{"id":64523,"date":"2022-03-20T06:18:55","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T06:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/?p=64523"},"modified":"2022-03-20T06:18:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T06:18:55","slug":"noticing-the-faults-of-art-and-why-its-okay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/blog\/noticing-the-faults-of-art-and-why-its-okay\/","title":{"rendered":"Noticing the Faults of Art and Why it\u2019s Okay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xm7awfl6hYA?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe>&#8220;I am so tired of seeing art that is bad and people who are good at drawing but don&#8217;t,&#8221; the art student wrote. &#8220;The problem is, we all want to be seen as good, and I understand that. But you should never have to feel bad for calling out something that isn&#8217;t right.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a sentiment I&#8217;ve heard from many others, both as an editor and as a writer. &#8220;Complaining about problematic depictions of marginalized people isn&#8217;t censorship,&#8221; they argue, &#8220;it&#8217;s criticism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s the thing: Calling out a work of art for being bad and not acknowledging why it&#8217;s okay to do that reveals much more about the critic than it does about the creator. It reveals that the critic doesn&#8217;t understand what makes art good.<\/p>\n<p>And if you can&#8217;t explain why you think a piece of art is bad, then you don&#8217;t really have any basis for asserting that your criticism is valid. To truly understand why certain depictions can be harmful, we must first examine how they can be harmful.<\/p>\n<p>There are certain flaws that almost every single artist out there has and you can\u2019t really blame them for it. However, sometimes that doesn\u2019t stop us from doing so. This is a good thing though because the audience should never have to feel bad for calling something out.<\/p>\n<p>The first kind of mistake is one that is completely understandable: the fact that most art is made with an intended audience in mind. That means that the art itself isn\u2019t going to be made with everyone in mind and it\u2019s not going to be perfect for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>In this article, I will talk about how to identify what makes art bad, how to look at art critically, and how to be okay with calling out something that isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n<p>Art is a powerful tool for any kind of media, from video games like Undertale, to movies like Room, to books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Art can make us laugh, cry, or even inspire us. Art can be a source of entertainment or create deeper critical thinking. The world would be dull without art.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to art, however, we can\u2019t always agree on what makes art good or bad. A friend might think the book or movie you love is terrible, and vice versa. There are many different opinions on what makes art good. But we can always use our critical thinking skills to analyze what is being presented as art and decide whether it\u2019s good or not.<\/p>\n<p>What makes art bad? Bad art doesn\u2019t always have to do with the quality of writing or art itself; sometimes it has more to do with how someone reacts when they see the piece of work (or just their opinion). There are many ways you can respond critically to the work you see in front of you; my<\/p>\n<p>When I was younger, I used to read the comments on a lot of popular webcomic artists\u2019 websites. It was one of those things that seemed like it would be fun or interesting at first, but then turned out to be kind of a time suck. You see, my problem with reading the comments on these sites is that I found myself getting very angry with people. Like, not just mildly irritated, but genuinely angry: yelling at my computer screen, throwing things across the room angry.<\/p>\n<p>Thing is, though, I never said anything. I never told anyone how angry I was. Why? Because this isn\u2019t Tumblr and I\u2019m not some pretentious artist who thinks her drawings are the height of artistry and should be revered by all. No, the reason why I didn\u2019t tell any of these people how awful they were for liking such terrible works is because\u2026 well\u2026 it wasn\u2019t their fault they liked them. They just didn\u2019t know any better.<\/p>\n<p>And really, no one should have to feel bad for being honest about what they don\u2019t like. That includes me and it includes you! Being honest about your tastes is important because if you never say you hate something, people<\/p>\n<p>After reading this article and reflecting on the art around you, you should agree that the nature of art is not always quite what we perceive it to be. This action of criticizing something that may seem perfect can be difficult at times, but in order to evolve as a society we must not be afraid to challenge even the most common of thoughts.<\/p>\n<p>Treating art with a skeptical eye will help us recognize the faults within it and therefore allow us to appreciate truly great artwork.<\/p>\n<p>Art is a complicated thing. It&#8217;s created by the artist&#8217;s heart, mind and soul and is shaped by their life experiences, relationships and most importantly their mental health.<\/p>\n<p>Artists are people who experience intense emotions like any other human being on this planet, but they channel these emotions into visual representations of their daily lives. This process is always going to be muddled with mistakes as an artist has to make quick decisions when creating a piece of work. Even though it&#8217;s evident that mistakes will be made in the creation of art, it shouldn&#8217;t be seen as a negative thing but rather an interesting aspect of the creative process.<\/p>\n<p>Exceptional art can only be created from the combination of both talent and skill. A talented artist will continue to create great work throughout their entire career, but to create exceptional pieces you need more than just artistic talent; you need skill and expertise in your field of choice. To create exceptional art you must also have enough experience to filter out your own personal emotions and allow them to transform into something which is not only visually appealing, but also carries a message that is meaningful and relatable to both the creator and audience alike.<\/p>\n<p>A perfect example of this would be Picasso&#8217;s &#8220;Guernica&#8221;. As Picasso was one of the founders of<\/p>\n<p>At the close of the semester, I like to give a survey of art history. This year it was the Italian Renaissance. One thing that always makes me wince a little is how often artists in this period depicted Jesus as a blond-haired blue-eyed white man.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, this was not an accurate rendering of Jesus&#8217; appearance. I don&#8217;t know about you, but the first and only visual image I can conjure up of Jesus is from one of those stained glass window illustrations you see in some older churches and cathedrals &#8211; where he is depicted with brown hair and dark skin, dressed in a red robe. For some reason, that&#8217;s the image that came to mind when I first learned about who Jesus was.<\/p>\n<p>But even if you&#8217;re like me and have never really thought about it before, it might be useful to take a minute to think about why we imagine Jesus looking like this. The way we picture him has been influenced by hundreds of years of European art history &#8211; specifically, mostly by whiteness-obsessed European art history. Not only is this less than accurate in terms of his physical appearance, but it also helps perpetuate a skewed view of the world &#8211; one where white people are placed on a pedestal while non-white<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/E9Aj6UK0B8U?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/veEQQ-N9xWU?autoplay=1&#038;mute=1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I am so tired of seeing art that is bad and people who are good at drawing but don&#8217;t,&#8221; the art student wrote. &#8220;The problem is, we all want to be seen as good, and I understand that. But you should never have to feel bad for calling out something that isn&#8217;t right.&#8221; It&#8217;s a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64523"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64523"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64525,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64523\/revisions\/64525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artspainter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}