You Call It Craft, I Call It Art

This article is so hopelessly ethnocentric. Now that's a word you don't here often anymore around here. This is a narrative for local consumption. Local meaning here upper middle class liberal narrative. Local in terms of the NYT. Nothing wrong with that, but it's partial enough to warrant some commentary, at least in the big picture. "We never thought what we were doing was art" says, kinda, the Oaxacan weaver. Sometimes it is just a means to survive until it becomes interesting to others who have the cultural relevance to insert this into a sophisticated narrative about who can and who cannot make art, and a subsidiary discussion about the frankly irrelevant distinctions between art and craft. Sorry, ish. From a perspective, this narrative has a mild ethnocentric stench compounded by a self-serving unawareness masked as support to the disserved. We should love each other, and that trumps everything else, but ffs let's not romanticize.

I've been listening to the Art versus Craft debate for over 40 years and have always found it ever so tiresome.

This article really annoys me. The International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe is a tremendous event, with gorgeous works and artists from around the world. There are so many points of departure to write about (the event) for the NYTimes, and this article is literally about nothing. Is the writer really that lacking in knowledge, or just fatuous? It's fine craft.

The distinction between art and craft is largely based materials, gender and ethnicity. Not really on skill, concept or visual esthetic. It has real consequences, because we all need to support ourselves and our families: food, housing, medical costs, education for children, international travel. I abandoned weaving 20 years ago and now make trashfilm. They are seen around the world by appreciative audiences and I love talking with them. I still make no money at it, but it does have an audience. While my weavings of years gone by are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Renwick), Cleveland, Minneapolis and San Francisco, only the de Young has ever put them on the wall. When they did, I wrote to eight of the fine art galleries in SF, asking for an interview. It was a hand written letter with attachments, not just one-off emails. Not a single gallery (in the home of the microchip industry) wrote back. Not one. I was a craftsman. I love weaving and would return in a heartbeat if I could sell at “art” prices. For now, I make very good (bad) trashfilm. I’m I bitter? Self-Aggrandizing? Judge for yourself. Mine is the white on blue microchip weaving, 36” x 36” (wool). So what do you think? It really won’t matter one way or another. I'm a "craftsman": https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/216303/specters-of-disruption/

The definition of Art, as opposed to anything else, is very simple. Its like the Mercedes-Benz logo with three labels at 120 degree points: One is "Artist", one "Art Dealer" and one "Art Critic", while the center point is labeled "Money". The three points talk to each other and decide! You get to be on one of the points from the center. It is important to note that the talk between the three is jargonistic and very clearly "tagged" with dog-whistle phrases (the ones of the moment) to exclude the "hoi polloi". The crafts people can get in by attending to all this. And oh yes, one more thing: the (separate) geographic center has to be New York, and discussion about it prominent in this very so-called "Newspaper".

Like beauty, it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Marcel Duchamp settled the question of what is art. It's whatever we say it is. There was an upside to this--art was freed from the dead hand of the academy. But, as with all revolutions, there was a downside--thus the sad state of high art (mostly agitprop) that exists today. Most "artists" today visibly do not know how to draw. Most hope to hit the jackpot and found little mini-factories that will do the tedious work of fabrication, Meet Jeff Koons. "Craft" will probably save high art from itself. It will take time, but we are beginning to learn that actual utility married to expertise, expressed by the human hand, is better than the cold, propagandistic preaching embedded in today's monetized high art. Gimme a well-thrown pot any day.

I, too, am a weaver. I sell my work. What am I? I use the German designation "Kunsthandwerker" - artistic handworker/skilled craftsperson. I have learned a skilled trade - weaving, involving skilled use of tools and materials to create quality product. I have also learned to apply artistic design to that product to make it more attractive than what might be needed for the object to be useful. That is a category that is not covered by standard English terminology - it is the difference between shoeing horses and making wrought iron gates - both require blacksmithing. Designing and making that gate with vines and leaves requires some artistic vision and skill as well. Mostly, the distinction between "craft" and "fine art" in the US market has to do with pricing more than the "objets d'art" themselves.

Public Art is usually decoration. Decorative Arts are seldom Art. Art of the past decorates Museums. Pieces in art galleries might be Art. This is how objects may be classified. Art for me is an experience in the presence of an object. It doesn't always happen. However, I enjoy this paper's descriptions of the objects I don't have time to experience as I try to conjure Art.

I live in Santa Fe, where art and craft intermingle on a regular basis at the various annual markets for which the city is known. In July and August every year, the Folk Art Market gives way to Spanish Market a few weeks later, followed shortly thereafter by the well-known Indian Market. In all the markets, there are serious artists, and there are craftsmen; I don't think their intent to make art differs materially, but their skill, education (formal and not), and imagination surely do. Does that difference distinguish what is art and what is not, or does it simply make obvious that some art is a lot better than other art? My wife, a professor who directs a masters program at a major U.S. art college, recently introduced an intriguing question to her class: was Bob Ross an artist or a craftsman, cranking out the same "happy clouds" canvas after canvas after canvas? His works sell for quite a penny these days and are sought after; is the value of the object determinative? I saw a lot of everyday junk at all three markets this year, and I saw some beautiful craftsmanship, and I saw some works of artistry that were worth every penny of their higher price (best-of-show beadwork at the Indian Market this year sold well in excess of $20,000, for example). What's the point of trying to pigeon-hole one vs. the other as art or craft? Today's work with an embedded found object may well be tomorrow's priceless new addition to MoMA.

Yes, it's Art. I suppose the distinction/question here relates to the notion of "Fine Art". Any boundaries are fuzzy at best. Works of the sort featured in this article will continue to add value (in the broadest sense) to the lives of its creators and appreciators. They enliven, enrich and inform the human experience. The Fine/Museum/Gallery Art world also contributes to this essential element of culture & humanity. However, as an artist whose work has never been confined or defined by divisions like Art, Illustration, Craft, Design I'd suggest that "elevation" of work into the fine art realm is not necessarily desirable. At its worst, that realm is driven by manipulation aimed at art-as-investment, devoid of those broader notions of value. For all artists I know, the real value is in the doing. For most viewers the value is the feelings/insights evoked — whether profound, intriguing or simply pleasurable, comforting, amusing.

Beautiful! Fashion and what many call "crafts" are artistic. If they hold over time, they are art.

While I appreciate this coverage of the art and craftsmanship shown at this great show I would ask that the author follow up with a survey of the extensive world of US based craftsmen and artists. Jewelers, potters, weavers, basket makers and dozens of other kinds of artists make new work every day in our own communities. By all means, support artists from all over the world (I certainly do!) but don't forget to spend some money closer to home too.

Art requires intention, if a piece is created without an artistic intention, it's craft. Tattoos for example are craft not art in my opinion.

I am all for calling any creative effort in any medium (including literature) art. But what is needed is careful categorizing of the nature of the creative process used and the specific genre (i.e. 'realist, oil on canvas' or 'ceramic, glazed stoneware' ) then let the viewer judge the degree of craft involved. There is nothing the mind creates that isn't art.