Artists who thought they were terrible

[Haruki-kun]

I've been thinking about this for a bit. As a graduating art student who has a low perception of artistic self-worth, and having a lot of peers who have the same issues, and using the rule of threes to create a massive run-on sentence, I decided to try to compile a list of artists.

But these artists must be special! I need these artists to be artists (of any given medium) who believed their work to be terrible.

The immediate artist who jumps to mind is, of course, Vincent Van Gogh, the painter who sold not a single work of art in life* but became extraordinarily famous post-humously, regarded as one of the greatest painters who ever lived, and a central character in the only episode of Doctor Who to actually make me cry. (:smallfrown:)

Alternatively, one that stands out to me is Friedrich Schiller, the poet who wrote "Ode an die Freude" (Ode to Joy), and thought it was a complete failure. While Schiller did not consider himself a failure, I find it fascinating that he commented that the poem was "detached from reality", this being a poem that was, years after Schiller's death, given a musical score by none other than Ludwig van Beethoven. And 150 years later adopted as the Anthem of the European Union.

So I come to the Playground to ask for help on a small, tiny project: A list of artists who either believed themselves to be terrible, or believed some important piece they worked on to be terrible. Anyone got any?



Vincent Van Gogh - Post-Impressionist Dutch Painter (Did not sell a single painting in life*)
Friedrich Schiller - German Poet (Thought Ode to Joy to be a terrible poem, with little value)
Virgil - Ancient Roman Poet (Asked for the Aenid to be burned, not published)
Franz Kafka - Austro-Hungarian Writer (Burned most of his work)
Emily Dickinson - American Poet (Did not want her works published)
John Kennedy Toole - American Novelist (Rejected during his lifetime, published the works posthumously)
Christopher Plummer - Canadian actor (Refused to watch The Sound of Music because he thought it was terrible)



*This fact is thrown around a lot, but I have heard from other sources that "not a single painting" is an exaggeration and that he did sell one or two. I have no sources to back this up, I just wanted to write this disclaimer in case anyone felt the urge to point it out.

[Aedilred]

Virgil famously asked for the Aeneid to be destroyed on his death, because it was unfinished and he didn't think it was fit for publication. Augustus overruled him.

Of course, there are a few people who reckon Virgil was just a hack writing Homer fanfiction, and who probably think it should have been burnt, but I suspect they're in the minority.

[T-O-E]

Virgil famously asked for the Aeneid to be destroyed on his death, because it was unfinished and he didn't think it was fit for publication. Augustus overruled him.

Kafka also made this request. I wonder how many great works of art we've lost because their creators's wishes were respected.

[GoblinArchmage]

Emily Dickinson did the same thing, I believe.

[Jaycemonde]

Kafka also made this request. I wonder how many great works of art we've lost because their creators's wishes were respected.

This isn't in a historical context, but every other month or so another really amazing artist on an art site or online gallery will delete all their work and give their watchers the bird without so much as a second thought. That or they die.

[Haruki-kun]

@Jaycemonde: Yes, but if nothing is left... it's kinda hard to judge. =/

I'm thinking more of world-wide known artists or huge works of art that lived on for years even though the artist him/herself didn't think they were that great.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be an artist that's already dead, either.

[Temotei]

Emily Dickinson did the same thing, I believe.

Something similar. If I recall, she just didn't ever want her works published. Her wishes were honored for a while, at least. And again, if I remember correctly, we did lose some of her work. Sad day. I like her stuff.

[tensai_oni]

I seem to recall someone saying: if you look at your completed work, and aren't full of fears and suspicions that this is a piece of crap, that people won't like it, that you performed terribly? If you're actually happy with it? You're almost guaranteed to have just made something that only you like, and no one else does.
Artists capable of creating great work doubt themselves. The skill-less do not - because their lack of skill also means they can't see that what they did is bad.

So, I assume at one time or another, pretty much every single artist out there thought they were terrible. It probably changed once other people told them their work is great though.

[Trog]

John Kennedy Toole, an American novelist whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide at the age of 31.

It is a singularly hilarious and well written book and if you haven't read it you should.

[AtlanteanTroll]

John Kennedy Toole, an American novelist whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide at the age of 31.

It is a singularly hilarious and well written book and if you haven't read it you should.
Why was I under the impression he was alive? Also ... That book ... ... Mmm. *shakes-head*

[thubby]

it is my understanding that the overwhelming majority of artists are hyper critical of their own work.
various actors won't watch their own movies.

[BWR]

Yet they think it's good enough to try to sell and live off their efforts.

[Closet_Skeleton]

To be a good artist you have to practice a lot and improve. If you're happy with your work its harder to motivate yourself to get better.

Knowing what you did wrong is a vital talent needed to master skills. Artists who aren't happy with work that's good enough for everyone else are probably very ambitious.

There was an M. C. Escher Quote I don't have about him not liking to show people his works because all the ones he really wanted to show were still in his head.

[AtlanteanTroll]

Oh. Speaking of actors not watching movies.

Christopher Plummer refused to watch the Sound of Music for years because he thought it was a piece of crap. He has only just recently watched and admitted it was okay. Ish.

[An Enemy Spy]

Not to toot my own horn, but I know I personally end up despising everything I write.

[JoshL]

Every artist out there WAS terrible. And it's hard to get over that mentality once you start achieving what you set out to do. Oft repeated quote from Ira Glass:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I think there's a good balance to be achieved...making something to the best of your abilities at the time, and being able to look back and appreciate that...enjoy what you've achieved without being wrapped up in where you failed. I've always been my biggest fan. If I don't want to listen to my music, why would anyone else want to? But at the same time, I'm trying to always get better (interesting note: sometimes backtracking in approach is useful, to not forget what you did well in the past while still growing).

[Talanic]

There's some of that in my work. What's worse is that I can feel it sometimes when the writing's right. When I've managed to edit a scene to be just the way I wanted it to be, it's an incredibly satisfying feeling. Like beating a boss in I Wanna Be The Guy.

The de-motivational part of that is that I've only really been that satisfied with a handful of scenes. The rest of my writing has often been satisfying but it didn't have that rightness. So when I'm working on it and it doesn't click the way that I'm looking for, it can be intensely depressing.

Sometimes the opposite is true as well. I can read a scene that I'm working on and I can almost put my finger on what's wrong here. Motivation? Characterization? Is this scene relevant or did I make some filler? (I hate filler.) Or am I writing in an event that doesn't fit with the larger work? Sometimes it's not even the scene I'm stuck on but one immediately preceding it that's the problem. Sometimes it drags me to a stop for a long time before I can chop it apart and figure out what's wrong. And once in a while, when I finally sew it back together, I'll get that feeling like I got it right this time.

Sometimes.

[Othesemo]

As the story goes, Tchaikovsky hated the 1812 overture, decrying it as far too noisy and without any great musical merit. As somebody who's actually performed it, I'm inclined to agree, but that's neither here nor there- it's arguably one of, if not the most well known of his compositions.

[SiuiS]

Artists who thought they were bad:

• All of them


I have never heard of someone look back on a finished work an you or three later and not be disappointed. It's like, a thing. You learn and refine even during the creation of a work. Sometimes you feel good about the general direction of a piece, or that it is outstandingly less crap than your usual, but rarely if ever has an artist been 100% satisfied with the details of a thing. At best you'll get "I'm happy with this/how this turned out".

[AtlanteanTroll]

Every artist out there WAS terrible.
Heh. I thought you were saying "was" as in, they were terrible when they died, not in that they were terrible at some point in their life.

I was so ready to be angry and have a huge argument...

[Tylorious]

Slash from Guns 'n Roses thought Sweet Child o' Mine was terrible, and he hates that it is their most popular song.

[Socratov]

Mark KNopfler, while not in selfdepreciation, thought Sultans of Swing to be horrible commercial crap destracting form his really good songs. Guess what became popular and what not? :smallamused:

Similar, when playing in the beatles, Ringo Starr always put himself in the back os the one who playd the drums did not really actually contribute. Little did he know he had more of a social function in the band making sure Paul McCartney and John Lennon did not split up the band. (it's sort of counts?)

[Amidus Drexel]

As the story goes, Tchaikovsky hated the 1812 overture, decrying it as far too noisy and without any great musical merit. As somebody who's actually performed it, I'm inclined to agree, but that's neither here nor there- it's arguably one of, if not the most well known of his compositions.

The same goes for most of Tchaikovsky's famous pieces; he didn't like the Nutcracker Suite either (although he did like his music for the Swan Lake ballet).


Mark KNopfler, while not in selfdepreciation, thought Sultans of Swing to be horrible commercial crap destracting form his really good songs. Guess what became popular and what not? :smallamused:

Money for Nothing? :smallamused: :smalltongue:

[Socratov]

The same goes for most of Tchaikovsky's famous pieces; he didn't like the Nutcracker Suite either (although he did like his music for the Swan Lake ballet).



Money for Nothing? :smallamused: :smalltongue:

well, that too, but he didn't like it.

[mistformsquirrl]

Artists who thought they were bad:

• All of them


I have never heard of someone look back on a finished work an you or three later and not be disappointed. It's like, a thing. You learn and refine even during the creation of a work. Sometimes you feel good about the general direction of a piece, or that it is outstandingly less crap than your usual, but rarely if ever has an artist been 100% satisfied with the details of a thing. At best you'll get "I'm happy with this/how this turned out".

Definitely this, and what JoshL said as well.

I'm by no means a good artist (far from it; and no I'm not just being self depreciating, look at my DA page lol, it's not impressive); but I do learn with every piece I do. Sometimes I learn a lot, sometimes a very little - sometimes I don't even realize I've learned anything at all until I do a piece some weeks later that turns out better because of something that didn't work out on a previous piece.

The thing is, this constant learning means never being able to be satisfied with my work, even though I give it my best effort. Even my best pieces, the handful with fewer obvious flaws will typically be riddled with a ton of minute mistakes that drive me up the wall later.

Here's an example:

This, to date, is probably one of my best works. (http://mistformsquirrel.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Yumi-Final-376049612)

There's a lot of flaws in it of course - many you'll probably spot yourself without effort; but you may not immediately notice (without me saying so) that the back and the face don't actually quite have the same skintone. I'm not even sure how I managed that since they used the same palette - but yeah, there's a subtle flaw in the coloration between the two; and even though no one else has ever mentioned that particular problem to me, I'll always know it's there. And it drives me nuts.

I suspect for more experienced artists who are just flat out better than me, it's actually more grating - because while we see an incredibly well done and finished piece, they see all the little flaws left in their work. All the compromises, all the "I couldn't quite get the thing to do what I wanted it to do so I did this instead...." elements. All the moments when they got lazy, however briefly, or drifted off to the music they were listening to or just tried something that didn't work. Just imagine how frustrating it has to be when someone tells you the part they loved best about your work was the kludgey thing you threw in at 3am because you were ready for it to be over.

I suspect that makes it very easy to tell yourself you're crap, maybe even a fraud.*

*This is something I've noticed a lot of good artists and writers say about themselves. They feel like frauds; which is of course absurd, but I totally understand where they're coming from too - because there's this feeling that "If people could see my work the way I see my work, the jig would be up." But most people of course will never see that. Even professionals mostly won't see that, because they don't even know what the artist originally intended really - they've only got the finished product to work with in most cases.

[Weiser_Cain]

Yet they think it's good enough to try to sell and live off their efforts.

No I don't.