There it was on a public television broadcast, a curator proclaiming that no other artist had made as many bad lithographs (and maybe other kinds of prints) as Picasso. But, came the rejoinder, no other artist had made so many of genius, either. The freedom of one was necessary to open the other.
I took the message to heart. Genius, of course, is another matter.
Jnana's Red Barn 
what curators think does not really concern artists, much less dead artists who did their part in art; but modesty is not curators’ strong point
We learn best by making mistakes.
If you are thinking about what the critics are going to say while you are working, you are in trouble. Afterwards though, it is hard to ignore the fact that the curators have a big say in whether you will make any money or not. I’m not saying that the critics are always (or even sometimes) correct, especially in their own time about what is “good” art. Only history and the artist that created the work ( in the context of their own body of work) can say. The freedom to create without the worry about money or fame is an ideal state that I have never personally known an artist to have so I can’t begin to think like Picasso in that regard. But I know what it is like to create without worry about whether it is “good” or not. It is freedom.
Some of us are consistent in our work, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Consistency can mean ploughing the usual furrow. Great artists are unafraid to go out on a limb. Picasso, yes, but I’m thinking of Spike Milligan, the Irish poet and comedian who changed the face of humour in the UK from the 1950’s onwards. A lot of his work falls flat, but when it soars it goes higher than any comparable talent of the era. The thing is, he HAD to fall flat in order to hit the heights. Genius is falling flat a whole lot less than you fly, I guess…