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The Art of Failure: The Importance of Risk and Experimentation

American Artscape | 2014 No. 4
Cover of NEA Arts No 4 2014
Cover photo by Don Ball.
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About this Issue

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter.
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

In the sciences, the concept of failure is a natural part of experimentation. If you want to learn how a process works, or develop a new one yourself, the scientific method demands that you try, fail, and try again.

But in the arts, failure is often seen as a dirty word—no one wants to be responsible for a critical or commercial flop. But without taking risk and pushing boundaries, art would remain stagnant, and the creative spirit would be wasted on our own fears. As filmmaker George Lucas said in a 2013 blog interview, “If you’re creating things, you’re doing things that have a high potential for failure, especially if you’re doing things that haven’t been done before. And you learn from those things… [F]ailure is another word for experience.”

In this issue of NEA Arts, we’ll speak with individual artists, entrepreneurs, and critics about their relationship with failure. Told as edited, first-person musings, these pieces offer personal insights into the fear of failure, whether failure can be helpful to the creative process, and how failure, either real or imagined, has contributed to current success. Taken together, these voices show that maybe—just maybe—failure isn’t such a dirty word after all.

Included in this Issue

Toni Morrison wearing hat, sitting and gesturing with her hands

Toni Morrison

Write, Erase, Do It Over
Man in black shirt gesturing with his right hand.

Geoff Nuttall

Finding Balance with the St. Lawrence String Quartet
Perry Chen portrait

Perry Chen

The Role of Creative Failure
Man standing in front of wall with names of play written on it.

Carlos Murillo

Success and Not Success
Sarah Kaufman portrait.

Sarah Kaufman

Waiting for the Art to Unfold
Gene Luen Yang in classroom teaching.

Gene Luen Yang

Failure Can Be Fruitful
Portrait of Janai Brugger

Janai Brugger

Strength in Weakness
Woman looking up as blocks drop around her.

Nichole Canuso on Taking Risks

Video Available
Paula Pondstone photo. She is shown clutching an old style radio microphone.

Paula Poundstone

Stand-Up Comedy: Going for the Moment
Audio Available
A string quintet at rest.

A Talk with Geoff Nuttall about Mozart

Video Available
Book cover of A Confederacy of Dunces

Cast-off to Comeback: Artistic "Failures" That Made History

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