By: Ken Paul

Ken Paul — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:52:50 +0000

Having taught art at the college level for more than 3 decades, I have heard most of the possible points of debate on the issue of art-vs-craft. I taught printmaking, which involved a lot of technical crafting…thus this issue was always lurking in the background of that genre. Laypersons often had a lot of trouble understanding the distinction between printing and printMAKING.
There are also labels that get applied to the practitioners of these things—artist, artisan, craftsperson, e.g. This tends to personalize the issue and only adds to the confusion, often raising defensive hackles. And county fairs continue to make distinctions between art and craft in terms of awarding ribbons, etc. So the culture itself keeps carrying these attitudes along with it.
Some creative endeavors are characterized by technical exploration, printmaking being one of these; due to the limiltess possibilities of taking printed impressions from all manner of surfaces, natural to humanmade. Thus, if it’s the first time anybody ever did this particular
set of moves in order to arrive at an expressive image, then how do we separate the craft from the art? Often such first-time actions are fumbling and distinctly unskilful, so to speak, because, being new, how can they be “perfected,” other than by repetition/practice, which automatically renders them no longer new and exploratory?
Yes our own verbiage and rational thought processes have tied us in knots again.
It always interested me that the German noun Kraft means power.
In sum, I see the question around art versus craft as being a kind of koan,
i.e., not something the rational mind can find a final objective answer for. Everybody comes to it with their own set of experiences and views, which are necessarily limited. But thanks for the engaging discussion.

Comments on: ART & CRAFT cannot be separated – Kate Themel

By: Ken Paul