The Importance of Being Prolific

[queenlua]

Once again, Hacker News is discussing an oddly artsy article: The Importance of Being Prolific, which discusses the differences between prolific and non-prolific artists in various mediums (filmakers, novelists, etc). Pretty good read.

Some random related thoughts: while it's certainly not unheard of for a famous writer to publish only one or two books in their lifetime (To Kill a Mockingbird is the canonical example, but there's also Wuthering Heights and Invisible Man), as far as I know this is not the case for visual art—for a visual artist to be considered famous/well-regarded, they almost always need to have a large body of work. Part of this is probably due to the nature of the mediums—a piece of art is quicker to digest than a whole novel—but I still find this rather interesting.

Also, it's interesting to consider how the age of an artist factors into their work. I'm mainly thinking of music here—when you look at the romantic era of music, all the famous composers either (a) died young, or (b) produced their best work while they were young. (I remember when my piano teacher first told me this, I didn't believe her, so I went home and looked up all my favorite romantic composers—and, yup, nearly all of 'em kicked the bucket early.) Other eras of music have favored older composers, but it seems youthfulness was inextricably linked to the sound of romanticism.

Comments

[amielleon]

Interesting article.

You know, a lot of major mathematics is done young, too.

I think there's a profound difference between narrative art and other kinds of genius. It's said that there are very few good writers below the age of thirty, because you need time to live a little and learn about the world and simply learn enough to be able to produce something worth a damn. "For a single verse, one must see many cities."

As for prolificness, I think we probably do best with a blend of both types, which is for the best, because I'm pretty sure it's something inherent to the artist and unchangeable.