Art & Fear, or how to survive a creative person in the modern world
"This thin little book literally turned my life"
Dmitry Rudakov, photographer, writer, founder of ozon.ru
"Peter" is not only engaged in computer literature, we also publish books on design, photography, art, and even symbols and logos . And sometimes in our publishing plan there are books that are difficult to classify and define in the desired section of our catalog. We like such publications most of all, because they are not just books, they are whole stories.
About one of these publishing stories - the book Art & Fear - and now will be discussed.
')
This is not a new book - it was published in St. Petersburg at the beginning of 2011, and the first American edition dates back to 1993. It was written by two famous American photographers - David Beils and Ted Orland . Since its release, the book has been constantly republished, the total number of its readers in the world can already be counted in the millions, despite its rather narrow specifics, and in the creative circles of the West it has long become cult-like.
What is this book about?
About creativity, ordinary creativity. It discusses what it means to be a creative person, why we sometimes give up, where there is a gap between what we feel and what happens in our works, and why the belief that talent is needed is so constraining all our efforts. The questions discussed in the book concern anyone who has ever tried to create something called art. The authors themselves say that their book is about being in a studio or in an audience, behind a potter's wheel or behind a keyboard, in front of an easel or with a camera in hand, trying to create what you have to create.
The book traveled to Russian bookstores for 18 years, and a significant role in the fact that “Art and Fear” still came out in Russia, played by our author and famous photographer Dmitry Rudakov (by the way, in the 90s it was Dmitry who founded the Internet -shop Ozon.ru). Dmitry strongly recommended this book to us as publishers, and even put a review on it in one of his books:
You can write a separate book on the preparation of the Russian edition - justifying its purpose, Art & Fear squeezed all the participants of the process to a drop, making you feel all the torments of creativity, which are respected by the authors in the text. Nevertheless, everyone was pleased with the result, and Ted Orland even sent a special letter to the publisher with the subject “Cheers!”, In which he expressed his enthusiasm for the design of the Russian edition, complaining that Russia was so far away, otherwise he would have come to as he put it, “book-signing party”.
The path of the book to the domestic reader turned out to be as difficult and thorny as the path of a true artist. On the one hand, we received many excellent reviews on the book and even began to collect readers' reviews on it, but on the other - we could not always find the book even in large bookstores. Booksellers, for whom the classification is paramount, often sent it to the shelves with drawing albums and art history textbooks, and in one store we even found it in a huddle, next to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (apparently, some the merchandiser considered that a sequel of this book, Hunter Thompson, was published).
As a result, the Russian edition has not yet come close to the high bar of 25 circulations, set by the American prototype, but we sincerely hope that in Russia “Art and Fear” will find its reader, because it is addressed to any creative person ( artist , as used in the original) .
We offer an indicative excerpt from the book, telling that creativity is, above all, a craft.
Another small excerpt from the book is on the publisher's website ( PDF file )
And below - a selection of links related to the "Art and Fear":
Dmitry Rudakov, photographer, writer, founder of ozon.ru
"Peter" is not only engaged in computer literature, we also publish books on design, photography, art, and even symbols and logos . And sometimes in our publishing plan there are books that are difficult to classify and define in the desired section of our catalog. We like such publications most of all, because they are not just books, they are whole stories.
About one of these publishing stories - the book Art & Fear - and now will be discussed.
')
This is not a new book - it was published in St. Petersburg at the beginning of 2011, and the first American edition dates back to 1993. It was written by two famous American photographers - David Beils and Ted Orland . Since its release, the book has been constantly republished, the total number of its readers in the world can already be counted in the millions, despite its rather narrow specifics, and in the creative circles of the West it has long become cult-like.
What is this book about?
About creativity, ordinary creativity. It discusses what it means to be a creative person, why we sometimes give up, where there is a gap between what we feel and what happens in our works, and why the belief that talent is needed is so constraining all our efforts. The questions discussed in the book concern anyone who has ever tried to create something called art. The authors themselves say that their book is about being in a studio or in an audience, behind a potter's wheel or behind a keyboard, in front of an easel or with a camera in hand, trying to create what you have to create.
The book traveled to Russian bookstores for 18 years, and a significant role in the fact that “Art and Fear” still came out in Russia, played by our author and famous photographer Dmitry Rudakov (by the way, in the 90s it was Dmitry who founded the Internet -shop Ozon.ru). Dmitry strongly recommended this book to us as publishers, and even put a review on it in one of his books:
“If I had a choice from just one book, which I could recommend to you, then I wouldn’t have doubted my choice. This thin little book literally turned my life. There is not a word about Photoshop, but, in my opinion, it is worth all those multipage Talmuds that bookshelves are packed with. ”
You can write a separate book on the preparation of the Russian edition - justifying its purpose, Art & Fear squeezed all the participants of the process to a drop, making you feel all the torments of creativity, which are respected by the authors in the text. Nevertheless, everyone was pleased with the result, and Ted Orland even sent a special letter to the publisher with the subject “Cheers!”, In which he expressed his enthusiasm for the design of the Russian edition, complaining that Russia was so far away, otherwise he would have come to as he put it, “book-signing party”.
The path of the book to the domestic reader turned out to be as difficult and thorny as the path of a true artist. On the one hand, we received many excellent reviews on the book and even began to collect readers' reviews on it, but on the other - we could not always find the book even in large bookstores. Booksellers, for whom the classification is paramount, often sent it to the shelves with drawing albums and art history textbooks, and in one store we even found it in a huddle, next to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (apparently, some the merchandiser considered that a sequel of this book, Hunter Thompson, was published).
As a result, the Russian edition has not yet come close to the high bar of 25 circulations, set by the American prototype, but we sincerely hope that in Russia “Art and Fear” will find its reader, because it is addressed to any creative person ( artist , as used in the original) .
We offer an indicative excerpt from the book, telling that creativity is, above all, a craft.
At the very first lesson, the teacher of pottery art announced to the class that he intended to divide it into two groups. The students on the left side of the studio, he said, will be judged based solely on the amount of work done, and the students on the right side will be judged on quality. The procedure was simple. On the last day of classes, the teacher brought in the scales and weighed the work of the “quantitative” group: fifty pounds of pots were rated excellent, forty pounds - four, and so on. The “quality” group was required to complete only one pot - but flawless - in order to get the “top five”. At the end of the certification, a curious fact was revealed: all the works of the best quality were the work of the students of the “quantitative” group. It seems that while the “quantitative” group diligently “stamped” the pots - and learned from their mistakes - the “qualitative” group indulged in reflections on the topic of impeccability and eventually received not much more than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
If you think that good work is synonymous with flawless work, get ready for serious problems. Art is man, error is man; therefore, art is a delusion. Your work (like uh, previous syllogism) will always have some kind of defect. Why? Because you are a person, and only people, regardless of how they were born, create art. It is still unknown who you would be without your flaws, but clearly not one of us.
Still, some artists (including many former artists) continue to believe that the creation of art involves the creation of immaculate works; that in this case the status of most existing works of art is questionable, they do not take into account. In fact, the opposite principle seems to be more similar to the truth: imperfection is not only an ordinary component of art, but, most likely, also an integral part of it. Ansel Adams never equated accuracy to perfection, often recalling the old aphorism “the best is the enemy of the good”, and was also convinced that he waited until everything in the landscape was absolutely right, he probably would not have taken a single photo.
Another small excerpt from the book is on the publisher's website ( PDF file )
And below - a selection of links related to the "Art and Fear":
- book on piter.com
- book on Ozone (many interesting reviews)
- Labyrinth book (also many reviews)
- discussion in the ru_batic community
- community discussion ru_books
- reviews on the book on LiveLib and Imkonete
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/153599/
All Articles