telling is that they showed a 'name' like Caravaggio, and not any of the countless contemporary painters who are every bit is technically skilled as Caravaggio was, and perfectly capable of emulating his style. If the classical visual style was still relevant in itself, every art gallery would be showing off those contemporary artists.

[deleted]

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#148

Post by chimineycricket »

badpun wrote: post #140
NickC25 wrote: post #110

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 pl…

The difference is, artists can just shelve all the crap they made and release only the good stuff.

Also, having good tracks will make up for the crap tracks on the album. Fans don't listen to the crap tracks as much. That's a benefit of throwing a bunch of darts at dartboard at once.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#149

Post by shadowfoxx »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #116
shadowfoxx wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this really betrays history, even contemporary history. We could point to a number of contemporary artists that are worth millions of dollars for whatever they are known for - you might even consider them 'rockstars', regardless of how myopic I find the term - but headlines that make it onto the "4 big websites" is not the same thing as being irrelevant. For every "Picasso" you can cherry-pick from hist…

> People walking into whatever temple for whatever God they were visiting would be just as bored by the marble back then as you are of marble now. What gives you this idea? You don’t think that constant exposure to having one’s human recognition instinct stimulated artificially has a tolerance effect? Isn’t it a bit strange that people put so much effort and resources into e.g. statues despite finding them as boring…

I'm having trouble deciding if your post is tongue-in-cheek agreeing with me or not so I'll just add some earnest flavor. I'm going to answer your questions in reverse order.

No, I don't think it strange at all that people put so much effort and resources into Art. The creator of the work gets a different kind of satisfaction than the people viewing it. These reasons vary from person to person but I've always liked my Highschool's Motto "Art for Art's sake". So it makes sense to put effort into creation. Personally, I love narrative and so when I'm creating sculptures or art of any kind I'm considering the narrative that goes into it. The effort is to achieve the narrative while considering tone and taste. A Nightmare Before Christmas would not be the same movie if it were all rendered as naturalistically as possible.

I'm not going to pretend to know the entirety of reasons people have for liking their spaces designed, but we do like shiny things and people can be particular about their environments. Yeah, it might be most efficient to put people into perfect cubes but I doubt the emotional well-being of most people would be met by this kind of environment. So, on that basis alone we have a reason to put effort and resources into decorating our spaces.

I don't really understand your second sentence. I'm not sure what "Human recognition instinct simulated artificially" even means. Do you mean our ability to recognize humans? Or our ability to recognize anything? Its a little short-sighted to view the whole of "Marble Statues in Ancient Greece/Rome, etc" as "Activating, artificially, our Human Recognition Instinct". Like, not only was a majority of the Art from that time lost/destroyed, and not all of the statues were of people, but those statues were humongous. David is like 17 feet tall. No one is going to mistake him for a human. Humans from antiquity weren't that different than the ones from today, at least no biologically/evolutionarily. So it'd be the same for them as any memorial statue is today - they fade into the background (While still providing some aesthetics, mind you)

What you're really missing by pulling out this single quote is something I touched on later in the post - Focusing on any individual "medium" is myopic in the conversation of Art's Cultural relevance, and the thread you sparked is just as marrow-minded. We're definitely in a period of time absolutely saturated with Art but we are by no means running on cultural fumes. Maybe the spaces you occupy are dead-zones but that's a personal choice IMO - Its beautiful and full of culture out here.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#150

Post by whoami_nr »

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,…

Great quote. Checked Ira Glass out and he seems interesting. I totally agree with what he has to say. I used to be super apprehensive when writing my blog posts but I don't care as much these day. I don't care if people think I am a noob in some topic. At the end of the day, we are all trying to improve in our craft and being a beginner is the most excusable thing there is in this aspect. I write these days because, writing makes me a better thinker and I learn more about the topic when researching a blog post.
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