cannonalexander

Crap Art is a movement that seeks to “de-commodify” art, by urging a return to creative roots. The anti-elitist movement seeks to popularize to making “shitty” art. To give creative power back to the people. To cast out the gatekeepers and emphasize art as human expression, something inherent to everyone. Their website says it well:

The name is meant to sound honest and down-to-earth; to make you think, “I can make crap art!” perhaps. And you can! Anyone can participate in the movement, as long as the attempt is honest.

Art is a subject I both feel compelled to talk about and feel totally out of my element critiquing. Beyond the snide “art is subjective” that I often say, it really does feel inaccessible sometimes. Which is the entire point of this movement, started all the way back in the early 2000s. Those who try and make art status symbols of class and wealth miss the point. Art is the most egalitarian of pursuits, because it is a way to manifest in the physical world the slippery and formless emotions we harbor inside.

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. has an exhibit of cave paintings. They note that children’s handprints may be the oldest example of art we have. Art literally is a part of our bodies.

I am, in a way, trying to participate in making “crap art”. Not intentionally, of course. But, like Ira Glass says, there is a gap between your taste and your ability. The work you produce doesn’t live up to your standards. I have read a lot of great writing. And I am trying to produce some myself. But I am still in the beginner gap. And the only prescription for that is more work, more deliberate practice.

That is the takeaway: deliberately practice by making crap art.

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Day 8 of #100DaysToOffload. Many of these recent posts have been kind of meta. Not sure what to make of it, just an observation.