Quantity vs. Quality

My mountain

We've discovered throughout the years that when it comes to many things, quality beats quantity hands down. Spend better, buy less. One hour of quality time with a child is, they say, more beneficial than 8 hours of just plain old time. Even when it comes to exercise they're saying "10 minutes of the Powerplate is worth an hour of ordinary exercise".

But what about with our art? Do we need to do less to be able to produce better work? Should we plan down to the last details so as to be assured it will come out right?

At the moment I am reading a book called Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It's an excellent book I would recommend to all. When talking about uncertainty the authors give several examples of artists throughout the ages from Tolstoy to Ansel Adams who produced an astounding amount of work, much of it for the bin. Tolstoy re-wrote War and Peace eight times and was still revising as it rolled onto the press. Photographer Jerry Uelsmann once gave a slide lecture of every single photo he made in the span of one year, he judged only 10 pieces acceptable, the rest were destroyed.

The authors go on to talk about perfection and the following example brilliantly illustrates what we should be doing as artists. P. 29 "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality" however, needed to produce only one pot- albeit a perfect one- to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busy churning out piles of work- and learning from their mistakes- the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay".

As for myself, I have spent countless hours "thinking " about what I want to create, how it should look, my mind racing with expectations while my hands sit idle. I have also lamented at creating piles and piles of stuff for the bin, but after having read Art & Fear I really think the stacks are worth it. Maybe I will find the gem in my trash mountain.