Art or Craft?

In German, 'crafts' is called (literally translated) 'art handcraft', and no-one would really connect that with toilet roll ornaments (but with 'expensive' :wink: ).

Website of the German Crafts Association (in English as well, but since there are no nice pics on the English homepage ...).

yes, craft is a word that has become devalued - a craftsman is an expert and can be an artist, but his work does not have to be unique or in any way original - simply beautiful made - crafted - with skill and beauty. A friend is a craftsman, a potter who makes beautiful dinner services.

There needs to be another word invented to cover the hobby of creating 'decorative' toilet roll holders and such


An artist should have a more unique and personal vision and painting/art is a communication of ideas.

exactly.

If you think about crafts-people and what they used to stand for in the public eye... yes we need a new term.
There is a "craft" market on the corner near my house every sunday, and I am sure the friend who creates the hand made dinner sets would not want to be associated with them (generally). Maybe there is a person in there who is in it to create, but alot of it is those horrid paintings that people look like they slap up in a good half hour and try to sell for 100 Euros.
This is the type of example that is one step up from the toilet roll cover, but almost as bad.

Thank you for the German site, there is some really nice work on it.

Sorry to change the subject, but has anyone worked with "Genesis oils"? This is new oil-based medium that must have heat applied to it for it to dry. Until then it stays moist indefinitely. Genesis is the trademark name.

Never heard of it... er, them.

have heard of them but know nothing - sorry.

did you do a search? Or just hoping someone had used it?

I found this link JLN hope it helps you out.

Genesis Oil
Supplies

Just type Genesis Oils in the search box at the top of the page.

Thanks, Joanne. I found lots of info on Google (just typed in Genesis oils), but in addition to the self-serving "information" of the suppliers, I was hoping to get negative or positive testimonials of people I trust.

Arrived late to this fascinating discussion, so please forgive me for dipping backwards a little.

Art that "works" necessarily involves high-level craft--and that craft will be partly intellectual and partly physical. What distresses me most about too much new work presented (or as LW says, and I mostly agree with him, "marketed") as art, is that it has a flatness that suggests neither conscientious thought nor skill was involved in its creation. There is a similar lack of care and resonance in quite a bit of contemporary writing. I find this depressing, particularly when it sells well, because high sales encourage the production of similar work. A financially successful "Flatness" spawns "Son of Flatness" and "Bride of Flatness." And so it has always been. Nothing really new here, EXCEPT that buyers do seem increasingly willing to accept as art works that suggest not much effort was involved, either in conception or execution. I don't consider these slacker-artists to be artists--no matter how they are marketed--but, clearly, plenty of people do.

My publisher, who constantly studies new submissions, is now reading a lot of flat prose and poetry, and wonders where this apparently decreasing desire for artistic resonance leads. Is it, perhaps, an escape mechanism from increasingly harried lives to see the world as flat? Does flatness offer comfort because it doesn't ask questions of us? Also, is flatness perceived as flat by those who purchase it? If so, boredom with it may lead back to increasing desire for resonance. If not, we may be in trouble--at least those of us who like to engage our minds and hearts with work that is genuinely rich.

I try to remain sanguine. I tell myself that real art, either visual or literary, involves a "skewedness" of some kind and that people are not going to lose their basic perception of this quality any more than they are going to lose their ability to see that a picture is hanging slightly awry and wants righting. But, alas, the ability to generate and recognize subtle yet arresting metaphors of "skewedness" may weaken.

Craft seems in need of revival. Without serious craft, what happens to painting? I find it suggestive that there is little figure drawing on display in most galleries of contemporary work. In drawing, especially of the figure, the craft, or lack of it, shows clearly. Are slacker-artists drawn to painting because, in that medium, the lack of serious craft may be, for more viewers, less obvious? As a writer, I have seen that a weak novel is less obviously weak than a poor sonnet. Of course, not many people buy contemporary sonnets! They do, however, gobble up seriously-flawed novels.

How do the rest of you feel about the current state of craft? More cheerful than me, I hope!

Miklos, interesting question. To me "craft" is a problematic issue. I do not see "craftmanship" only in drawings and paintings that are astoundingly representative. I find the hyperrealism of a Charles Close to be painfullly boring (for the most part). But I find the "sloppy" human figures of "splashy" deKooning to be both profoundly artistic and skillful (i.e., exampes of craftsmanship). What I do not like is "craftiness", the use of skills to move the viewer away from an insistence on aesthetic power. It is important that craftsmanship serves as a means to the goal of art, that it never serve as an end in itself--that, I'm sure, everyone here accepts.

JLN, I am not an admirer of hyperrealism or photorealism either. I see a lot of effort and time in such work, but I see too little involvement of the intellectual aspect of craft to make them emotionally interesting to me. Looking at a photorealist cityscape, I find myself thinking, "My god, he really measured each one of those little windows." It's a strange triumph of flat detail, to my eye. Precise realists of times past gave their paintings atmosphere--which makes a huge difference. A contemporary microrealist seems most often to be reveling in the precision of a dull copy--it's a perverse variant on the classical ideal of art's imitating nature.

De Kooning is one of my favorite painters because of his vivid resonance, both on-canvas and psychologically. Do you think that a casual viewer of, say, his WOMAN series would see the figures as genuinely sloppy and splashy? Maybe, but I hope not. To me, their shimmer and intensity and coherence suggest long periods of contemplation and careful evolution.

I like your use of the word "craftiness," for it implies game-playing, manipulation, superficiality--the frequent underpinnings of what I call slacker-art. Such painters would have us perceive a mere imperfect means as having already reached a significant end.

Yes, Miklos. I think deKooning's Woman series demonstrates "sufficiently" controlled spontaneity. I'd love to see a film of deKooning painting. I strongly suspect that he welcomed a good degree of serendipity, the kind suggested by the phrase, "controlled accident". I am reminded of Nietzsche's discussion of the interdependence of the Dionysian and Apollonian phases of artistic creation. Too much accident/spontaneity (Dionysian expressiveness) and too much control (Apollonian "craftsmanship") produce work that is, respectively, chaotic or rigid.

I've had a gallery since mid 2000, and we've shown a bunch of people in solo shows, 50 shows, let's say, 20 artists.

None of them are going to stop the clock nor are any of them neo kincade or are the going to decoratorville.

There is a painting world alive in the here and now, if on no one's horizon. A few people in our town show nationally. None of the works I've seen will usurp the latest in NY, etc., though an artist with us does show at a good gallery in NY.

Most people here care less about that.

I am sure critics could slam the local scene upside down and sideways, but it still retains value for all of us doing it.

Osso, that's what I like to hear. Authenticity. I think that art and careerism are profoundly antithetical. Art, like raising children, must be done purely for the love of it.

Truth is, I think my post related to one sometime back, but thanks for trying to answer. I'll review the whole topic and be back.

OK, I give up, I have been all over the a2k boards tonight and am not sure my latest post applied to anything on the thread.

but, I meant it.

I know. Goodnight.

I do remember that my post on the gallery, now a few posts back, was in answer to another post. Now, where that post was .. is hard to dig out now, and I am not inclined.

As to goodnight, thank you.

But, dang, I am wide awake.

Trying to lull myself, and wishing lulling to all....

JLN, There IS a film (of which I saw a videotape version) of de Kooning painting! I saw it playing as part of an exhibition of modern art at the small but very good Berkshire Museum. I was so fascinated that I immediately went to the on-site gift shop to see if I could buy a copy. I couldn't; the video was on loan. And, when I returned to the label by the video screen, there was no information other than a date (sometime in the 50's) and de Kooning's name. The visual quality of the tape was quite good--but the soundtrack was poor. De Kooning was teasing the cinematographer about how carefully he needed to watch the artist if he wanted to learn anything. De Kooning then went into a purposely-cryptic spiel about the importance of the physical consistency of the paint on his brush. The artist demonstrated paint that was, first, too thick and, then, too thin, dripping all over everything. Both men started to laugh. Then de Kooning got down to business. He would apply paint in short bursts of activity, then stand back for quite a while in contemplation, then he'd begin another series of quick strokes--a few of them quite long. During the pauses in activity, de Kooning would "explain" to the photographer what he was doing, but, of course, the explanations made no sense. De kooning was mock-serious; the cameraman would giggle nervously. A great show! I have had no luck finding the film on-line, but I'll try again, because I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy it. Perhaps, as I'm reading the new biography of the artist, I'll come across a reference.

I find it a bit mysterious that de Kooning was willing to do this short film. He seems to have been an intensely charming and witty fellow, adept with humorous wordplay, but he also seemed very serious about his work. In this film, he is using humor to deflect or pre-empt analysis of his painting. Was he, perhaps, using the opportunity presented by this film to make fun of rigid critical analysis? Actually, what artist wouldn't like to ridicule rigid critics?! They can do such terrible damage to the spirit of a developing creator.