David Bayles & Ted Orland
This is the book that should be given to every freshman art major, to anyone who wants to start making art but can’t seem to get started and to every artist who is stuck. While it may seem deceptively short, the content packs a wallop. Bayles and Orland discuss cultural perception of art vs. craft, the difficulty of creating art after college with no-one giving direction, the necessity of making bad practice and the problems associated with teaching art. How do you get out of a funk? How do you manage to make art when simultaneously teaching or making a living another way? How do you keep going when what is in your head simply is coming out in your work? What if there IS nothing fresh and new in your head? Art & Fear is the firm, though kindly and practical, kick in the ass that so many artists need.
Talent is a snare and a delusion. In the end, the practical questions about talent come down to these: Who Cares? Who would know? and What difference does it make? And the practical answers are: Nobody, Nobody and None.