Why We Need Average Art

I think we have a big problem in this era of creatives: nobody is allowed to suck anymore.

Because I make music for a living sometimes people send me videos/audio of them making music. And sometimes it’s not the greatest musical performances.

A lot of times these videos or audio files are online. There’s sometimes thousands of views or listens, not because it’s good art, but because it’s hilarious to hear someone butcher music.

It’s fun to laugh at a terrible version of a song (I’m all for it if it’s not meant in a hurtful or mean way) but it highlights a cultural problem: we’ve substantially raised the bar of what we expect for creatives in the last 10 years.

We struggle to enjoy the average musician singing a cover in a coffeehouse (unless we know them), because we can’t help but compare them to the best musicians we’ve seen on TikTok. We have a hard time appreciating an average painting from a young university student, because we can pull up a high resolution picture of any famous painting anywhere in the world with our phone.

The problem is double sided, too. If you’re a young musician, you are more painfully aware than ever that you’re not that great at what you do, because most artists are really terrible at what they do for a very, very long time.

This can have a lot of benefits (including motivating creatives to grow) but it can often keep creatives stuck in two categories:

1. creatives can either put out poor copies of great artists’ work too early

2. Creatives give up because it feels unreachable to put out work that meets cultural standards.

The first point is perhaps part of the reason so many artists aren’t creating innovative art as in decades past. The second is at least part of the reason we’re seeing a huge decline in local art in most US cities.

The solution is surprisingly simple.

For musicians, don’t compare your art to others. Look for personal satisfaction in the art you make. Don’t look for external validation that what you make is worthy. The more you can enjoy your art for the sake of art, the better your work will become.

For consumers, go enjoy and support average art. Go to the coffee shop and really listen to a kinda average artist for a half hour. At the end, tip them $50- you will absolutely make their week. Take the time to look at average paintings hanging in random office buildings. Don’t compare or judge, just enjoy. If someone is selling creative services online and it’s kind of cool, support them. Not because they may improve or become famous, but because art elevates living, even when it’s average.

The more we celebrate average art in our communities, even poor art, the more we are likely to culture great art.