Inadequacy & Artistic Expression

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Or: The Overwhelming Need to Say, "I Suck".

I do it. Other people do it. Talented folk unwilling to step up and simply offer their work to the public eye without a self-depricating caveat - "Yeah, I suck, I know, just ... well, here it is, don't be too rude, even though it's terrible."

How do you handle this (regardless of which side you fall on - the creator, or the audience)? Do you (the audience) ignore the whining or ignore the work? Do you (the artiste) try to shut up or simply give in to your destructive instincts? Should I mention that I feel some trepidation, vaguely aligning myself with "talented" folk? Should a collective foot be shoved in some collective orifice of all these whinging brats? And which orifice?

― David Raposa, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

an alternate view - great artists who knew they were the shiznit and never shyed away from saying it: - pablo p.
- miles d.
- cassius c. (aka muhammad a. and if you don't think athleticism is an art, yr an ignoramous)
does great art preclude being a whiny apologist for yr own talent? do you hafta be a cold hard prick to survive the critics, the public indifference, the glutted marketplace?

― jess, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Miles Davis and the word humble do not belong in the same sentance. Exhibit A: Miles' bio. Need I say more?

― turner, Saturday, 15 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Defeatist attitudes is what really sucks. Do you see all the suck out there in the world? Being afraid of what others think enough that it affects your own judgement? Come on, that just gives power to your detractors. Few people make it to the top without people telling them that they "suck", but if they viewed themselves as "sucking", it's doubtful they'd make it anywhere.

― Nude Spock, Saturday, 15 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Real humility is classic. Playing the 'humility' card as a grab for credibility = dud.

― turner, Saturday, 15 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I do not suck, it's the rest of the world that sucks.

― DG, Saturday, 15 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

This is a good thread. (Yay randomiser). I find a kind of self-deprecation comes very naturally to me though I'm actually quite confident. It's a delaying tactic I think - a way of allowing myself to suspend judgement on my own stuff, because often I've no idea whether it's good or not until later.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 10 January 2003 12:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't believe that anyone who really believed their stuff sucked would actually show it to anyone else. Wanting someone's praise is fine, but you don't want them to give it out of pity, surely?

― Sam (chirombo), Friday, 10 January 2003 12:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Self-deprecation is the worst form of arrogance.

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 10 January 2003 12:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I am horrendously guility of this, but I don't do it out of pity or need for reassurance most of the time... I do it because the things I create never quite match the things I hear in my mind/see in my head, and I'm apologising to myself and my own imagination for not being able to realise those concepts, rather than actually apologising to other people.

If I really believed I was crap, I wouldn't do the things I do in public, so I've obviously got some self worth, but I feel like the things I do are not as good as they SHOULD be.

― kate, Friday, 10 January 2003 12:33 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Sam is OTM.

I'm shameless in the respect of letting people see/hear what I've written or pianted or recorded. I think there is room for improvement, but this is not the same as thinking I suck.

― jel -- (jel), Friday, 10 January 2003 12:34 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think it is arrogance - I think Kate is nearer the mark; if you don't put some kind of "sold as seen" sticker on your stuff you end up fiddling with it endlessly for ages looking for 'perfection'. I think there's a necessary arrogance involved in pushing your own work anyway - self-deprecation is a compromise with that part of yourself rather than a boost to it.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 10 January 2003 12:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Some of us concluded many years ago that we had no artistic talent, and gave up on all creative endeavour.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 10 January 2003 18:10 (twenty-three years ago)

eight months pass...

My understanding of artistic expression is the ability to communicate ideas that will evoke a form of emotion for the audience. This emotion however, is not in the control of myself as the artist. Therefore a negative emotion will not be my responsibility, rather it may be the outcome of perception and discourse that is not in my control. I do not say to myself that "I suck," rather I would challenge the response of the audience as being an honest response to the material and consider re-addresing the statement that I would like to say. Are there tangable ways of communicating artistic ideas that are inclusive of the audeince reasponse?

― Ryann Christina Nelson, Saturday, 20 September 2003 04:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Playwright/Critic George Bernard Shaw said, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
This is applicable to creative people everywhere-persistance in personal vision in the face of discouraging odds. ("Not Just Any Body" p. 25)

― Molly Smith, Tuesday, 30 September 2003 18:11 (twenty-two years ago)

It's incredibly brave for anyone to step up and put their work out of display. I don't put what little writing I manage to do on a par with a Pulitzer, but I never minded the stuff being seen. (Like it or not, the only thing I can't stand is indifference.)

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 30 September 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

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