Its strange how much more optimistic you can feel sometimes when the sun comes back from hiatus, although I guess its no great biological mystery. I can probably thank this new found energy for my project to vitamin D, that and the coffee bender I’m on right now. Chemical effects aside, I think Art and Fear has noticeably changed my outlook on my project, despite the fact that the book had a knack for making me self-consciously feel like a complete cliché on every page as I have probably had every fear the book addresses.

One of the greater challenges for me, not just of this quarter but probably since forever, is to not get ahead of myself and worry too much about what the artwork means and to let myself trust the process more. Trusting process I think lies at the heart of Art and Fear. The fears that are discussed in the book all relate to the ways in which artists lose faith in process and the book really only presents one compelling reason to keep faith in process, that nothing will happen if you don’t keep faith.

Pervading the entire book is a seemingly disheartening view that most artwork is meaningless and no one cares whether or not you make art. This seems to be an important first step in removing one’s ego from the issue of making art. To shift the focus from achievement to process, “ask your work what it needs, not what you need.” And this is actually quite freeing, in the sense that making art is never the last word on your worth as an artist. But the book is speaking to people who are compelled to make art, which ultimately makes such realizations only partly effective in separating the process from the artist’s desires. The book says as much: “vision is always ahead of execution – and it should be.” This paradox is not directly addressed perhaps to avoid unending existential tangents.

The same question arises when Art and Fear argues that artists and audiences have different concerns, that of process and product respectively. At the same time the book criticizes postmodern art for not engaging more with the world outside of its community. In fact the book goes as far as to argue that good art is only made in relationship to its contemporary environment. Audience certainly plays a key role in what it means to be contemporary. For all of the unresolved tension that the book steers clear of, I have new faith in my project by taking genuine interest in where it might lead me astray.