Art & Fear - Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

David Bayles, Ted Orland

Souvenir Press

2023

120 páginas

4h 0m

ISBN-13: 9781800815971

"This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially—statistically speaking—there aren't any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius."
—-from the Introduction

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book's co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is expeienced by artmakers themselves.

This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists -— it's about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do. First published in 1994, Art & Fear quickly became an underground classic. Word-of-mouth response alone—now enhanced by internet posting—has placed it among the best-selling books on artmaking and creativity nationally.

Resenhas (1)

5 (Perfeito)

Todo artista deve ler

Esse livro é maravilhoso. Ele te dá um abraço quentinho, faz um cafuné na cabeça e diz que vai ficar tudo bem.
O autor descreve, explica e soluciona todos os maiores medos dos artistas, sempre afirmando que não importa se você começou ontem ou já trabalha há décadas: não existe perfeição na arte, não existe fórmula pronta para a arte, não existe arte sem medo.
Dá vontade de arrancar todas as páginas do livro e colar na parede de tantas citações incríveis que tem.

"Those who continue to make art are those who have learned how to continue or more precisely, have learned how to not quit."

"Quiting means not starting again and art is all about starting again."

"To require perfection is to invite paralysis."

"You find reasons to procrastinate, since to not work is to not make mistakes. Believing that artwork should be perfect, you gradually become convinced that you cannot make such work. (You are correct.) Sooner or later, since you cannot do what you are trying to do, you quit."

"Between the initial idea and the finished piece lies a gulf we can see across, but never fully chart."

"The artist, if asked whether an art piece could be remade with identical results, would have to answer no or it wouldn't be art."

"In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice."