Art, Effort, and the Value of Doing Things Well

Slapstick, fruit paintings, and rock riffs all prove one thing: when creative work is done well, it can transcend into true art.

Hey, Friends! The cicadas are out in the greater Chicagoland area. That means we’re deep into summer, and school supplies are about to hit the shelves. Whether you’re looking forward to that or not, I’m here delivering creative inspiration.

On Doing Things Well

In an interview with David Zucker, writer, director, and producer of such movies as Airplane, The Naked Gun, and BASEketball, he made a comment in reference to slapstick comedy (at 42:45) stating:

Anything done well can be considered art.

I love this.

For one, I grew up on those movies and still quote them to this day. Also, those seven words serve as a great framework for considering creative work, especially when it falls outside of easy-to-define categories, is unpopular, or just a bit strange.

On the surface, slapstick comedy might feel cheap or easy, but the reality is that it’s only cheap and easy slapstick comedy that is cheap and easy. When done well, it’s brilliant. In the interview, Zucker describes all sorts of rules he and his writing team established when crafting a script, like:

• Joke on a joke: Never layer two jokes at the same time. Only one gag should be happening in the foreground or background; otherwise, both lose impact.

• Can you live with it? Once a joke is made, drop it. Don’t let a gag linger after the initial laugh.

• Trivia: If a joke requires the audience to know a bit of trivia to understand it, it probably won’t be funny in five years.

Zucker is, as my grandma Sally used to say, very serious about being funny, and it’s how serious he is about being funny that elevates his slapstick comedy to a form of art.

During my undergrad, while learning to become a teacher, a common refrain I heard was that lecturing was a poor form of instruction. I never quite agreed with that. I always felt that poor lecturing was a poor form of instruction, not lecturing itself. I’d pay large sums of money to sit in on a Richard Feynman lecture hall, for example, and I barely passed physics in high school.

In most aspects of life, especially those that you share online, you’ll find critics, but excellence is a great defense against those who speak against you. Art is less about what you do and more about how you do it and what you have to say.

Takeaway: Whether you’re making pratfalls or teaching undergrads Newtonian physics, anything worth doing is worth doing well, but when it’s done well enough, it sometimes transcends itself into an art form of its own.

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Fruit

A few weeks back, I ran across this note from

Ali Kaya

which reads:

Between 1887 and 1942, the USDA hired artists to paint fruit for scientific reports. The result? 7,000+ hyperrealistic fruit paintings — apples, melons, plums, pears. Now public domain, free to download and print.

Check out the archive here, and see the original post below:

I don’t have much to say about this other than, “How cool!” Not just that the federal government commissioned these pieces, but that our legal system is structured such that creative works enter the public domain roughly 70 years after the creator’s time of death.

I’m entirely in favor of living artists benefiting from their creative efforts while they are alive, but I think this is one area in particular that we, at a societal level, got right about letting that work belong to everyone eventually.

As living artists gather inspiration from others’ previous works that themselves were influenced by others’ previous works, it is fitting that that work eventually officially returns to the public domain to continue the cycle.

Takeaway: I strive to produce something in my lifetime that retains meaning and value long enough beyond my passing that anyone gives notice when it too enters the public domain. Perhaps this is a goal we should all strive for.

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Defensive Riffs

In the short below, guitar legend Jimmy Page interviews Jack White on the making of one of The White Stripes’ most iconic songs, Seven Nation Army. In the clip, White shares an anecdote about playing the main riff to his roommate, Ben Swank, who received it with little enthusiasm, describing it as “all right.”

White then goes on to explain how he likes it when that sort of reaction finds him, as it makes him defensive of what others can’t yet see. Watch the full clip below:

The song, of course, charted internationally and has been certified gold, platinum, and multi-platinum in several countries, and can be heard in stadiums the world over.

Sharing your creative work is a vulnerable experience, especially when that work is in an early, nascent stage where the wrinkles haven’t been ironed out, the edges sanded smooth, or the surface polished. Too often, a single piece of negative feedback serves as a death knell for what otherwise could have been brilliant.

White serves as a reminder of the importance of one’s belief in oneself, and offers a positive mental framework for encountering resistance: let it act as fuel to prove them wrong.

Takeaway: What projects have you abandoned prematurely? Perhaps it’s time to channel your inner Jack White and revisit them with a vengeance.

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One More Thing

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See you next week!

-Mike