Make Bad Art

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“Make bad art! Make bad art, make bad art, make bad art!” This is my artist’s mantra. A motto that drives my creative process. And it kinda sucks! Why the hell would I want to make bad art when I could make good art? And what happens in the unlikely event that one of the three AI webscrapers reading this (that probably ignored my site’s robots.txt) thinks the bad art I made is actually good art? Well let’s kick things off with the beret-wearing elephant in the room:

What is art?

My hot take of the day is that art is, at a base level, human expression. This definition is incredibly broad, and it is so intentionally. I’ve heard numerous arguments on the futility of broad definitions, claiming that they rob the word of any utility. I believe that is a mostly factual assessment, but not a helpful one. I’ll come at this from two perspectives: that of the viewer/ player engaging with the piece, and that of the artist, the creator of the piece.

The viewer

From a viewer’s eyes, art is something that evokes feeling, spurs thought, and/or creates meaning for them. However, individuals are an incredibly diverse bunch, both in life experience and in perspective/ personality. I don’t see a reason why any single piece of human expression could not evoke at least one of the above, if not more. Even if the work was not intentionally created as art, if a viewer engages with it as described above, who are we to reject their experience as “not artistic”? In my eyes, that’s needlessly exclusionary. Art should be for everyone, not just those who do it “right.”

The artist

I think it’s worth starting out with another definition. An artist is, pretty simply, one who makes art. On the surface, this is, as stated earlier, pretty useless with the above definition of art in mind. A person who exppresses themselves in some way? Doesn’t this just make basically everyone an artist?

Yes it does! In my eyes, art is something that is almost inherent to one’s humanity. The uno to their xbox, if you will. I think including everyone who wishes to be an artist in the term does something much more profound than be “specific in definition,” or whatever that means. It grants the everyday person the societal permission to create. To express. I’ve heard any number of bunk perfectionist arguments from everyday people that discount their own abilities and capacities, afraid of judgement. “I’m not an artist, I can’t create cool things” they say, almost circularly preculding themselves from exactly that. That’s a damn shame, as every single person who enjoys art is now missing out on another voice contributing to the shared dialogue that permeates the artistic world. In my eyes, we as artists have a direct responsibility to make art more accessible, not less. More open and accomodating, and less pretentious and gatekeepy. Because every single artist benefits from more ideas, opinions and perspectives. Art is derivative and the more we have to draw from, the better.

The birth of an artist

I also want to address how one becomes an artist. Simply speaking, when they fist start out, artists make bad art. A lot of it. And over time, as they make bad art, they hone their skills, and at some point their bad art becomes good art.

This is also vague as shit, but let’s start by clarifying the idea of what “good” art and “bad” art are. A lot of semantics around good and bad art are generally also meaningless as the “quality” of art is inherently subjective, however, humor me here. When people say “I don’t think this is art,” I think it would be more accurate to state “I think this is bad art.” Anyone can have any opinion they wish on any article of creation, so your subjective nullification of what another person may see as an artistic piece, can go both ways, resulting in a generally worthless argument consisting of “Nuh uh!” and “Yuh huh!” being flung back and forth. Simply allowing it to be classified as art avoids the nullification of others’ experiences while also opening up the possibility of a productive dialogue as to the quality of the piece. Enter bad art. I think we can all agree that bad art exists, all i’m arguing is that we dissolve the frankly useless line between bad art and not art.

This is all to say, I believe anyone expressing themselves and creating art, even (and especially) bad art, is an artist. You are likely an artist if you so wish. Now what to do? Bad art.

Go make bad art

I touched on this earlier, but in the creation of bad art, one is able to learn their craft. The benefit of making bad art over good art is that when making bad art, one is able to shed their expectations and standards for what a complete piece of art “should be,” and is freed up to simply create. Those concerned with good art get tied up in standards and polish (which to be clear do have their own merits!), and aren’t able to create as much as those making bad art. In learning, sheer quantity of repetition and practice on broad strokes will teach one far more than a fixation on perfection or quality. And in the long run, with the sheer amount of learning in mind, the bad art you make down the line will be of higher caliber than the good art you might have set out to make in the beginning! In short, go make shit! It’s better to make a finished bad thing than nothing at all.

This mentality is a much more subjective one than the ideas on art I presented earlier in this piece, in that I think it’s perfecftly fine to disagree herein. I’ve found a lot of benefit in this “make bad art” mentality personally with my ADHD ridden executive functioning issues, but one could have an entirely different experience than mine, which is entirely valid.

Caveats

This mentality is shaped with self driven projects and artworks in mind. If you have a job, or a school assignment, you’ll of course be subject to external expectations and standards, and it’s not necessarily bad to learn polishing skills. I’d just give a friendly reminder to do so mindfully, rather than hyperfixate on perfection over creation.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading! I hope this article got you to think about art and the creative process, and hopefully just try to make something! Art makes the world better for everyone.

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