Defending the right to bad art

When I was in high school and college and took art classes, nothing terrified me more than critiques. I would rather have died than had my work put up next to that of my classmates (who, I was convinced, were innately and infinitely more talented than I was) and talked about.

Consequently, I did my best to get sick on those days, to stay up too late the night before and then fall asleep in class, or just to mentally check out and not pay attention.

When I graduated with a degree in apparel design, I never did put together a proper portfolio with which to apply for jobs, and actually never applied for any design jobs--I was THAT scared of my work being seen and found wanting. I was happier to apply for jobs involving menial, robot-like tasks, and spent years doing this--even after it began to take a toll on my body, mind, and spirit. I didn't think I had any choice. I felt I had already been somehow proven unfit for creative work, and would need to live out my life on the sidelines, forgetting the dreams I once had.

I can understand the need for harsh critiques as part of the education process. We need to develop our ability to stand up to criticism and integrate it to better ourselves and our work. We also need to be able to decide when NOT to integrate the criticism, when it would weaken our vision rather than strengthening it.

Yet I am still, firmly, an advocate of everyone's fundamental right to make as much bad art as they would like. Bad art serves two very interesting functions: as practice for the artist, and as a mode of soul healing. Most of us have seen the self-indulgent, angsty artwork of teenagers--and I'm the first to admit it, I feel I never left that stage. That work serves an important purpose for the person making it, and it is an unavoidable stage in their development, like falling down when learning to walk.

Now I don't have any readers here, but I imagine that when I do, many of them will be similarly wounded adults seeking to rediscover their own creative and artistic abilities while also having to make a living and do all those other adult things of which we are justifiably proud. It will be important for such individuals to find enough courage within themselves to break whatever patterns of social conditioning have kept them walking in circles over unfulfilling terrain, and I believe making bad art will be an integral part of many individual and collective revolutions.