ART & FEAR

[droqen]

Re: David Bayles' & Ted Orland's
"Art & Fear"

i believe i encountered this book simply in this Austin Kleon blog post about a parable that someone (jack? ziggy?) told me about sometime.

[droqen]

on Chapter I, "The Nature of the Problem"

The first chapter, "The Nature of the Problem," says some interesting stuff about art and some other stuff that i hate. In particular it couches the practice of artmaking in a presume end goal or state, "once you're famous", and though it admits the finished product matters to others and not to the artist, it's still offensive to me to read, "The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars."

No, I thought this book and its authors understood, as they write earlier,

"Making the work you want to make means finding nourishment within the work itself."

[droqen]

"The viewers' concerns are not your concerns (although it's dangerously easy to adopt their attitudes.) Their job is whatever it is: to be moved by art, to be entertained by it, to make a killing off it, whatever."

To say the function of any part of your artwork exists in relation to it "soaring" or to presume there is value (to the artist) in fame is to fall victim, as the authors warn against, to the viewers' concerns.

[droqen]

The source of this problem is here, on page 5: "for some reason. . . artists find it tempting to romanticize [a] lack of response [to their work,] picturing themselves peering deeply . . . before anyone else has eyes to follow. // [
But] the disinterest of others hardly ever reflects a gulf in vision."

Here the chapter takes a clear turn, or rather misses one, allowing the underlying unstated focus on response to take root. I do not believe the response is very important to the artist's process. What's wrong with this romanticization isn't in how it handles the viewer's response but in that it handles it all. That is the trap and this book does not allow the reader, the artist or would-be artist, to see that. It confuses.

[droqen]

on Chapter II, Art & Fear

The second chapter, titularly entitled "ART & FEAR", is similarly messy and does not point me anywhere good. It starts by indicating how frequently artists quit, and what it means to quit — but again failing to connect quitting with any legitimate reason to not quit. Just, "lots of artists quit, what a shame" and "here's how to not quit". How about this, Bayles & Orland: WHY not quit?

Anyway, this incomplete topic then stumbles into a discussion of working with materials and how you can't make your idea come true perfectly if at all, the potential of materials, etc. What the fuck? How is this chapter even related to itself?

[droqen]

on Chapter III, Fears About Yourself

the authors are definitely on the same page about something, i can see the same perspective returned to again, the same perspective w/ which i take issue/offense. "fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work" they write, without really defining what 'best' work is -- that is okay, but it seems to fly in the face of another thing that they say, which is that your humanity drives your work, that your weaknesses are your strengths.

aren't your fears your weaknesses? oughtn't your fears be part of your strengths??? they don't resolve this.

[droqen]

i am particularly irritated by their return to Mozart, in a way that conflicts wildly.
at first, the introduction states:

This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. . . . Making art is a common and intimately human activity

but then in chapter I we're talking about fame, about art soaring, and now here in chapter III the book positions Mozart as an ideal, as a motivation, as though desiring to be Mozart or Mozart-like is a given, using such a desire as motivation to do hard work and not give up:

p.27-28

Newspapers love to print stories about five-year-old musical prodigies giving solo recitals, but you rarely read about one going on to become Mozart. The point here is that whatever his initial gift, Mozart was also an artist who learned to work on his work, and thereby improved. In that respect he shares common ground with the rest of us. Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work, and learning from their work. . . .

and so on.

[droqen]

i don't understand what Mozart is doing in here at all. get the fuck outta here, Mozart.

[droqen]

"Ask your work what it needs, not what you need."

i've heard this advice before. i don't know. why? why, with this? i think there must be a better way to describe this that does not center the artmaking project as magically self-sustaining. maybe we need to ask the work what it needs, but why do we need the work? in the end, if the work is what we need, then asking the work what it needs really is just a technique for asking ourselves what we need. and understanding artmaking through that lens is invaluable.

do the authors really understand what's going on here or are they taking artmaking as its own end? this isn't useful, this can't possibly be the end state of artmaking. as an artist you can't just say "i make art and it's my job to sustain this without questioning why i make art". you can't. it comes from somewhere.

p.30
"To demand perfection is to deny your ordinary (and universal) humanity, as though you would be better off without it. Yet this humanity is the ultimate source of your work"

the book poses humanity, humanity's value, as being a source of work. ABSOLUTELY NOT! your humanity is not an instrumental object to be squeezed like a lemon for work. this is the issue. the work's relationship to your humanity is not "an object you get out of valuing your humanity", rather the work must come itself foundationally from being the best expression of valuing your humanity, doing the work is the instrumental thing, art is instrumental.

artmaking is a tool which you wield in order to value and accept your ordinary humanity.
when it fails at this task, or when it is not the best tool for accomplishing this task, you must change the tool.

art is not the juice of humanity, art is the juicer. the juice is self-acceptance. the juice is self-knowledge. the juice is happy, comfortable existence. the juice is psychological safety. the juice is purpose.

[droqen]

on Chapter IV, "Fears About Others"

im beginning to see that 'others' for me includes other people as well as my materials. the material is an other, incapable of understanding me, something to reject, something to work with and accept as existing, but whose limitations i do not need to pay too much attention to.

it is the same with players.

[droqen]

i began to realize this in the opening paragraph of this chapter. p37, "Art is often . . . emerging unbidden in moments of selfless rapport with the materials and ideas we care about. In such moments we leave no space for others. . . . But while others' reactions need not cause problems for the artist, they usually do."

i half relate, half don't. rapport with the materials and ideas i care about... am i so concerned with others' reactions? am i so concerned with my materials? maybe i am, but it doesn't cause me problems. the material helps me. i don't have ideas that flow against the grain of the material, i am not trying to convey something that the material holds me back from, the material is what helps me flow! without the material how can i have ideas, how can i know what i am thinking? if my idea is clearer without the material, then perhaps there is a lack of understanding of what i am doing. why introduce the material to the idea? the material must be the best available material for doing what i must do, which is to get ahold of the idea at all. i know that the mental idea 'feels' clearer but that is pure illusion. the object made of material is always much clearer than the idea.

back in chapter I, p14-16, the book talks about imagination vs material:

David lamented to his teacher, "But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers." To which the Master replied, "What makes you think that ever changes?"

i'm frustrated by this perspective. it makes no sense to me. i can't hear the music better in my head than i can get out of my fingers, or maybe, it isn't my fingers' job to produce what's in my head, it's to make something else. the work of art is not reification, it is harmonization with the music that's in my head.

the first few brushstrokes to the blank canvas satisfy the requirements of many possible paintings

like what? what does this even mean? the first few brushstrokes to the blank canvas aren't there to satisfy requirements, they're there to create the beginning of feeling... i draw the first few tiles, and they open up the space, they create more possibility. not literally more possibility, but they draw pathways, they inspire me, i make more tiles. the first mechanics give birth to more mechanics. i extremely don't relate.

Finally, at some point or another, the piece could not be other than it is, and it is done. // That moment of completion is also, inevitably, a moment of loss

no artist is so special that their creation at the moment of completion is somehow perfect. this is a fantasy. this is fiction. this is absolute garbage, utterly useless to any serious making. everything is flexible, changeable. the idea that "the piece could not be other than it is" sells people on the idea of perfection, which the book explicitly argues against later. ANOTHER CONFLICT! every piece of art could always, always be other than it is. but we draw our boundaries for sanity's sake. i think this is a misunderstanding of the flow of time, of cause and effect, of acceptance.

we accept our work, imperfect and incomplete, and choose to regard a process as no longer ongoing. a finished work is not self-satisfied, we imbue it with satisfaction. we feel what we feel from it and make a mark when we intuitively feel that a mark must be made, and we stop when we judge ourselves to be done with the process.

to be finished with something is to accept our own imperfect, ephemeral satisfaction.

to continue to be finished with something is an act of ongoing self-acceptance, knowing that at some point in the past we were satisfied enough to call it finished, and that no matter how we feel now, we must strive to respect our past self, in the way that a future self will strive to accept our present self, and in doing so, we accept our present self.

[droqen]

p37-38

As an artist you're expected to make each successive piece uniquely new an different -- yet reassuringly familiar when set alongside your earlier work.

how can this book do this to me -- in a book called art & fear in a chapter entitled Fears About Others it frequently uses the collective-first-person pronoun, we, and here a second-person pronoun, you... but why would they project these fears onto me? do i care? i do not care about this expectation, or, i should not care about this expectation; the authors are giving me a new fear so that we might be on the same page. authors, i don't want your fear.

who expects this of the artist? nobody i care about, especially not when artmaking.

[droqen]

ugh! i hate this chapter! don't tell me about all of the things that artists are afraid of. i'm so tired of this. i'm not interested in these fears. do i really need to be reading this book about fears about artmaking? i wanted to read about art's relationship to fear, how fear fuels art, but this is a book of anecdotes by artists who fear things. that's kind of interesting, but i want to be reading it as their experience, yet the choice of pronoun is constantly confronting me as advice. "you feel this, you feel that, you you you", no, this is not about me, this is about YOU TWO and perhaps your students(???). i'm not a student though, i haven't been for a long time.

"The only pure communication," they write on p47, "is between you and your work."

yeah. so stop with all this other noise, thank you!!!

[droqen]

on Chapter V, "Finding Your Work"

i'm done reading for now, i think. i'm too frustrated with the authors for the way their perspective imposes on mine, and differs, conflicts. there is a lot of interesting perspective in the book, many things to draw from and learn, but maybe nothing new, and not in a shape that's useful to me personally. it's not a good shelf, it's been made for a brain other than where mine is now, or maybe i just don't need a new shelf, i've already chosen one.

[droqen]

p114

Q: Will anyone ever match the genius of Mozart?
A: No.
Thank you -- now can we get on with our work?

i'm so mad! like get the fuck outta here with the Mozart shit! maybe this is how people feel when i write about kill gameplay. i'm reacting to something that not everyone is burdened by. these authors are burdened, somehow, by comparisons to 'The Greats'. i am not. i have never been.

i am presently reacting to gameplay, some dread god of culture. perhaps to Bayles and Orland their god, their great enemy, is Mozart. when they wrote in the introduction that their book is about "all art not made by Mozart" they showed their hand and i should have listened: this book, as all works and actions, is a reaction. in their case it is in part a reaction to a fear that they have, that the only art that matters is art made by Mozart and people like him. what, then, is their art? what is art in the shadow of The Greats? i have no use for this, unfortunately, but perhaps someone will. well, the book is quite old, so maybe i should say -- perhaps someone has.