Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant and Wise
Review: Art and Fear is the best and most inspiring book I have read for the artist. It is affirming and realistic and hopeful. I am so grateful to have discovered it.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing!
Review: I'm a screenplay writer.
Movie director Robert Rodriguez recommended this book in his commentary on DVD. So I bought it.
But it was not as good as I expected.
If you're confident about you and eager to create something, you don't need this book.
Rating: 
Summary: I have mixed feelings about this book
Review: First of all let me say that I am glad I read this book, I just don't know if I would do it all over again. I got a few things out of this book. There were some cool quotes from artists and some old proverbs that really hit home with me. Probably the most profound quote in the book for me was "if you chase two rabbits, you catch neither". I'm really glad I heard that one. It's also nice to have someone remind you that art isn't supposed to be perfect, art is supposed to be human and we humans are not perfect.I'm also glad that I read some of the interesting discussions of art vs. craft and art vs. science. Their approach to explaining the differences was rather philosophical and not definitive, but it was interesting none the less since probably none of us are able to draw an exact line between those things. However, I also have to say that I found this book very annoying and patronizing. It's full of constant reassurances as if they're speaking to someone that's got tears streaming down their cheeks and saying "I'm not sure if I can go on being an artist, boo hoo... I don't know if I have what it takes". The books tone kind of comes off like "there, there, Rome wasn't built in a day... you know what Picasso would say about this... well Mozart always said to keep your chin up!". I also found it really annoying how the book is constantly pulling up some kind of story or lesson from a rotating selection of artists from random mediums. You'll be reading along and they'll throw in something like "Mozart used to cry for ten hours before he could even write a note" and "Ansel Adams was constantly on the verge of suicide because he felt insecure about his photography skills". Of course those aren't real quotes from the book, but they are examples of what I find annoying. I know they were writing a book about art in general and they have to throw in things about different art forms occaisionally, but it just seemed really patronizing. Like I said I'm glad I've read it, but I probably wouldn't have if I really knew what it was. This book is for people that are very afraid and very insecure. It will give you lots of reassurance and make you feel better about yourself. However, if you are not depressed and on the verge of quitting, then I think you may find this book to be very annoying.
Rating: 
Summary: Zero stars is more like it, for Artist as VICTIM
Review: "Art & Fear" by David Bayles, Ted Orland, List Price $12.95
This book might have been sub-titled: "The Artist as Victim"
Another of the genre of intellectual "handholding" for the Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor crowd. The authors presume that art cannot be done without their pithy reassurances; so here you are, a book dedicated to pithily reassuring others with pithy reassurances.
No doubt there will eventually be an entire art movement, suitably named: PITHY REASSURANCE SCHOOL OF ART, as a result of this.
The first paragraph is written in first person plural; "We" this & "We" that...etc, as though the issues that Boyle and Orland confront, they conveniently project upon all other persons.
The inference here, is that ALL artists or prospective art students suffer from provisional self-esteem and are in need of being "empowered" by the authors. Unfortunately, empowerment by others is a narrowly seductive reasoning that delicately reassures the student/artist that he, indeed, really does lack real artistic or other power unless Bayles and Orland confer it upon you. In the final analysis, that's a way to DISEMPOWERMENT
of the reader.
This presents art as something profane, and anything but a sacred activity between the creator, and the canvas that stands blank. The suggestion here is that there will be you, the canvas, and in between, Bayles and Orland, whispering pithy reassurances.
The first reassurance is, of course, that you cannot draw anything without first running down to the bookstore to buy their book of pithy reassurances. That will empower you to stand before a canvas, ruminating over the pithy reassurances.
Even Pinnochio had a conscience, if only he would listen to it. All he had to do to become a real live boy, was to stop lying to himself, and turn off the pithy reassurances about CANDYLAND. The authorship here is self-pitying, self-centered and regressive, presenting the artistic impulse as a some psychological disorder for which holistic mumbo-jumbo is the cure.
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