We often think of art as something found in a museum. When you look at products made by individuals, whether they are woodworking, pottery, stained glass, or whatever, have you ever considered whether that person is an artist? Does it have to be in a museum or an ‘Art gallery’ to be art? A skilled craftsman can make beautiful projects, but is it art? There is a lot of debate about the difference between being an artist and being a craftsman.
R.G. Collingwood, a British philosopher, made this distinction: “The craftsman knows what he wants to make before he makes it.…The making of a work of art…is a strange and risky business in which the maker never knows quite what he is making until he makes it. As a result, a craftsman will allow the materials to limit their expression, but an artist never will.” He says that “all artists are craftspeople, but not all craftspeople are artists. Artists go further in what they choose to accomplish.”
Another way to state it is to say that the craftsman is done when the design has been realized and it may require great technical skill, patience and talent to get there. The artist is only done when the piece has achieved perfection in the artist’s eyes. The artist has less care for technical perfection, cost or other people’s opinions. He or she only cares about the final result.
As a result, not all art is very practical. You may have felt that way about some of the pieces you’ve seen in art galleries or museum exhibits. Playwright Tom Stoppard said; “Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.” An artist would create a chair that is beautiful to look at but not very comfortable to sit in. Conversely, a craftsman would create a chair that that is less esthetically pleasing but comfortable to sit in.
Those are the extremes. In reality, many artists produce utilitarian objects and many craftsman are also artists. To take the chair analogy a step further, you could say that if a person takes wood, tools and a set of instructions and creates a beautiful chair, that person is a craftsperson. The person who creates the design is an artist.
All craft work is skilled work. The word craft comes from the German word Kraft which means power or ability. It is generally associated with the hand production of useful objects. And when the craftsperson creates their own design or vision and then uses their abilities to make it real, its art.
Do you like to choose plans and execute them perfectly? Or are you more inclined to dream up your own ideas and then figure out how to make them? In any craft those are equally valid pursuits.
So the question is, with the work that you do, are you a craftsperson or an artist. Or are you both?
