Here are four things that make art suck.

1. Art that doesn't speak for itself.

What does that mean? It means that if you are making art to try and convey a message then your art should do just that. By itself. If you need to put a three paragraph explanation of what the art is supposed to be about beside your art then congratulations - you're a writer, not an artist. The whole point is to convey a message when you aren't around to tell people what the message is, otherwise all your art is is a glorified conversational starting point you can use to trick people into starting a conversation about whatever the balls it is you wanted to talk about at the moment.

Also, saying that other people "just don't get it" or requiring a trip to the library for your viewers to know what it is you are on about is silliness. Even though the human race as a whole has never been more educated in all of history than it is now, most people are still pretty dumb. Just look at scientologists. And besides, making art that only you can understand is like taking a huge dump and then telling everyone about it - we would all rather you just kept it to yourself. (If you do happen to be the kind of person who likes to hear about peoples dumps, call me, we should hang out). Mind you, if your target audience isn't the general population then you can be free to adjust the content to suit said demographic.

2. Mistaking a Dollar Value for the "Worth" of Art.

Many people who follow the art "scene" have ridiculous notions of how much art is worth. Let me give you an example. The Mona Lisa - everyone has seen what it looks like and reproductions can be purchased for mere pennies yet somehow the original physical copy is worth millions. What this essentially says is that the image painted by Leonardo is practically worthless (in a monetary sense) but the board it was painted on and the frame around it - MILLIONS!

Why do I think this is stupid? Because I'm a digital artist. What that means is that I will never, ever, have a canvas that is a one of a kind original. Thereby reducing my art to it's real monetary value - pennies - if that. Other digital artists may or may not agree but they have to admit that when your 'original' work can be copied exactly an infinite number of times without being a pinch different than the original digital file, this introduces questions of the worth of 'art' over 'physical rarity'. Some artists will go to great lengths to create 'unique', high quality digital prints and throttle the number that are produced to induce a false sense or rarity, but the fact still remains that these prints could still be made an infinite number of times over. This is why comics have run numbers, to give money loving people a reason to value one physical copy of a comic (first edition) over another (second, third, fourth run etc.).

What we should really be valuing is the content, not the paper it's printed on.

This brings me to my third reason why art sucks:
3. When people do it for the money and not for it's own sake.

When has the corporate hollywood watered down big blockbuster movie ever been better than the eventual director's cut that finds it's way onto the dvd? NEVER. That's because making something simply for mass appeal and money automatically involves compromising any initial artistic vision the project may have once had. The more money is a motivating factor the more art suffers - a look at advertisements and commercials will surely inspire some vomiting from more than one of us.

I'm not going to say that every individually produced thing that stays true to its vision is good. Just that I would rather go see a bad but visionary work over an okay but uninspired one any day. Of course the best works are ones that have the most support (financial or otherwise) and are still allowed to express the artists' intent.

And the last reason art sucks:
4. Art School.

These places seem to teach how to ride a high horse and not much about art anymore. We live in a molly-coddling age that lets two bit hacks get away with crap art on the basis of it having a deeper underlying meaning that somehow makes up for the fact that no one can tell what it was you intended to draw. I'm of the opinion that the ability to form an idea of a deeper meaning you want to express is something everyone is born with. What people aren't born with is the ability to draw/paint/write/photograph these ideas they want to communicate. It just happens to be easier for art schools to let students graduate with a degree in something they already knew how to do instead of taking the time to teach the actual skills it takes to express yourself in a useful way.

The unfortunate side affect of this method (aside from people being no better at art when the graduate) is that this kind of attitude breeds elitism of the kind that justifies any and all kinds of suck art. Because when the value of art is only attached to the gobledy gook the artist can spew about it instead of the actual work itself there is no way to distinguish the good from the bad.

Actually there is a way to distinguish the good from the bad. Just like the coke versus pepsi blindfold tests, all you have to do is remove the art from the elitist douchebag that made it. If it's still good without someone blabbing on about how "It's a diatribe of the emotional struggle present in all of humanity and the conflict of the id against the ego... blah blah blah" then that means it's good. We don't have Michelangelo around to tell us anything about his work these days but we can still 'get it' and appreciate it.

Anywho, it's all a matter of taste anyway so I don't know why you need me to tell you these things, you can go ahead and like any art you want for any reason you want. But if you like any of the crappy art mentioned above consider yourself on my "Feed these people piece by piece slowly to a venus fly trap" list.

Well I don't actually have such a list but I'm not afraid to start one >:C

Thanks for reading! Questions, Comments and Inquiries can be made to turquoiserabbit@gmail.com

Want to read about how I make MY sucky art? check out my articles