We’re enraptured with the myth of a masterpiece. A lightning bolt of inspiration that weighs heavily on some tortured artist. They toil away and forgo luxuries in order to achieve the divine. It’s not limited to traditional art forms - we tell stories about moonshot business ideas, star athletes who bear life-threatening injuries, and ascetic religious leaders who throw away even what seems necessary to live. And even then, they may not be publicly recognized in their lifetime. These legends sacrifice in order to succeed.

Less popular is the concept of sustainable art. Art made by a spare-time artist. Ideas not rendered from a lightning bolt, but picked loose from a fabric of ideas present in our cultural context. Art that doesn’t see commercial success in their lifetime or after. Art that is made for the artist’s enjoyment and probably not very ‘good’ at all.

Creative people are reluctant to call themselves artists unless they sacrifice themselves in the name of their creation. Is somebody who works in their spare time an artist? Can a spare-time, sustainable artist make great art? What is more important: the practice or the output?

What is art?

Rick Rubin, in his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, breaks down the process of creating art in four parts, the final one being release. A crucial part of art to Rubin is that final step - to share it with others. This requires the artist to view their creation with some level of finality; they’ve decided that it is ready to be witnessed by others. Stamping out a piece of art in time, a snapshot of the artist at that moment, is what Rubin states separates a creative decision from actual ‘art’.

Rubin proposes that creativity is something that anybody can access at any time. It is not limited to making artifacts (books, records, sculptures), but includes ephemeral, temporary acts as well. “A conversation, the solution to a problem, a note to a friend, the rearrangement of furniture in a room, a new route home to avoid a traffic jam” is creativity according to Rubin. Engaging with creativity is only the first step toward making art.

He also separates art from the artistic practice. The practice is something artists engage with regularly, but the art is what comes out of it. Art is the concrete pieces of self-expression that emerge, take shape, and then split off from the artist to be perceived by others.

In contrast to Rubin’s object-focused perspective on art, Steven Pressfield describes art as a perpetual fight against a spirit of ‘Resistance’ that lies within each of us. In his book, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, he clarifies that ‘art as an artifact’ is secondary to this battle.

He lasers in on the artistic practice as an ongoing and frequent return of the artist to their creative work, instead of any end result of that ritual. He sees the artistic practice as a war against your inner sloth, what he calls Resistance. He writes very little about what the process should look like over the course of creating a piece of art and instead talks at length about the day-to-day. The artistic process, to Pressfield, is sitting down at your desk every day, working as long and hard as you can, and leaving it all out on the court. He describes the transition to take an amateur artist to the next level as ‘going pro’, which to him looks like treating art like a job instead of a passion.

Both authors agree that making art requires an artist to commune with themselves and their practice on a regular basis. But while Rubin describes art as a noun, Pressfield argues for art as a verb.

Art is simultaneously the results of the artist’s practice (a noun), and the practice itself (a verb). Rubin frames the artist’s efforts toward projects. He views art as cyclical practice of exploring creative acts, crafting and developing them, and then releasing them to the world.

Pressfield, however, emphasizes the artist’s dedication to their craft. The results are milestones, yes, but nothing to dwell on. He recounts a story of working twenty-six months straight on a novel, and finally reaching the day that he could write “The End” on the last page of his manuscript. After this monumental journey, he went to his mentor’s home for coffee to tell him that he had finished the novel.

“Good for you,” [Paul] said without looking up. “Start the next one today.”

Pressfield, and his mentor Paul, see the productive output of the artistic practice as a side effect, not the goal.

Is somebody a writer if they publish stories? Or if they sit down every morning to write? The fact that Pressfield and Rubin perceive art differently shows that there are multiple paths to making art. This is what takes a creative act from ephemerality to art - a longer term dedication to the project or to the artistic craft.

Once an artist has dedicated themselves to a project or craft, it takes certain factors to make great art:

  • The artist’s eye, ear, and taste - their ability to perceive.
  • The artist’s experience, skill, and technique - their ability to execute.
  • A lightning bolt, a loose thread - their ability to capture a resonant idea.

What does it take to make great art?

Perception and mindfulness pervade the societal zeitgeist. Even as they are posed as cure-alls for many forms of work, Rubin emphasizes these traits as key aspects of making great art. Perception is intentional curiosity, probing and seeking to uncover patterns and mechanics in an experience. This costs energy for the artist, but levels up their taste and discernment. Rubin:

The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.

Mindfulness is another facet of creative experience, perhaps orthogonal but not opposite. Mindfulness is more passive than perception. It lazily opens the artist to the sensations, shadows, and emotions around them. Rubin claims this allows the artist to detect the whispers of Inspiration. He likens it to a child’s experience of the world (emphasis mine):

How do we pick up on a signal that can neither be heard nor be defined? The answer is not to look for it. Nor do we attempt to predict or analyze our way into it. Instead, we create an open space that allows it. … As children, we experience much less interference between receiving ideas and internalizing them. We accept new information with delight instead of making comparison to what we already believe; we live in the moment rather than worrying about future consequences; we are spontaneous more than analytical; we are curious, not jaded. … Artists who are able to continually create great works throughout their lives often manage to preserve these child-like qualities.

Perception and mindfulness take in the outside world and internalize it. Skill and technique express the internal world and turn it into something physical.

While technique is separate from taste, great work can only be created when both are present in the artist. A pianist can mechanically practice their scales in every possible key, but without an equally deep understanding of dynamics and expression, their output will sound rigid and robotic. On the other hand, a composer might love listening to cello quartets but fail to write compelling pieces without a more intimate knowledge of the instrument and its abilities. Pressfield states how integral technique is to an artist that considers themselves to be a ‘professional’ of their craft:

The professional respects [their] craft. [They do] not consider [themselves] superior to it. [They recognize] the contributions of those who have gone before [them]. [They apprentice] themselves to them. The professional dedicates [themselves] to mastering technique not because [they believe] technique is a substitute for inspiration but because [they want] to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. [They know] that by toiling beside the front door of technique, [they leave] room for genius to enter by the back.

Improving technical ability only comes through regular and frequent artistic practice. While artists wait for their next big idea, what do they do in the meantime? They work. Pressfield’s attachment to ‘art as a verb’ gets artists the results he values most: a high level of technique and skill that allows them to channel inspiration when it comes.

Through honing their ability to internalize the external world and express the internal world, artists open themselves up to the chance to capture a resonant idea. Great art is not a guaranteed perpetual output of the skilled artist. Great art can happen upon anybody, but skilled artists are the ones most able to detect it, bottle it up, and release it when it arrives.

Popular culture sees inspiration as a unique, individualized event that only happens if the right person is in the right place at the right time. If the stars don’t align, the idea would never come to light. Or if that artist perceives the idea, but fails to execute it, it’s left to wither and die. Its moment was lost.

Both Pressfield and Rubin unequivocally deny this model of inspiration. They see creative ideas as part of an energy that flows globally, able to be picked up by any artist tuned into the context and attitude of the era. Pressfield says:

As I understand it, it’s as though the Fifth Symphony existed already in that higher sphere … It needed a corporeal being, a human, an artist … to bring it into being on this material plane. So the Muse whispered in Beethoven’s ear. Maybe she hummed a few bars into a million other ears. But no one else heard her. Only Beethoven got it.

Rubin describes a similar inspirational process:

We are all participating in a larger creative act we are not conducting … If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.

Although every artist has their own unique voice and individual spirit, Pressfield and Rubin allude to the idea that the artist does not create in a vacuum. They are profoundly impacted by the context in which they live. This limits the origins in which great art can come from, and allows many artists to generate similar works without ever being aware of one another.

Inspiration isn’t a lightning bolt - it’s a loose thread on a weft of metaphysical fabric. This fabric makes up the social context in which artists, and everybody, live. This fabric is tightly woven, clean, and unfraying when nobody is looking too hard at it. The perceptive and mindful artist notices small inconsistencies here and there: tiny threads loosely connecting events, ideas, and emotions. The skilled and technical artist tugs on these threads, pulling them loose and reinterpreting them through their own lens. Art unravels our social context by looking more closely at what it’s made up of in the first place. This is how great work is made.

If great works are out there, waiting for their time to come to light, does that mean that a sustainable artist has every chance that the tortured artist does to lasso one and bring it into our world?

What defines great art?

This recipe for great art is based on the artist’s ability to perceive the world and express themselves. They must use their skills to tune into the inspirational fabric of their context. If they get lucky, they might be able to pull on a loose thread… but then what? How does the artist know that they’ve made great art? How does the world receive their product and practice?

Through an economic lens, society values the artist’s product more than their process. Pursuing art comes with the social expectation that the artist will receive some financial gain from doing so. This puts undue pressure on ‘art as a noun’. By doing so, this corrupts the spiritual connection that any person has to their creations. Artists who only value the products of their practice are shoehorned into either the role of the tortured artist, or lose connection with their art altogether by making the most highly marketable and consumable product. Instead of enjoying the act of creating, we have been taught to only value the end result.

It’s obvious that there are many talented and skilled artists out there who are capable of making great art. And yet it’s also well known how fickle commercial and critical success is for artists. There’s a contradiction in the way society views great art. We accept that artists are often not recognized for their great works until long after they’ve created them. We also accept that many popular artists make work that’s derivative and trite, that their output will eventually be lost to time or in a sea of other similar works.

There’s a parallel between these:

  • The artist’s cyclical practice - internalizing the external, and externalizing the internal
  • The artist’s output and its reception - unravel and remake a loose thread from the world’s fabric, and the world’s willingness to weave it back into the fabric

Artists have control over their practice. They choose to enter into the cycle. They have no control over the output or how it is received. The output is derived by the skills they possess, not the earnestness in which they work. Both critical and commercial success are out of the artist’s grasp. Once they have shared something with the world, their work is done.

Pressfield supports this in saying:

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define [their] reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that [they] keep working […] Remember, Resistance wants us to cede sovereignty to others. It wants us to stake our self-worth, our identity, our reason-for-being, on the response of others to our work. Resistance knows we can’t take this. No one can.

Commercial success is rarely available to artists - both tortured and sustainable alike. Rubin, well-versed in the fickle nature of commercial success due to his status in music production, states:

Popular success is a poor barometer of work and worth. In order for a work to connect commercially, stars must align […] If a global catastrophe happens on the same day a project comes out, the project might be overshadowed. If you’ve made a stylistic change, your fans may not initially be receptive to it. If a highly anticipated work by another artist is released on the same day, your project may not land with the same impact.

Instead, Rubin posits that great art is decided entirely by the artist themselves:

Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows - all magnificent. Curated to your taste. This is the essence of great art. We make it for no other purpose than creating our version of the beautiful, bringing all of ourself to every project, whatever its parameters and constraints. Consider it an offering, a devotional act.

This puts the focus on the output, the great work only being complete once the first night is spent in the mountaintop abode. What happened to the hours spent searching for the right materials, or plumbing the depths of the self to identify the desired characteristics for this new home?

A great product is self-defined. An artist who coddles an idea through infancy, develops it into something richer, and then shares it to the world - the artist can then decide if they fully devoted themselves to the project. The inner critic may have some notes, but the act of working through this process begets a great output.

A great practice is also self-defined. An artist who repeatedly tunes in to their own Self, who attempts to express the internal world on a regular cadence… this is an artist making great work. The evaluation of the output from an artist’s great practice is irrelevant.

The sustainable artist can lean on either view: art as a noun or verb. One might drive them more than the other, but the product and the practice are intertwined.

They can focus on the arc of a creative project from start to middle to end, and the different creative acts it brings along the way. And they must also focus on the constant practice, experimenting with new techniques, improving learned ones, and connect with their inner world constantly.

Both are necessary ingredients to make great art.