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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

#151

Post by epiccoleman »

Animats wrote: post #146
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."

I've heard this expressed something like "you'll write 50 bad songs before you write a good one, so get started!"

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#152

Post by LudwigNagasena »

stale2002 wrote: post #137
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I criticize the title because it says something vague piggybacking on the idea of freedom to guilt-trip its readers to support a controversial opinion that has barely anything to do with the title in question. And I can only learn the content by clicking on that clickbait title that provides no information. Well, if it is common in English to refer to the situation when the public opinion about you is allegedly shape…

> it says something vague piggybacking on the idea of freedom This is where you are wrong. It is not based on the idea of freedom. The point of the article, and the title, has nothing to do with whether someone is legally allowed to make bad art, or has some fundamental human rights, that are being infringed on, related to freedom. Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is that because artists are more i…

> Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is that because artists are more in the public eye these days, this extra scrutiny on every single piece of work that they do, has anti-creative effects on artists, and this is bad.

So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed” to do something?

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#153

Post by stale2002 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #152
stale2002 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it says something vague piggybacking on the idea of freedom This is where you are wrong. It is not based on the idea of freedom. The point of the article, and the title, has nothing to do with whether someone is legally allowed to make bad art, or has some fundamental human rights, that are being infringed on, related to freedom. Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is that because artists are more i…

> Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is that because artists are more in the public eye these days, this extra scrutiny on every single piece of work that they do, has anti-creative effects on artists, and this is bad. So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed” to do something?

> So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed"

What it has to do with that, is not that artists are literally prevented by the law from making bad art.

Instead, it is that artists should be able to make bad art, without suffering significant negative consequences from doing so.

So, you should interpret the statement as being "artists must be able to make bad art, without suffering significant negative consequences for doing so"

That is the intent of the title.

This is what "allowed" means in this context.

It means "it must be possible for them to do this, while not suffering significant negative consequences."

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#154

Post by perfmode »

dimgl wrote: post #126
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,…

I love this, thanks for sharing. When I was younger I used to make a lot of music. A majority of it sucked, but some of it was legitimately good. So much so that some of my friends would go out of their way to listen to it even if they had other options. Funnily enough they'd still listen even if the tracks were always super low quality (I was young and didn't know how to mix it and I didn't have any kind of equipmen…

pick it back up!

the talent never goes away. you can pick up right where you left off

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#155

Post by therealdrag0 »

Animats wrote: post #146
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."

I also found a thousand variations of this online in the early 2000s when I was interested in writing. This isn’t hard wisdom to find. Anyone trying to learn a craft should come across it before king.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#156

Post by LudwigNagasena »

stale2002 wrote: post #153
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, the purpose of the article, and the title, is that because artists are more in the public eye these days, this extra scrutiny on every single piece of work that they do, has anti-creative effects on artists, and this is bad. So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed” to do something?

> So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed" What it has to do with that, is not that artists are literally prevented by the law from making bad art. Instead, it is that artists should be able to make bad art, without suffering significant negative consequences from doing so. So, you should interpret the statement as being "artists must be able to make bad art, without suffering significant…

And since we both agree that it has nothing to do with freedom, why do you think it is justified to talk about it as "being allowed to"?

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#157

Post by stale2002 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #156
stale2002 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, explain what does any of that has to do with “not being allowed" What it has to do with that, is not that artists are literally prevented by the law from making bad art. Instead, it is that artists should be able to make bad art, without suffering significant negative consequences from doing so. So, you should interpret the statement as being "artists must be able to make bad art, without suffering significant…

And since we both agree that it has nothing to do with freedom, why do you think it is justified to talk about it as "being allowed to"?

> why do you think it is justified

Because by "allowed to" what it means is "to be able to do so, without suffering significant negative consequences."

So, that would be the definition of "allowed to" that is being referred to, which is both true and justified.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#158

Post by js8 »

esquivalience wrote: post #67
js8 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, let's call it efficient market pressure in my original post, then.

I'm interested in your comment about copyright being proposed for stability. Can you direct me to a source please? If you have a reference or a hint for further research, I'd like to read into it more.

You're probably reading too much into that comment. In the U.S., the copyright was justified "to promote progress of science and useful arts", which I interpret in a way that it provides certain stability of income needed to promote learning and experimentation (and also allows for a failure). It was understood even then that it is an anti-free market policy.

And that seems to be what OP was complaining about, the lack of this security for artists. Unfortunately, the copyright (like most other property) today has been mostly captured by rentier class, so it no longer provides these protections for most artists, if it ever really did.

So I was really just pointing out this connection between OP's woes and copyright.

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#159

Post by js8 »

badpun wrote: post #138
js8 wrote: post #10

That's the free market pressure. The free market only cares about your present performance, not about your past. And it is by many believed to be a good thing, because it's very meritocratic. But it has downsides, too. People are human, not machines, and sometimes need to rest too. That's why we shouldn't leave everything up to the free market (not even the one that works in liberal theory and is perfectly meritocrat…

> But it has downsides, too. People are human, not machines, and sometimes need to rest too. That's why we shouldn't leave everything up to the free market People are competing against other humans, who need rest too. Hence, everybody rests, and things work out for everybody in the free market scenario.

Um, no. This could only work out if there was no capital accumulation, which is pretty much a prerequisite for a civilization.

And even in hunter-gatherer societies humans evolved past that. I mean, this guy got sick for a month, let's not feed him anymore, he's not competitive enough. Surely humans would flourish with that attitude!

Re: Artists must be allowed to make bad work

#160

Post by Ekaros »

badpun wrote: post #139
dagw wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't judging (or pricing) random Da Vinci sketches as art, but as investments and historic artefacts. In fact I'd go as far as saying that anybody paying more than ~$300k-$500k for a piece of 'art' isn't paying for the art any more, but are investing in a financial asset (that may or may not look nice displayed in their living room)

I'd say the treshold is much lower, and depends on the area and wealth of the person. But I doubt even a billionaire would pay $200k for a piece of an unknown artists just because he loves it. Maybe he'd pay $50k. For regular people, it's more like $5k.

5k is a lot of money.

I think for actually regular people threshold is in hundreds or tens. Art isn't very expensive on the low end. Paintings by no name authors don't cost much at all.

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