Artist

Typology of the activities

Can be commonly called an artist any person exerting one of the trades or following activities:

Discusses between artist and craftsman

The artist is to be differentiated from the craftsman, even if the borders can seem moving. Where the first innovates starting from techniques that it has comparable, the craftsman puts his knowledge at the service of the reproduction of an object, with an aim of being most faithful possible to the model.

EDICT: The true craftsman carries out his parts thanks to techniques that him also with comparable… Each part is single and has its characteristic. The craftsman is all except a reproducer…

  • First difference:

The training: it can be entirely learned. The craft industry applies techniques already established, known, transmitted by predecessors in forms of formulatable and communicable rules. The first quality of the craftsman: skill. The art of the artist cannot entirely be acquired by studies and a training:

The artist must however acquire techniques (virtuosity and control in the techniques of an art). Art puts up with constraints.

But the training is not enough: each one can write a Poème; but one cannot learn how to write a beautiful poem; one needs a specific measure, a specific talent, an innate genius. There would be thus two kinds of rules: school techniques (which come from the school and which are necessary); rules of the genius (unconscious), that the artist cannot explain or to formulate in words and cannot thus teach. For example, for Kant, there is genius only in art (and not in science). This design raises the question of the reception of work. If art is an intention, to receive it is an attention. However, which can define what is a " beau" poem? Wittgenstein, in its Lessons on esthetics , shows the nonsense of such a proposal: " You could think that Esthetics is a science which says to us what is beautiful - it is almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose that it should also include which is the kind of coffee which has a pleasant taste. "

  • Second difference:

Art of the craftsman: aim at the utility, i.e it does not have its end in itself, but average for an external end, to give to the object a form for an end; the fine one orders the form.

Art of the artist: no utility in oneself. Work is its own end. But certain works have a utility side and an esthetic side (architecture: utility and esthetics).

No the material end, does not enable us to satisfy our vital needs: art exceeds the biological life; it has a metaphysical range, exceeds nature and the natural life.

Art does not have either intellectual end (to inform, etc) nor morals.

  • Third difference:

The craftsman can entirely represent the object which it will carry out. One speaks about manufacture (different from creation): transformation of the matter for a model already envisaged: not the unforeseeable one.

The artist uses the rules of the genius, in addition to the school rules. These rules of the genius are unconscious. The artist has intentions, without being able to precisely represent his work before producing it. He discovers his work as he creates it: the work of art is unforeseeable for the spectator and the artist himself. Valéry: the more one work surprises its author, the more it is important.

It is not any more of the field of manufacture, but of creation: work breaks with what exists before. There is more in the work finished than in work of departure.

Art of the artist: creation of a work that one cannot explain by the only technical rules (school), and which for that is absolutely surprising.

Random links:Regimental sergeant major | Large-boarder | Launay-on-Calonne | Auxiliary company of navigation | Maskova | Rizpah