Don't Call It Art! DMA#53 This Week with Austin Kleon!

Austin returns Thursday 2:30pm EDT - Add it to your calendar now!

I had Austin Kleon on Draw Me Anything last June, and it remains one of the best hours I’ve spent on this thing.

He walked in with a blind doodle of my face he’d drawn while we waited to go live, and then proceeded to dismantle nearly everything I believed about being a tortured artist. His whole pitch was that the tragic-genius model (the special soul who suffers, succeeds, and then drinks himself into a wall) is a trap, and that the better frame is comedy: an ordinary person who bumbles, fumbles, improvises, and survives on their wits. As an ordinary person who bumbles and survives largely on wit and instant noodles, I took this personally. (In the good way.)

Tomorrow -Thursday at 2:30 p.m. Eastern- Austin Kleon returns to Draw Me Anything!

The reason for the visit: his new book, Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. It came out on the 2nd of June, the long-awaited follow-up to his Steal Like an Artist trilogy, and his first new book in seven years. I have read it. I am, to be transparent about my condition, obsessed with it.

Here’s the premise, and it’s a good one:

Kleon spent years being what he calls a “studio assistant” to his two young sons, and discovered that watching kids make things teaches you almost everything you’ve managed to forget. The title is lifted from the artist John Baldessari, who said he learned so much about art from watching a kid draw, because kids don’t call it art when they’re throwing things around and drawing; they’re just doing stuff. That’s the whole thing, really. Throw out the instructions. Give yourself permission to be bad. Stop calling it art and just do stuff. (You can buy it here)

I saw some quotes from the likes of John Cleese, Ray Bradbury, and Doris Lessing, who said artists who feel stuck will savour it. I’d go further. I think it’s the rare creativity book that doesn’t make you feel like you’re being scolded by a wellness app.

(I should flag, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I’ve now spent two paragraphs explaining a book whose entire thesis is “stop overthinking and just make the thing.” Austin, if you’re reading this: I’m aware. I contain multitudes, most of them contradictory.)

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It comes for the recovering perfectionist, the burnt-out professional, the recent art-school graduate, and (a phrase I love) the retiree hunting for a creative third act. Given who reads this newsletter, that last one may be the most relevant of the lot, and I mean that as the warmest possible compliment.

So come along on Thursday. Bring questions. Bring a pen if you’ve got one. I’ll be drawing live, asking him to explain how to unlearn a lifetime of bad creative habits in under an hour, and trying very hard not to look at the paper.

It’s going to be great. I can’t wait to share it with you.

‘til then!
Your pal,

PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.