Disasterpieces

One of my favorite process play frames is to make bad art, or a Disasterpiece (opposite of a masterpiece). This can be done in any art form.

My invitation to you: make a disasterpiece in whatever medium appeals to you.

Steps 

1. Write a list of all the art rules you can think of in the medium you're going to play in. For example, if you want to write a bad pop song, then first write all the rules of what a good pop song is. 

For example: 

A good pop song has to be three and a half minutes long

A good pop song has to have a catchy chorus

A good pop song has to make you feel good

And so on. This part of the process will make conscious the critic's rule book.

Wonderfully, through this process I sometimes discover entries in the rule book that I am ready to erase, once I see how specific or silly or not true they are. When I do this process with a group, and we share our list of rules with each other, it always happens that someone shouts out indignantly "But why?" in response to someone's idiosyncratic critic rules. I'm always pleased to see there's less consensus than I thought about what makes good art. 

I also have fun having the group think of artists who broke one of their rules and got away with it. In the example above, I could cite the fact that Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone clocks in at more than 6 minutes, but still managed to get to #2 in the US in 1965. Also, Thom Yorke wrote a song, Subterranea, that's 18 days long supposedly, and no one stopped loving him. 

2. Try, as best as you can, to create a piece that violates as many of the rules as you can. In the example I laid out above of writing a pop song, you would try to make a pop song that is way too long (or short), that has a chorus that isn't catchy (or no chorus, you get the idea), and which makes you feel bad. And so on. Notice how you feel during the process. I get visceral pleasure from creating the most forbidden art piece I can think of. 

3. At the end of your process, reflect on your piece and enjoy it.

The funny thing about doing this assignment is that while it is super fun to do, for most people I've done it with, the take away often seems to be that it's as hard to make truly bad art as it is to make good art. This usually makes us laugh. Also, delightfully, people from the outside often can't tell that the piece was intended to be bad art.

Here is an example. I did it in the visual channel. The rules I had were: colors should look good together and can't be muddy, the composition shouldn't be cramped, you can't use shiny paint, you can't paint horses, and you have to be anatomically accurate if you're going to be figurative. 

This is what it turned out like: 

I really love it.

Have fun! 

Bad art thumbnail by Cecilia Giménez, who lovingly "restored" a 16th century Spanish fresco to look like that, thereby surprising, delighting and alarming the art world.