Fears about yourself, Fears about Others

The next two chapters are about Fears about yourself and Fears about how others receive your work. Internal fears and external fears.

They say, 

"fears about yourself prevent you from doing your best work, while fears about your reception by others prevent you from doing your own work."

Fears about Yourself

A few fears about yourself that they cover are the fear that you’re pretending, imposter syndrome, that you don’t have talent, perfectionism, the fear that stems from having your identity wrapped up in being an Artist: namely that if you don’t produce work you cease to exist, The fear that the best art contains some kind of magic and that you don’t possess that magic.

Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a common feeling artists have. Because artists are the closest to the work. We know our shortcomings. We know where these ideas came from.
Where we borrowed from either intentionally or unintentionally. We know the disconnect between what we meant to do and what we did.

“But while you may feel you’re just pretending that you’re an artist, there’s no way to pretend that you’re making art.” 

Lack of Talent

The fear of not having talent may arise when the going gets tough. When the ideas stop flowing. Here they return to Mozart. Mozart was a child prodigy. He clearly had some sort of natural talent for music. But he wasn’t the only prodigy in history. But he's the only one history remembers. Most of them fade away as they get older. As their youth decays, so does the novelty and charm of their "natural talent."  If you’re given that much recognition for your talent early on, what’s the motivation to improve?

Whatever Mozart’s natural talents were, he worked on his work. That’s what led to his best work, not mere talent. 

The authors have a real disdain for the idea of talent. They call talent a snare and a delusion. They write: 

“ In the end the practical questions about talent come down to these: who cares? Who would know? And what difference would it make? And the practical answers are nobody, nobody and none.”

Perfectionism

In terms of perfectionism they tell the perfect parable that all artists would do well to keep in mind when struggling with perfectionism: 

A ceramics teacher divided the class up into two groups on the first day of class. 

One group would be graded on quality, one group would be graded on quantity. 

The first group would be given a grade based on the quality of one single piece they turned in. They have the whole semester to work on it.

 The other group would weigh their work on a scale and be graded based on the weight. The higher the weight the higher the grade. 

The group being graded based on the weight inevitably made better quality pieces as well. Because through trial and error, doing it over and over, they learned from their mistakes and improved their skills. 

While the other group learned a lot of theories about what made a good piece, they had, in fact, little to show for it.

They write

 “You make good work by (among other things) making lots of work that isn’t very good, and gradually weeding out the parts that aren’t good.”

Fears about others

Art is generally an isolated experience. Committee’s don’t create great art. But our art will inevitably will collide with the opinions and reactions of others. This is where the fears of others comes in.

As the authors write “we carry real and imagined critics with us constantly-a veritable babble of voices, some remembered, some prophesied and each eager to comment on all we do.”

The common fears of others that they write about come down to wanting to be understood, accepted and approved of.

Being Understood

Wanting to be understood is a basic necessity that we have as a social primate species. As an artist, when you show your work you are inviting people to say “you’re not like us.”

On top of this, we’re not exactly the poster children for normalcy. They quote the artist Ben Shahn who talks about how people would be proud to hang a Van Gogh in their living room but would be horrified to have Van Gogh himself in their living room.

But sometimes our work seems to land with people. This makes us feel understood. And that’s one of the most rewarding feelings of making art. 

Until we want to chase another idea. The people who gave us this feeling of being understood now say the familiar phrase “I like the early stuff, better." 

Ask Metallica about this, or bob Dylan or any artist who created iconic art in one genre and then began exploring.

Acceptance

But maybe a bigger fear than not being understood is not being accepted. 

They tell a story of this guy named Beaumont Newhall who wrote the first substantive history of photography. 

He chose a bunch of photographers to praise and a bunch to criticize. The photographers who were most hurt by this guy’s book weren’t the photographer’s who he criticized but the one’s he ignored or didn’t even know existed.

The problem with worrying about being accepted or understood is that it can clash with you making your own work. You can end up making work that just mimics other work which is already understood by people so that it can slide under the radar and be accepted by them.

I don’t even think there’s anything wrong with sliding under the radar like this. Especially if you are just starting out and trying to find your way.

The problem comes when you need to branch out and try something different, something new. That’s where the uncertainty is. And that’s when you have to do the thing anyways. 

You’ll never know if it will be accepted or not. You can’t control that. And it’s not your problem if it is or isn’t. 

It’s your job to follow the work where it leads.

It's not up to you

Being understood, accepted and getting Approval (which is subtly different from acceptance. Approval means they not only accept the work as art, they also like it) are out of our control.

It’s in the hands of other people. Yet at the same time we have to pour a ton of time and energy into the work. And be inspired and motivated to get deep into the work in order to make it good. But we have to do that fully knowing that there is no guarantee for us once we put it out there.

Now, f I had one critical thing to say about this book it would be that they are more clear in laying out the fears than are in giving the advice.

But for this fear of acceptance and approval, I’d go back to something else they suggested earlier, which is find other artist friends and focus on getting their approval and acceptance. 

I’d also point to something Rick Rubins talks about in the Creative Act, which is to start with an audience of one: you. Focus on making stuff that pleases that audience.

The problem with trying to get acceptance and approval, as the authors point out, is that it puts too much power in the hands of of other people. The only issue that really should matter to you is whether or not you are making progress in your work.

So far this has all been about the problems and fear related to making art. Once the art is made, artists run into what the authors call “Ordinary Problems”

And that's where I'll pick up in the next post about Art and Fear

Happy February 28th Everybody

I'm about to head over to my mentor's studio to check out his sculpture set up and tools.

I've been working on another painting walkthrough of that Antler Boy painting. My goal was to have it posted by the end of the month. But I think I'll run out of month.

I had a friend who danced at a strip club. She told me about this group of guys from Boston who came in to her club. She approached one of them to offer him a dance and he said, in a thick Boston accent, "Not gonna happen sweetheart."

So whenever something just isn't going to work out I always think, "Not gonna happen sweetheart." In a thick Boston accent. 

Like this painting walkthrough being finished this month.

Have Fun

Goodnight Sweeties

*Art in this post: Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin, May the Rope Break by Goya, On the Horizon the Angel Of Certitude by Redon, Clown by Toulouse-Lautrec, Issac Newton by William Blake, Mob by Goya, The Beheading of John the Baptist by Rembrandt, Selling the Shadow by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Vampire II by Edvard Munch