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Craft and art9/10/2023 ![]() In many cultures of the world, the distinction between art and craft has never existed. So, if we consider a painting by Rembrandt or Picasso art, then where does that leave an African mask? A Chinese porclein vase? A Navajo rug? It turns out that in the history of art, the value placed on innovation is the exception rather than the rule. Meanwhile, those who maintained guild traditions and faithfully produced candelsticks, ceramic vessels, gold jewelery or wrought iron gates, would be known communally as artisans, and their works considered minor or decorative arts, connoting an inferior status and solidifying the distinction between art and craft that still persists in the Western world. In the mind of the public, painting, sculpture and architecture were now considered art, and their makers creative masterminds: artists. Within a single generation, people's attitudes about objects and their makers would shift dramatically, such that in 1550, Giorgio Vasari, not incidentally a friend of Michelangelo, published an influential book called, "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects," elevating these types of creators to rock star status by sharing juicy biographical details. A few brave painters, who for many centuries, had been paid by the square foot, successfully petitioned their patrons to pay them on the basis of merit instead. Florentine intellectuals began to spread the idea of reformulating classical Greek and Roman works, while placing greater value on individual creativity than collective production. In Florence, Italy, a new cultural ideal that would later be called Renaissance Humanism was beginning to take form. It wasn't until around 1400 that people began to draw a line between art and craft. And the customer who commissioned and paid for the work, whether it was a fine chair, a stone sculpture, a gold necklace, or an entire building, was more likely to get credit than those who designed or constructed it. Patrons regarded these makers collectively rather than individually, and their works from Murano glass goblets, to Flemish lace, were valued as symbols of social status, not only for their beauty, but their adherence to a particular tradition. The master, following a strict set of guild statutes, insured that apprentices and journeymen worked their way up the ranks over many years of practice and well-defined stages of accomplishment, passing established traditions to the next generation. If you had chanced to step into a medieval European workshop, you would have witnessed a similar scene, no matter whether the place belonged to a stonemason, a goldsmith, a hatmaker, or a fresco painter. ![]() It might seem obvious to us today to view people, such as da Vinci or Michelangelo, as legendary artists, and, of course, they possessed extraordinary talents, but they also happened to live in the right place at the right time, because shortly before their lifetimes the concept of artists hardly existed. But if it's so tricky to separate art from craft, then why do we distinguish objects in this way? You could say it's the result of a dramatic historical turn of events. ![]() Just as not every musical instrument is utilitarian, not every painting or statue is made for its own sake. A spoon or a saddle may be finely wrought, while a monument may be, well, uninspired. ![]() When you hear the word art, what comes to mind? A painting, like the Mona Lisa, or a famous sculpture or a building? What about a vase or a quilt or a violin? Are those things art, too, or are they craft? And what's the difference anyway? It turns out that the answer is not so simple. ![]()
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