Episode 72 - Unpacking Disgust: How what you HATE reveals what you VALUE.

Woodworking is B******T!

The episode explores the psychological and artistic value of identifying 'bad art' to uncover personal values and dislikes. Through discussi

Key takeaways

• Jack Thomas uses a 'bad art assignment' to help students locate their personal origin of disust.
• Eric Curtis critiques performance art as narcissistic and lacking the focus on the physical object.

Main topics

• Psychology of disgust
• Critique of performance art

Notable quotes

You can't know what you truly like, what you really love, until you know what you truly hate.

Conclusion

This episode provides a profound look at how our aesthetic prejudices

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) So I was standing there looking at this piece of artwork and I thought to myself, this is the second worst piece of artwork I've ever seen in my entire fucking life. Do you mean to tell me in real life that there is a Thomas Kinkade painting called NASCAR Thunder? Yeah. Speaker 3 (0:39) I guarantee it's going to be a spicy one tonight, folks, because we are back. This is Woodworking is Bullshit, your favorite podcast that likes to tear shit up in the pursuit of honesty and authenticity. I don't care about your feelings. I care about the truth. I'm your host, Paul Jasper of Copper Pig Woodworking, scientist by day, truth-sayer by night, and I got my boy in the chair, Eric Curtis, furniture maker and content creator. Speaker 2 (1:07) Mayamo NASCAR thunder, bitches. That is the only way I will be addressed for the rest of this Speaker 3 (1:12) podcast. And unless you're deaf, you haven't had any trouble noticing the sweet-sounding pipes of our favorite learning designer and homesteader and art professor, Jack Thomas. Speaker 1 (1:28) Hey, guys. Happy to be here. Speaker 2 (1:30) Oh, my God. Those pipes. Those pipes. Speaker 2 (1:35) Also, Paul, don't jump on our deaf listeners like that right off the jump, man. Come on. Why you got to shit on those guys? Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I guess Speaker 1 (1:43) they wouldn't be listening Speaker 2 (1:44) to a podcast. You Speaker 1 (1:45) just said deaf listeners. I said unless Speaker 3 (1:47) you're deaf, you wouldn't notice. Did I say listeners? Oh, anyway. Sorry. Apologies. Today, we decided to take on a rather, I'd say, unusual topic, and that is why making Bad art might be valuable. And you say, why are we talking about this? Who the hell wants to make bad art? But today, I think there's quite a few reasons that we're going to cover why it could help you. It could help all of us. We spend so much time learning how to do things correctly. We take classes. This is how you want to do this. This is how you want to do that. You don't want to do that. You'll screw it up. You'll make a mistake. Oh, God forbid. And we really don't, in any organized way, talk about our failures or what not to do or why that is such a learning opportunity. So that's our topic today. And to start it off, Jack is going to get the ball rolling. Speaker 1 (2:49) Okay. So when I was still teaching college, I assigned one particular assignment to all of my classes, whether they were intro. you know, upper level, whatever. And that assignment was the bad art assignment. I've actually assigned it to a couple of y'all's listeners and then followed up and met with them about it afterwards. And they had the same reactions as my college students, which is to say, like just mind absolutely being blown sometimes, you know, I still have people call me like half a decade later and they're like, dog, doggy dog. I'm still learning things from that assignment. So the bad art assignment is this. You imagine the worst fucking piece of art that you could possibly make, right? The worst piece of art you could possibly make. You write down what it looks like. You write down why you think it's bad. And then you actually go Speaker 2 (3:50) and make Speaker 1 (3:51) that piece Speaker 2 (3:52) of art. Speaker 1 (3:54) You make that thing. Now, half of the assignment is like discussing afterwards, but we'll, I think we're going to get into that. But, but basically when I, when I ask people to make the worst artwork they can imagine, I'm not asking them to identify like universal badness. I'm not even sure that that exists, honestly. And we might get into that later. What I'm asking people to do is to like locate their own disgust. What do you think makes a truly bad piece of art? Speaker 3 (4:24) And why is locating that origin of disgust valuable, Jack? Speaker 1 (4:30) There are so many reasons. You can't know what you truly like, what you truly love, until you know what you truly hate. That's one of them. It also says a lot about you as a person, what you dislike. And it says a lot about your cultural upbringing. But it also says a lot about your own fears, about your own shortcomings. And honestly, I think if you were to talk to someone for long enough, which we might get into tonight, if you were to talk to someone for long enough about the artwork they hate the most, after a while, they wouldn't even be talking about the artwork. They would actually be talking about themselves in some way. And it might make them uncomfortable. It gets that deep. It really does. Speaker 3 (5:09) Well, let's start it. We're going to start it up. We're just going to start. We're going to talk about what we hate and why. Eric? Speaker 2 (5:17) Well, the first thing I want to know is you use the word disgust, and I know you well enough to know that that's an intentional choice. Speaker 1 (5:26) It is. Speaker 2 (5:26) So when you say disgust, do you mean, and I think I know the answer, but do you mean like that visceral repulsive disgust? Do you mean disgust of like? How could this possibly be considered good work? Like a visceral angry disgust? Define disgust a little bit more for me. Speaker 1 (5:52) That's a good question. I think yes to both of those things. But the important thing to point out is it's not just artwork where you're like, man, that sucks, and you move on. It's artwork where you're like so disgusted by it that you tell other people how much it sucks. You're just like, You're like, I can't, not only can I not believe that people consider this good, that anyone considers this good, but I can't believe that someone actually put the time into making this and that other people consume it willingly. It makes Speaker 2 (6:24) you Speaker 1 (6:24) mad. You have a gut reaction. Oh my God, I can't wait. It makes your blood boil, right? So it's a both Speaker 2 (6:33) end of like, it makes me angry that people are doing this and calling it art, but it also could be like a biological, like piss Christ. You know, it Speaker 1 (6:42) could it could be like piss Christ. But I would say that pit with piss Christ, like there's biological. Speaker 3 (6:49) I'm Googling piss Christ. What the fuck's this Christ? What's piss Christ? OK, Jack, I'll let you I'll let you hit it. No, no, no. OK, fine. Speaker 1 (7:01) OK, so. So explain it to Speaker 3 (7:03) the Speaker 1 (7:03) listeners, Speaker 3 (7:03) please. Speaker 1 (7:03) Yeah. OK, OK. So so. Piss Christ is a photograph, a cybochrome or kybochrome photograph that was created by Andre Serrano. And it came out the same year I did, 1987. And it's a photograph that depicts a small plastic crucifix that is submerged in a glass tank of the artist's own piss. Oh. Speaker 2 (7:30) Piss Christ. Piss Christ. I just Speaker 1 (7:31) Googled it Speaker 2 (7:32) and found it. Got Speaker 1 (7:33) it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for some people, for some people, this disgust, it might be like a biological or body horror kind of thing. But what I'm really referring to is art that you just, you fucking hate it because you're like, what the, what? No, no one can possibly like this. I am so mad at this. And what that says about you as a person. Speaker 2 (7:55) Okay. All right. So I'll step up to the ledge first. Speaker 2 (8:04) Performance art pisses me off. I really, I was like, I've seen a couple of things. And that's not to say like we're speaking in generalities, right? Like we have to kind of take a bold stance because this is a podcast. So I'm just going to say performance art in general is dog shit. It doesn't make any fucking sense. You are bastardizing the work of talented actors, writers, performers, singers, et cetera. Speaker 2 (8:33) minimizing it to the narcissism of I have an idea that I'm going to get down on all fours and just be a table. and then I am and it's supposed to make you feel a thing it's supposed to transcend you into another space oh it makes you feel a Speaker 3 (8:50) thing or or Speaker 2 (8:50) I'm gonna roll around and paint on a on a large canvas and then people are gonna stand up or Speaker 1 (8:56) I'm gonna Speaker 2 (8:58) pull the the plug out of the bottom bucket of sand and watch the tower fall over it's bullshit like that right like it's it's obviously it's deconstructing what is art? And it's making a statement about how fucking stupid consumers of art are and the, the fucking, I don't know the voyeurism of it all. But, but at the same time, like those people are still getting paid real fucking dollars for that dog shit. And I'm out here, like I got a mortgage to pay and I'm trying to put out actual good work into the universe. So go fuck yourself. Now, how do we dive into Eric's psyche? What underlies Speaker 3 (9:32) that now? Or do one of us go? Speaker 1 (9:35) I, I don't know. I have some questions. I have some questions. All right. I think we're all going to have some questions for each other. And I just got to say, God, man, if any of my former colleagues are listening, I'm sorry in advance. If I wasn't kicked out of academia before, I definitely will be at this episode. Speaker 2 (9:55) Okay. Speaker 1 (9:56) I'm going to withhold my own judgment on performance or anything like that. But here are my questions. So do you hate it? Because it feels pretentious? Or do you hate it because you feel like there's no skill involved? Or like it's not really... Or you see these Speaker 3 (10:13) motherfuckers getting paid for pretending while you have to put in this incredible sweat equity and make less money. Or Speaker 1 (10:24) do you feel... And you're jealous. Like, or does it just feel like anybody could do it? Like there's no skill involved? No, Speaker 2 (10:31) it Speaker 1 (10:31) doesn't feel like anybody Speaker 2 (10:31) could do it. I think it probably is. I mean, certainly it's a little bit of jealousy of like, how did you just get, how did you get a fucking grant, like $100,000 art residency grant to... fucking jump off a trampoline and hit the highest point on a canvas with a paintbrush that you possibly fucking could like Speaker 3 (10:54) go sit Speaker 2 (10:56) on a dick like what are we doing you know uh so i think there's definitely a little bit of that Speaker 3 (11:01) uh Speaker 2 (11:02) like hey some people like sitting on a dick i'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum you know but still um so so i think there is that component of it um and and listen i love ideas ideas are a beautiful thing. And, and I never want to squash the, the creation of new ideas. And some of these things are new ideas. And some of these things are really wonderful ideas, but then to articulate them to an audience, um, with such little thought into how to relay that message, such little thought into the craft, as it were, it's. It's coming up with a perfect story and then never bothering to edit the text. You're just like, well, this is the first thing I wrote down and so it's the truest form of it. Go fuck yourself. It's just not good writing. The first thing you did is not the best iteration of that thing. And yes, it definitely feels elitist. If I went to art school, I could... fucking jump on a trampoline and slap my dick on a canvas and people will give me $10,000 for it. Speaker 1 (12:15) I mean, but I don't mean to split hairs, but I think people would pay you to do that right now. Speaker 1 (12:24) It's Speaker 2 (12:25) the spiciest first 12 minutes of an episode I think we've ever had. Oh, Jesus. Speaker 1 (12:28) This is just an hour Speaker 2 (12:29) in. Speaker 1 (12:30) What the fuck are we going to be like 45 minutes from now? Oh, God. You know what? Buy the ticket, take the ride. That's right. That's right. Speaker 2 (12:40) Okay, Speaker 1 (12:41) I Speaker 2 (12:41) have one Speaker 1 (12:41) more question, Eric. Okay. Does your opinion change depending on whether or not there is a physical object? that is left over at the end of the performance? Speaker 2 (12:55) Ooh, that's a good question. I would say the. Speaker 2 (13:00) The pieces that I am thinking of specifically that I can pull to mind, I don't know for certain, but I imagine those pieces are then left in place post-performance for a period of time as an installation. And that does not alter how I feel about those things at all because the... Speaker 2 (13:24) I think the thing that irks me about it is you are taking... Speaker 2 (13:30) These folks are taking exercises, practice pieces, and putting the... Speaker 2 (13:39) the creation, the act of creation on display rather than the object that is created. And that then turns the thing inward and say, look how amazing I am for my ability to create rather than thinking about the object as a sanctified thing in and of itself. You are not special. The Speaker 1 (14:02) object Speaker 2 (14:03) is what matters. The outcome is what matters. But no, no, no. Look at me. I can do X. Aren't I so wonderful? Speaker 3 (14:11) Is it I can do X or the process of doing X is wonderful? No, it's I can do X is wonderful. Speaker 2 (14:20) I don't Speaker 3 (14:21) know. Because, Speaker 2 (14:21) Paul, I don't know how to tell you this, buddy. If you pulled a plug out of a bucket full of sand and let a tower fall over, nobody gives a fuck. But that guy does it because he did it. It now Speaker 3 (14:35) has inherent cultural value because he has a name, because he has collectors, et cetera, et cetera. But let's go a level deeper. Eric, what does this say about your value system? Each of these is speaking to an underlying value. Speaker 2 (14:50) Oh, sure. I know exactly what it says about my value system. It's I feel like a dirtbag when I have to sell my work. It's the act of performance of... let me convince you why I am important and therefore the value of the thing that I made goes up. Whereas somebody else who is just as good, if not better than me, can make an object and they can't sell it because they don't have that skill set because they don't have a following because they didn't have a Netflix show, whatever the fuck it is. But it's the thing of if I convince you that I'm important, the value of the thing that I made is higher. Speaker 3 (15:25) Perceived value. Yeah, Speaker 2 (15:26) and so the thing... is still at the end of the day, not the valuable thing. Like you're not buying the object, you're buying the artist, which is the thing we've talked about on this podcast in Speaker 3 (15:36) the Speaker 2 (15:36) past. Yeah, it's irksome as a person who cares about the object. Listen, don't get me wrong. I am grateful that as I get better and my... my reach in my field grows that I am more and more able to pay my mortgage. I understand I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth, right? But again, this is a podcast. We're trying to take a stand and have a conversation point. But still ultimately in my soul, I believe that the object is an important thing in the, the making of the most, the striving to make the most perfect thing that you can is a valuable way to spend your time in your life. And by it being about me, it, it shifts the, the value to, well, Eric Curtis made it. So that's cool. I feel like there's also something here about charlatans, like people who Speaker 3 (16:30) pretend to be something maybe they're not. We have a proud Speaker 2 (16:35) history of snake oil salesmen in this country. Yeah, you seem to have like an underlying disgust of that based on what I'm hearing. Well, I think, okay,