Amazing quotables from a book by David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear, that tackles the process in which all self-proclaimed artists (and non-artists alike) struggle to overcome in the creation of art.
This book is about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people – essentially (statistically speaking) there aren’t any people like that. But while geniuses may get made once-a-century or so, good art gets made all the time. Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar.
That’s my problem. I’m hiding out in my bat cave, scheming for what’s next to come. I forget about the intense rush of productivity, inspiration, and fearlessness I experience in the moment of doing, rather than thinking. Art is very backwards like that.
Art is human; error is human; ergo, art is error. Inevitably, your work (like, uh, the preceding syllogism) will be flawed.
What accompanies my feelings of accomplishment is usually a bit of disappointment. Errors and flaws that I’d so very much like to ignore end up rearing its ugly head, and it deflates my high hopes. But it makes no difference. In order to survive, I’ll just have to bite my tongue and keep creating.
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
I’m going to buy this book, sit down and completely pulverize the content into my brain, and see how I orient myself after. Fear can drive you, but it’s pushing me in the wrong direction right now.
Thanks, kottke.org.
Art and Fear
Amazing quotables from a book by David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art & Fear, that tackles the process in which all self-proclaimed artists (and non-artists alike) struggle to overcome in the creation of art.
That’s my problem. I’m hiding out in my bat cave, scheming for what’s next to come. I forget about the intense rush of productivity, inspiration, and fearlessness I experience in the moment of doing, rather than thinking. Art is very backwards like that.
What accompanies my feelings of accomplishment is usually a bit of disappointment. Errors and flaws that I’d so very much like to ignore end up rearing its ugly head, and it deflates my high hopes. But it makes no difference. In order to survive, I’ll just have to bite my tongue and keep creating.
I’m going to buy this book, sit down and completely pulverize the content into my brain, and see how I orient myself after. Fear can drive you, but it’s pushing me in the wrong direction right now.
Thanks, kottke.org.