[the ambitious artist --> good artist?]

[reenka]

This essay called 'How Art Can Be Good' articulated something I've been thinking about for awhile (er... if some of you haven't noticed, heh). Basically, this guy is talking about professional-level visual art, and he pretty much says it's good (beyond individual matters of taste) when it appeals to a lot of people, approaching 'universal'. He mentions the obvious difference between a blank piece of canvas & the Sistine Chapel, though I think the Sistine Chapel is more 'impressive' than good.

I mean, on some level he's talking about stuff that gets noticed, that leaves an impression rather than being necessarily of 'good quality'; I'm also not sure about mass appeal as it relates to the 'lowest common denominator' issue. Clearly lots of really crappy pop-cultural things have huge near-universal appeal (Disney, anyone?) without really being... good. Like, at some points it gets a bit fuzzy to me, like:
    Art has a purpose, which is to interest its audience. Good art (like good anything) is art that achieves its purpose particularly well.

I think he makes a more valid argument when you consider his second point, which is that he's saying all this to appeal not to the art critics but to the artists, who tend to instinctively want to make things that are good. He says that what we're missing in the arts now & what the great painters during the 15th century had is an honest work ethic-- the desire to seriously work at making things that are inspiring and challenging, rather than just masturbatory/self-expressive or 'good enough' for your intended audience.

To me as a writer, the idea of critiquing and wanting to write ambitiously myself seem to go hand in hand-- I guess I'd say I read with a writer's perspective & often write with a reader's perspective. To me, the point about the necessity of nurturing artists' natural ambition is very well-made-- not the shallow ambition you often see in fandom of just being popular or reaching a wider audience, but the deeper artistic ambition of Being Good, which sort of implies a greater audience as a by-product. Admittedly, with visual art, it's just a lot more obvious how much you need technical mastery of your medium to really achieve your desired effect and reach people. With writing, it's so easy to be like 'this is just my style' or 'this is my preference/idea'. It's like, well, anyone can have an idea; the point is to competently and plausibly manifest it.

I guess one of the things about caring about one's art, also, is always taking it seriously (that work-ethic thing is really about being a personal value system). Like, it's about not saying 'this is just for fun' vs. 'this is what I'm paid for, so I do it well'; not seeing that division as worthwhile. But the truth is, it really does get a lot more messy when you try and translate truths about visual art or music to writing. Man, I've always thought that really sucked. :/

EDIT - He gets more specific on what 'good' is in design in his earlier essay. And he echoes my own experience as a writer, that better = less empty ornament and 'evasion' of meaning, more streamlined simplicity <3. Yeay for simplicity!! :D :D Though he also adds other guidelines like 'timeless' & 'suggestive' and some that don't translate quite as well to writing -.- I love this bit, though: "If you're not working hard, you're probably wasting your time." :D
~~

I also really liked his essays on good vs. bad procrastination & how to do what you love. He has this way of explaining things simply and rationally without being too dry or literal-minded (which I always find extremely annoying), and he has a way of saying things that weren't quite obvious until he said them the way he did. I LOVE it when people do that :D And I really enjoyed his essay called 'What You Can't Say'; not just 'cause it made me smirk thinking about fandom or made me think in general, but because (I have to admit) it makes me just that much more smug than I was right before :> I wouldn't mind becoming Noam Chomsky just 'cause I couldn't keep my mouth shut though; I mean... it may be inconvenient to be distracted by idiots, but this guy underestimates the value of having an idealistic streak, methinks.

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. V. interesting article. I think he addresses the mass appeal part in the part about tricks.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think in his earlier essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html) on the subject he makes more sense to me 'cause he's just talking directly about the problem of taste as it's relevant to creators. I mean, I think something about looking at it from the outside (the audience's pov) one way or another prevents one from really seeing the issue/creative work clearly. His point in the earlier essay about how one knows one's own earlier works are crap is so great-- there isn't anyone that'd convince a good artist that no, their early work wasn't crap. It was. You just -know-, and I think that's a basic property of being a good artist (having the capacity to see this and to evolve).

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I'm not sure how true that really is, because the developing taste of the artist doesn't involve them seeing their own work clearly, but also the work of others, because good taste is really about being a viewer.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I guess you could see self-criticism as being a viewer too, really; I guess it's just that if you're -only- a viewer, a sense of one's own subjectivity and preferences is more natural? It's just that in the second (earlier) essay, he ties in 'good' with things like 'degree of hard work' and 'saying what you want to say in the most elegant/simple manner possible' and that part of the puzzle seems difficult to grasp/measure from the outside. It depends on what aspects of 'good design' one focuses on.

Perhaps in a way, what I really meant isn't that you'd need to be that specific creator to get some things (in art, architecture or music but especially fields like computer programming or mathematics), but that you'd need to be another creator-- a peer. A lot of the metrics he mentioned seem most interesting to other designers, I guess, and some wouldn't be clear unless you followed the development of that particular designer/creator's work or that specific field/genre/type of work.

I think on the surface, to a viewer, ornate or not perfectly elegant styles may be more genuinely appealing than to someone with the experience to appreciate 'making it look simple'. Perhaps I'm really talking about a specific breed of viewer, though.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

At first I was confused at the idea that mass popularity is a "art." But I always like the idea of artists as craftsmen--it seems like maybe (without yet having read the article) he's almost saying okay, go back to the point of art. You're making it or writing it so other people will see it, because it's communicating something in some way. I think art that's trying to communicate something to someone else is going to show that--and that makes working on your craft an obvious thing to do because it's what helps you communicate. So yeah, the difference between seeing yourself as part of the world and connected to the audience and high above it doing things you don't want anyone to understand because it makes you superior...?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well, he was really saying the mass audience appeal and the art-quality stuff for artists were separate issues? Because artists are naturally ambitious-- not just craft-wise (doing it 'well'), but rather doing it excellently, superbly, doing it as well as you can possibly imagine-- being Great. When I was a teenager, I definitely was inspired by the idea of being Great and doing Great Things, and the idea is that if you're Great, there are people who'll recognize that. So the attempt at Greatness comes first, the audience follows, in this scenario :>

I don't think he made the connection between actually reaching out to the audience and the audience's response-- if anything, in visual art (and music) this concept is a lot more iffy than with writing. He talked a lot about how people in general are attracted to faces and realistic representation, but he didn't say that great art relied on those things because they communicated easiest. I think especially to visual artists and musicians (and dancers, probably), working on your craft is obvious for a simpler reason-- it's for the sake of the craft. Because you love it, and because you want to see it being as glorious and rigorous as possible. In writing, speech itself is used more directly to communicate ideas, though, so a lot of people's relationship with it is more about content (communication) than style (execution). But while some people like general genres with visual art (ie, fantasy art, or specifically mermaid pictures or religious art), it's still more about execution than subject 'cause the subject alone doesn't have that much depth all by itself, I guess?

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

There's also another, earlier essay by him on good taste here (http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html). I like this part:

Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. Football players like to win games. CEOs like to increase earnings. It's a matter of pride, and a real pleasure, to get better at your job. But if your job is to design things, and there is no such thing as beauty, then there is no way to get better at your job. If taste is just personal preference, then everyone's is already perfect: you like whatever you like, and that's it.

I think that's the heart of my frustration with subjectivists in writing & all the other arts. If it's really 'elitist' and pointless to talk about 'better' seriously, then there's seriously no point. I mean, you could talk about audience all you want, but that ain't cracking it for me as an artist who cares about the craft. If people were my craft, I'd design people :/