I would say that the internet has taught us one thing about people: there are still adults who enthusiastically create bad art. I do not mean this in a cynical or trolling context, simply that the democratization of media spaces has allowed a lot of grown ups to wave their freak flag and share their shitty art with the world, some of them are clueless that they suck, but I am certain there are a lot of people who know their art sucks and just do it anyways because it's fun.
This proliferation of bad and amateurish art is both good and bad - on the one hand I firmly believe that everyone should engage in creative pursuits and they should be free to share their creativity with whomever they want, but the flipside of the coin is that you get a media landscape that is absolutely saturated with bad art and that makes it much more difficult for the truly talented people to find an audience, you get buried in the sea of mediocrity.
Add to that the fact that virality is not based on merit, but on completely random things like clickbait titles and thumbnails and you get a world where 'bad art' is king.
This is honestly a great point, and you’re totally right. It makes me wonder what separates the people who knowingly distribute bad art with those who don’t.
I’m so tempted to make some sort of judgment about this, but I’m not going to—we wouldn’t be discussing this if the state of affairs wasn’t what it is, so (as you said) gotta take the good with the bad, right?
That said, thinking of shitty art on the internet as the product of kids-at-heart waving their freak flag does make it a bit more charming.
A Wonderful article Melissa. Kids can be so natural and unihabited. You noted so many good points and are so perceptive. Many of your kids must think your awesome!
When my kids were small, decades ago, our objective was to keep them as Pure and Natural as possible for as long as possible!
I like this a lot, so simple! Though I wouldn't quite agree that the kids experiment shows good and bad art. I think it shows that some kids have more natural aptitude. The other kids could also have learnt to draw, but they would have needed some training... I like your overall point though, because it suggests that learning skills does actually mean something, still, in a time when people can, and do, call themselves artists just because they find out that they like pushing paint around. I feel bad saying that, because I believe that creativity is everyone's birthright, which in our culture is now denied to many (precisely because you are deemed 'good' and 'bad' at art very early on, and that sets your course...). But no-one would pick up a violin and immediately start calling themselves a musician, and I do think that learning and time and application matter in art. Thanks for your post!
I just read your post again, and I think really you're making a different overall point, about not judging yourself to be good or bad all the time, and just get on with making something. Yes!
Thanks, Tamsin! I agree with you about learned skill vs natural aptitude (this adds another layer of complexity that I didn’t address here).
You put it rightly—creativity is everyone’s birthright, and (paraphrasing Julia Cameron) oneself to be a ‘bad artist’ is necessary if one ever wants to make ‘good’ art.
Thanks, Jenn. Yeah, it is sad to see, although I think it probably happens to all of us at some point. The silver lining is that some of them will get back into it at some point.
Jackson Pollock’s art isn’t representative of post modern relativism though. It’s a concrete, meaningful embrace of the medium of paint itself. He wasn’t trying to make art like a Michelangelo or a Rembrandt so is it really valid to compare him to those kinds of figurative artists? His goals were different and if you compare his work to say the forgeries people try to pass off as his they really do catch the eye in an objectively more sensuous manner.
Still my favorite works are not his splatter pieces but rather the emotionally more expressive bookends of paintings like Stenographic Figure and Easter and The Totem. He may have gotten famous for the drip but those other pieces inspire me more. Judging an artist solely according to the classical model is oppressive, and one does not fall into relativism for recognizing that different goals have different optimal outcomes. Relativism is the assertion that nothing has an optimal outcome because all outcomes are valid, that is a descent into meaninglessness that is absent in Pollock and in the other great Abstract Expressionists be they Newman, Hartigan, or Rothko.
These are artists who forged meaning out of the mundane in a way that post-modern nihilists are incapable of doing, thats why it was the last great art movement before Pop Art came along and burned it all down. That is where relativism starts, the adoration of the mass produced and the corporate.
I would say that the internet has taught us one thing about people: there are still adults who enthusiastically create bad art. I do not mean this in a cynical or trolling context, simply that the democratization of media spaces has allowed a lot of grown ups to wave their freak flag and share their shitty art with the world, some of them are clueless that they suck, but I am certain there are a lot of people who know their art sucks and just do it anyways because it's fun.
This proliferation of bad and amateurish art is both good and bad - on the one hand I firmly believe that everyone should engage in creative pursuits and they should be free to share their creativity with whomever they want, but the flipside of the coin is that you get a media landscape that is absolutely saturated with bad art and that makes it much more difficult for the truly talented people to find an audience, you get buried in the sea of mediocrity.
Add to that the fact that virality is not based on merit, but on completely random things like clickbait titles and thumbnails and you get a world where 'bad art' is king.
This is honestly a great point, and you’re totally right. It makes me wonder what separates the people who knowingly distribute bad art with those who don’t.
I’m so tempted to make some sort of judgment about this, but I’m not going to—we wouldn’t be discussing this if the state of affairs wasn’t what it is, so (as you said) gotta take the good with the bad, right?
That said, thinking of shitty art on the internet as the product of kids-at-heart waving their freak flag does make it a bit more charming.
A Wonderful article Melissa. Kids can be so natural and unihabited. You noted so many good points and are so perceptive. Many of your kids must think your awesome!
When my kids were small, decades ago, our objective was to keep them as Pure and Natural as possible for as long as possible!
Thanks so much, Albert! & that’s a good goal. A lot of kids ‘grow up’ much too quick nowadays.
I like this a lot, so simple! Though I wouldn't quite agree that the kids experiment shows good and bad art. I think it shows that some kids have more natural aptitude. The other kids could also have learnt to draw, but they would have needed some training... I like your overall point though, because it suggests that learning skills does actually mean something, still, in a time when people can, and do, call themselves artists just because they find out that they like pushing paint around. I feel bad saying that, because I believe that creativity is everyone's birthright, which in our culture is now denied to many (precisely because you are deemed 'good' and 'bad' at art very early on, and that sets your course...). But no-one would pick up a violin and immediately start calling themselves a musician, and I do think that learning and time and application matter in art. Thanks for your post!
I just read your post again, and I think really you're making a different overall point, about not judging yourself to be good or bad all the time, and just get on with making something. Yes!
Thanks, Tamsin! I agree with you about learned skill vs natural aptitude (this adds another layer of complexity that I didn’t address here).
You put it rightly—creativity is everyone’s birthright, and (paraphrasing Julia Cameron) oneself to be a ‘bad artist’ is necessary if one ever wants to make ‘good’ art.
Thanks for reading!
This was most interesting, thank you. And how sad for the kids when they’ve grown out of their childlike joy for doodling..
Thanks, Jenn. Yeah, it is sad to see, although I think it probably happens to all of us at some point. The silver lining is that some of them will get back into it at some point.
That is a pretty good silver lining!
I feel like I should comment on this but I don't know where to begin....
Jackson Pollock’s art isn’t representative of post modern relativism though. It’s a concrete, meaningful embrace of the medium of paint itself. He wasn’t trying to make art like a Michelangelo or a Rembrandt so is it really valid to compare him to those kinds of figurative artists? His goals were different and if you compare his work to say the forgeries people try to pass off as his they really do catch the eye in an objectively more sensuous manner.
Still my favorite works are not his splatter pieces but rather the emotionally more expressive bookends of paintings like Stenographic Figure and Easter and The Totem. He may have gotten famous for the drip but those other pieces inspire me more. Judging an artist solely according to the classical model is oppressive, and one does not fall into relativism for recognizing that different goals have different optimal outcomes. Relativism is the assertion that nothing has an optimal outcome because all outcomes are valid, that is a descent into meaninglessness that is absent in Pollock and in the other great Abstract Expressionists be they Newman, Hartigan, or Rothko.
These are artists who forged meaning out of the mundane in a way that post-modern nihilists are incapable of doing, thats why it was the last great art movement before Pop Art came along and burned it all down. That is where relativism starts, the adoration of the mass produced and the corporate.