Bad Art

Originally published April 26th 2023

I could count on one hand how many paintings I’ve sold after 10 years of consistently making work (not 100% true, but makes for a decent opening). There are times where I wonder what’s the point in making when it will very likely not sell, that I haven’t put in the work to get my work to sell (networking, exhibiting, promoting). I am not an entrepreneur and it seems like every artist must be one. Have to sell stickers online, do cutesy, safe characters. Palatable for a wide audience to consume. Why is every famous painter on instagram also hot? Do I have to sell myself along with my work? Must I become palatable?

Well I’m not and doubt I’ll ever be. I know in order to make better work I have to stop thinking about the tiktok-ification of art. I need to stop thinking about AI making 6 finger figures. I spend so much time worrying about bad art that I stopped looking at the good stuff. And some good art is bad art. Ugly, horrible art. I’ve been watching a lot of 80s horror movies, creatures covered in slime and unconcerned with being pretty. The sexualisation of certain characters is now comedic (i.e. Night of the Demons, there is a long shot of a woman bending over, focused on her bum for a good 10-20 seconds, it’s later revealed to be a ruse to distract a couple cashiers while her friend steals stuff, but we all know why the shot was really in the film) and its ugliness draws me in. The grime and grain of film. I watched a series of Youtube videos on Tom Savani, famously known for his makeup and prosthetic work on several of The Dead movies (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead) and Creepshow. You might recognise him as the biker with a dick gun in From Dusk Til Dawn. Learning how he made certain effects and the evolution of his work has helped me reframe my perspective on making. That it’s technical and serious and also very silly and fun. Zombie movies, when it comes to the effects, is a lot about “What would be a fun way to kill this guy?” “How do we gross ‘em out?” “How much fake blood do we have?”. I went back to the works of Rick Baker who did the effects for American Werewolf in London and Videodrome. I just really like how they did special effects in the 70s/80s before they got a little too into stop-motion and just before CGI took over with a certain dinosaur themed movie. It’s so nasty and messy, and there was a lot of invention. So many ways to make a head explode.

This eventually led me to skipping through 80s B-movies, just looking for the special effects because most B-movies are incredibly boring. Rick Baker’s work on the Incredible Melting Man is fantastic but I’m not too interested in watching the melting man walk through the woods for 2 hours. Skipping through these movies made me think about bad but sincere art. Even Canon Films, who were very cynical and just made schlock rip-offs of better films, still have a certain charm to them because they got talented special effects artists. Most of these movies are bad, unwatchable most of the time, but have created some iconic imagery (The Company of Wolves is a rare good one) and well done effects. It gave me a renewed sense of ease when it feels like my work is going nowhere. I’m sure many of the people who worked on Cannon films could not foresee the internet and the grander appreciation of niche work. Not comparing myself to them, just that it’s hard to know whether or not your work will be appreciated to some capacity, so you might as well put your best into a low-budget horror film or a painting.

When I think of bad art I think of ocean themed bathrooms or restaurants with rockabilly clutter on the walls, black and white pictures of celebrities and license plates. Generally cheap looking pieces probably once sold at a sea-side tourist trap and someone put in the effort to bring it home, so maybe the piece on its own wasn’t bad but once engulfed in a blue/white colour scheme, it took away its craftsman glow. A hap-haphazardly decorated restaurant, if the food is good, is part of the charm. I couldn’t really tell you about a nice looking bathroom or a particularly well designed restaurant, my mind only wanders to the bad ones I’ve seen. Maybe that’s not even bad art, because most bad art isn’t worth remembering, most of it is boring.

That is the dreaded word: boring. I fear it everyday of my life. I think I could handle being “bad”, being bad turns one into an underdog, someone with something to prove, an unseen genius. But boring is just boring. I look at my work, painting and writing, and wonder if it is uninteresting. If I am not talented enough to rise above the drab and be interesting. Although, I don’t think I’d like to be “interesting” either. “Interesting” is something someone says about you on a date when they don’t like you but like a lab rat they want to see what I’ll do next. “Interesting” is what people say when they don’t understand something but know there must be more to it (or assume there must be when there isn’t). Perhaps, in trying to be interesting, you’ve made yourself boring again. I’ve seen plenty attempts of musicians trying to be experimental and just fall short of a kid who just learned their first song on guitar (a lot of starts and stops). In taking ourselves too seriously, in losing an element of fun, we turn into tourist trap art. Simple, bland, safe. Imitations of those who came before and not carrying on the conversation. Because all art is just a conversation. We’re just taking to each other in images and songs and films, referring back to one another, theorising, playing the fool, falling in love, yelling, taking the piss, hoping we’re heard.

I recently discovered that the production company that made The Lord of the Rings movies, my favourite trilogy of all time, New Line Cinema, is also responsible for and got their big start from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. A franchise I will say, goes downhill from the ending of the first movie. This is an argument for bad art, make so much bad art because one day you might make good art. Then you’ll go back to making bad art again aka The Hobbit movies.

Thank you for reading

-Enya xx