Is Critique Actually Valuable?

Hey-Yo! 👋🏿

I’m traditionally trained as an artist. From electives in grade school to a lane in University, I’d like to think that I’m well-versed at this point. I’ve done my thumbnail exercises, my 100 boxes, my figure studies and 30 minute contors.

Of course I can come up with 100 different nitpicks about xyz issue, but is that useful? Yes the shading is a bit bland, yes the hand is bent at an akward angle, yes the head is a bit too small for the body- but is that useful critique? Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here.

It’s beaten into your skull, over and over, that critique is the most important thing for every artist. Not only that, but you should be willing to take it no matter in which form it arrives. In a way, I agree with this.

If something is bothering a user or viewer enough to make a comment, then I think that something must actually be a sizable issue. After all, we don’t feel a need to comment on something until it strikes us as exceptional. For better and for worse.

Critique helps you shave these exceptional bits off, or it can help you recognize what your audience thinks is exceptional that maybe you couldn’t see. That’s helpful when trying to find direction and an area where you can lean into.

But what’s the motivation behind making something that’s unexceptional? To make it easy to consume of course. If you shave off all the rough edges and keep it round and soft, your work is easier to swallow. This is extremely important in all fields of design as a customer that cannot easily parse your work, will simply not purchase it. They won’t seperate from their money if they feel their burger is itching to start a fight with them. And when your job requires a certain amount of money to come in every month to keep itself afloat, this is a massive issue.

With that context, every critique is ALWAYS useful critique. But what about otherwise? Surely we all realize that art is a passion. It’s an emotional thing that you throw yourself into. Sure, a career in this can wring that passion out of you like water from a sponge, but if you’re wise enough to keep your creative talents at home, then is there any room for this useful critique?

I don’t think so.

Motivation

I ask again, what exactly is the motivation behind making something unexceptional. Well to make it easy to consume. No sharp edges or rough bumps. Ok, but why do we want our art to be easily consumable?

Fame? Some of the worst art I’ve ever seen is so important they put it in museums. The way we value what art is good or not is a different topic though.

Money? Well, smooth art will produce consistent money. And sure, that’s important in a company. There’s nothing that keeps a CEO up at night more than inconsistent cash coming in. But, exceptional art is held up because it is exceptional. Naturally you make money when you’re great at it. The issue is framing what you do as something that is valuable. No one gave a damn about what brand you wore until we made that important. It’s all cultural, and thus, it is all fluid.

I’m sure you can tell what I’m getting at here.

Easily consumable art should not be the benchmark for anyone at all. No creative, no matter your field, should seek to emulate the unremarkable. When you try to be the average of all things, the item that is easily absorbed into the zeitgeist, you end up like AI.

But- doesn’t it work?

Popular Culture

Tyler the Creator, one of my favorite artists, talked about his creative process in an interview from SnifferMag.

Create like a Child- Edit like a Scientist

After a certain amount of success, you are able to identify clear signs, signals and choices that would always resonate with an audience of your choosing. Knowing your audience is obviously critical, but in Tyler’s context, music, he’s able to isolate the perfect Low-End frequencies that make humans feel like abc or xyz.

That is not the hard part.

They say perfection is impossible, but within certain contexts, it absolutely is. Flavor scientists are paid millions of dollars to create the perfect synergies that keep consumers coming back for more. The “audience” in this case is cultural. Asian markets prefer lighter and subtle flavors while North and South American markets demand strong and striking flavor profiles.

After 4000 rounds of A/B Testing, any UX Designer can tell you the exact shade of purple their application needs to keep users on for 3 seconds longer.

There is a science to perfection. But as you can probably tell, it’s not very fulfilling. Our world doesn’t work off of fulfillment though. Even outside the context of capitalism, our species is damn-near hardwired to stick to what’s popular.

I’m willing to bet that the majority of people who watched Game of Thrones never read the books. The medium of video is just easier to consume. Even reading this blog post has a certain amount of cognitive load assigned to it that we are getting progressivly worse at handling.

Good on you to make it this far by the way. The attention span of Gen Z is estimated to be 8 seconds.Down from the Gen Y’s 12 seconds. We are worse than goldfish at this point, who average at 9 seconds. So I’m not joking, good on you for reading. Keep your mind sharp and you’ll go far.

Anyways, the joy of creation is the ability to whimiscally add and craft outside of the bounds of perfection. To flex and exercise your creativity, regardless of how an audience would percieve your work.

Luckily, you can have your cake and eat it too. When you start editing your work, after your manic creation phase, with the mindset of perfection, you can polish even the worst things into the best. Even the ugliest painting can be framed to be a masterpiece.

And for as long as I’ve been alive, this has been the way of things.

But I kind of hate it.

Dare to be Strange

I have a motto that I’d like to have tattooed onto my forehead. You can guess what it is, but the longer I go on, the stronger I feel about it. This feeling that I previously attributed to being a ‘hipster’ or a ‘rebel’ in my teen years has grown into some kind of monster that craves freakish works.

I’m beyond disatssfied with the state that our creative cultures have produced over the past 20 years. For every lit candle there’s a million blots of dark. I spend my days praying to stumble upon bread crumbs leading to murky portals non-euclidean doors. I spend my nights piecing together scraps of my dreams from Another World. It’s insatiable to me. The drive of creation outpaces my ability to actually create all the time, but I keep pace to hopefully get everything done before I can create no more.

And critique? How it will be recieved? The question of “is what I’m making valuable”? The questions never cross my mind. I create because I must, just like a breathe because I must. Every day I look around and say “if I don’t make this, no one will”. And I’m happy to hear that I’m not the only one who feels this way. But many of you don’t take that next step, which is incredibly disappointing. There is nothing to be scared of, yet you kill the dream before you even put your head down. You never get to see if it turns into a nightmare. You fear the jagged edges cutting you instead of thinking of the cuts as part of the experience.

Don’t fear it. You can come up with 100 different nitpicks about xyz issue. But don’t let them stop your steps. If you feel that calling to create, looming over your shoulder, a shadow that constantly reminding you of the time, then maybe it’s time to stop ignoring it. After enough signs, surely you get the message.

If you’re strange, lmk : Luther~✌🏿