Published: 2021-05-21T00:00:00.000+01:00
Edited: 2025-02-24T00:00:00.000+00:00
Status: 🌲evergreen

Art doesn't have to be good to be worthwhile

Reading time: 4 minutes

So, I was browsing Instagram the other day, and I ended up looking at
what you might term "art" Instagram.

Now there's plenty of art on Instagram since it is a visual medium.
There are lots artists who use it to showcase what they're doing.
Painters, illustrators, photographers, video editors; if it's a visual
medium, then Instagram can be a great place to be.

I ended up browsing long enough that I got away from what I was
originally looking at, which was fan art of some of my favourite
cartoons, and ended up watching videos of people doing abstract
painting. And I made the fatal mistake of looking at the comments, which
is generally a bad idea on the internet.

It's an especially a bad idea with something like abstract art.

As I scrolled down the comments, I saw there were many that were very
positive. Plenty of people were enjoying this person's art. Which is
good. But then I reached the inevitable argument that always crops up
with abstract art about whether it really counts as art.

Which is something that bugs the shit out of me as someone who's done an
abstract painting or two of my own.

Thankfully for the original artist there were a few people who jumped in
to defend the original person and their art.

But I was a little discomforted by the way in which they defended this
person's art.

Many of them jumped straight for the financial defence. That because
somebody would buy the piece, it was art.

And it rubbed me the wrong way a little.

Because, last time I checked, the definition of art didn't include
whether someone would purchase a piece.

If it did, that would mean that every single sketch or experiment in a
person's sketchbook didn't count as art. Practice paintings wouldn't
count as art. Rough cuts of a video wouldn't count. Anything created for
personal reasons that weren't intended for sale wouldn't count as art.

Which is clearly bullshit. All of those things are art.

My good friend Merriam Webster has a decent definition of art, which is
"the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the
production of aesthetic objects."

Yeah, painting that this person did absolutely fit that definition.

Even if you want to argue that because of the abstract nature of the
painting or due to the techniques being used, there was less of an
emphasis on skill (and I would disagree with you there) there was
absolutely creative imagination at play. And it resulted in an object
that was aesthetically pleasing.

Therefore, this painting is art.

Then I scrolled a little further and saw someone respond with what I'm
sure they consider the ultimate rebuttal and last word in the argument
that had gone down, which was "his art's shit though."

And I'm not gonna lie, at that moment I saw red.

Because what does it matter if it is shit?

Let's put aside the fact that visual art in general and abstract art in
particular, is very subjective. What is considered good and what is
considered worthy of praise varies from decade to decade and person to
person.

Some people love traditional oil painting portraits. Some people don't
like them and prefer a nice pastoral watercolour piece. Neither of them
are wrong.

So, it is difficult to say 100% whether something is good or bad in art.

And I don't think something has to be good to be art.

The important things is the use of skill and creative imagination.
Merriam-Webster says nothing about the aesthetic object's perceived
quality.

Even when a person is just starting out when their skill is low, because
they're a beginner, this person is still producing art every time they
flex their creative imagination.

I want to put forward it doesn't matter if art is good or bad. All that
matters is it exists.

What matters is that you consider yourself an artist of any stripe. Flex
your creative imagination and use your skill to create an aesthetic
object. And it doesn't matter whether your skill level is high or low,
whether lack of life experience limits your creative imagination, or by
the boxes that so much education, particularly arts education, tries to
put you in. You're still making art.

It doesn't matter if your creative imagination is completely off the
wall, and leads you to create things that nobody has ever seen before
and has no definite definition.

It's still art.

And what is art, really?

At its most basic level, art is play.

It is expression.

Thousands of years ago humans created art by painting on cave walls. And
hundreds of years from now humans will still make art, even if it looks
nothing like what we currently call art.

I believe this there is drive within human beings to create and play and
express ourselves. To make art.

We see it in its purest form in children, though it gets discouraged as
they get older. The school system in Britain, where I attended school,
doesn't prioritise art education. Art and music and drama will get one
slot each per week, if you're lucky, though that depends on your school.
And teaching teenagers art stops being mandatory when they hit 14 or 15.

Why is that?

That's a rhetorical question. I know exactly why that is.

It's because an artistic mind, a creative mind, a mind that is used to
expressing itself and flexing its imagination, does not make for a good
worker. And our schools, certainly in the Western world, which is all I
can comment on, are set up to produce future workers. Once upon a time
it was to prepare children for working in a factory. Today it's much
more likely to be an office job.

And creative writing, art, theatre or music get de-prioritised in
education because encouraging creativity encourages people to ask
questions, which doesn't go down well in the workplace.

Unless the question is "am I okay to work an extra couple of hours for
free, boss?"

So what happens is we end up with two kinds of people: those who resist
hardest, who insist they be allowed to play and create still who grow up
to be artists; and those who don't.

People like the commenter on this video, who spend their time and energy
pulling other people down rather than encouraging their creative
expression. People who would rather sit there and say "That's not real
art, and even if it is art, it's shit and nobody's ever going to pay any
money for it." People who would rather do that than create themselves.

I think it's a real shame that so many people learn and internalise this
idea that art must be financially viable in order to exist and that's
not possible because nobody makes a living with their art,

Which is so blatantly a lie it's shock that so many people believe it.

But I'm here to call bullshit on this whole thing.

You can make a living with art, but you don't have to. Art doesn't
have to be financially viable in order to justify its existence.

Art doesn't even have to be good.

I'd much rather live in a world full of "bad" art than one with no art.

So this is our call to get your paints out, buy a sketchbook, or take
those piano lessons you've always wanted. Get out there and express
yourself.

Just make art.

It doesn't matter if your art is good. It just has to exist. That's all
that matters.

Originally published at medium.com