On Art and Fear
By: Gioacchino Difazio
Tags: Courage, Books, Creativity, Art, Finding Yourself

LIFE-CHANGING BOOKS

On Art and Fear

Considerations on a small, surprising and precious book about artmaking.

Detail of the book cover

Art and Fear — Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles & Ted Orland. This is a book I love and recommend to all those who have decided to devote their life (or part of their life) to art (any kind of art).

The authors, both artists and teachers, recognize that making art is, for various causes, a painful process and explores, with grace and depth, the nature of the difficulties that aspiring artists are facing and which force many of them to abandon.

…most who began, quit. It’s a genuine tragedy. Worse yet, it’s an unnecessary tragedy.

Premises

Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares wheter you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward.

There was a time when artists were supported by the society in which they lived, because they worked for the glory of God, or that of their tribe, or to enrich the prestige of a noble family. It was much more difficult for an artist to doubt his abilities or not to make sense of his works.

But that time is over, and today if you want to be an artist you can only count on the support of yourself and your works.

The authors make some initial assumptions that define some aspects characterizing the artist’s work today.

1. Artmaking involves skills that can be learned

According to a common way of thinking, creating works of art is reserved for the few who have received the gift of talent. In fact, talent can be a practical integration, but the main ingredient is constant, tireless day-by-day work.

In large measure becoming an artists consists of learning to accept yourself, which makes your work personal, and in following your own voice, which makes your work distinctive.

2. Art is made by ordinary people

We tend to imagine artists, particularly those we love most, as perfect creatures, made-up only of virtues. If so, in reality, they wouldn’t even need to make art. Artists are instead human beings, with all the contradictions that this condition entails.

This is a giant hint about art, because it suggest that our flaws and weaknesses, while often obstacles to our getting work done, are a source of strenght as well.

3. Making art and viewing art are different at their core

As an artist, you are continuously and painfully confronted with the result of your efforts, which often cannot compare with what you had imagined.

The point is that you learn how to make your work by making your work, and a great many of the pieces you make along the way will never stand out as finished art. The best you can do is make art you care about — and lots of it!

4. Artmaking has been around longer than the art establishment

The idea that making art represents a way of expressing oneself is recent in history. It is also dangerous since if on the one hand, success fosters one’s self-esteem, on the other hand, every failure becomes a failure of the person, and you can easily imagine the consequences.

Through most of history, the people who made art never thought of themselves as making art. […] What this suggests, among other things, is that the current view equating art with “self-expression” reveals more a contemporary bias in our thinking than an underlying trait of the medium.

Inner obstacles

The first part of the book focus on inner obstacles. It’s an in-depth examination of the fears and doubt that often assault anyone who tries to make art, at any level. The authors caution first that:

When you act out of fear, your fears come true.

Then they analyze with acuity, wisdom and compassion, the obstacles that from the depths of our soul prevents us to fulfill our mission of artists.

First of all, there are the fears about ourselves: Are you a real artist or you’re just pretending? Do you have enough talent? Are your expectations about your artistic work constantly disillusioned?

There is probably no clearer waste of psychic energy than worrying about how much talent you have — and probably no worry more common. This is true even among artists of considerable accomplishment.

Then there is the fear about how others will react to our art. The latter arise first of all from the need to be understood.

After all, wanting to be understood is a basic need — an affirmation of the humanity you share with everyone around you. The risk is fearsome: in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, “you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy.”

Then there is the need to be accepted as artists, that is, to see one’s work recognized as art: as real art and not like something else (a craft, for example).

Finally, you can be accepted but not approved. Approval occurs when the public truly loves the art you have created.

In the book we learn to recognize all these fears and understand how they can influence an artist’s work.

The last chapter of the first part of the book is titled Finding your work. It is not a practical manual that indicates step by step solutions, but a documented exhortation to do the work that needs to be done at any given moment. With some advice.

If, indeed, for any given time only a certain sort of work resonates with life, then that is the work you need to be doing in that moment. If you try to do some other work, you will miss your moment.

A part of the chapter is dedicated to demolishing the preconception that the artist must continuously produce new ideas:

One of the best kept secrets of artmaking is that new ideas come into play far less frequently than practical ideas — ideas that can be re-used for a thousand variations, supplying the framework for a whole body of work rather than a single piece.

Instead, it is useful to have canons, or a series of routines, habits, models and practical ideas that allow the constant execution of artist’s work:

The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over — and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful. A piece of art is the surface expression of a life lived within productive patterns.

External obstacles

The second part of the book examines the obstacles that lie outside, in the world. That is, what the artist must face after she has defeated her internal enemies and produced her own art.

Once the art has been made, an entirely new set of problems arise, problems that require the artist to engage the outside world. Call them ordinary problems.

These everyday problems take up most of an artist’s time. These are ordinary but not trivial activities, ranging from cleaning the studio to networking to the business’s financial management. Producing art is only part of the artist’s work.

Competition is another activity that steals a significant chunk of an artist’s time. In itself, competition is not a bad thing; it is natural, wired in humans beings, but often proves to be unhealthy. For example, when the competition comes down to collecting the symbols of acceptance and approval (awards, newspaper articles, etc.), it often leads to a useless and exhausting confrontation.

Fear that you’re not getting your fair share of recognition leads to anger and bitterness. Fear that you’re not as good as a fellow artist leads to depression.

An entire chapter is dedicated to the academic world and its pitfalls, which affect both teachers and students.

The dilemma facing academia is that it must accommodate not only students who are striving to become artists, but also teachers who are struggling to remain artists.

The authors carry out a lucid and merciless criticism of the art education system and reveal its internal contradictions and problems. Without ever losing the subtle irony that characterizes their prose.

University art programs do serve some useful purpose. Admittedly not a large purpose. And generally not their stated purpose. But some purpose.

What is your work?

One of the most interesting chapters is the one titled Conceptual Worlds. It starts with a fundamental question: What is worth doing? The authors accompany the reader on a walk through some concepts that can help answer the initial question.

Of course, they does not provide a single answer that is good for everyone but some insights that can lead to interesting answers for each reader.

I was struck by the articulate discourse that illustrates the differences between art and craft. Without ever falling into banality, the authors explains how most artists travel a path that leads them from art to craft over time.

The only work really worth doing — the only work you can do do convincingly — is the work that focuses on the things you care about. To not focus on those issues is to deny the constants in your life.

Conclusion

Maybe you shouldn’t talk about books you love (or hate) too much: you risk being partially blinded by the excess of love or hate. But it is also true that if we remove these human aspects, as well as imperfections, what remains can be done by a well-educated software.

This book never ceases to surprise me. Every time I reread it, I find hidden treasures that I hadn’t noticed in the previous reading, and I always find it topical, even if it was published almost thirty years ago.

This book is a journey that every artist should take and enjoy page by page, line by line, word by word. Because he will come out changed and enriched, with new tools that will allow him to find his voice.