Is there a difference between art and craft? - Laura Morelli

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.

A spoon or a saddle may be finely wrought,

while a monument may be, well, uninspired.

Just as not every musical instrument is utilitarian,

not every painting or statue is made for its own sake.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It wasn't until around 1400

that people began to draw a line

between art and craft.

In Florence, Italy,

a new cultural ideal that would later be called

Renaissance Humanism

was beginning to take form.

Florentine intellectuals began to spread the idea

of reformulating classical Greek and Roman works,

while placing greater value on individual creativity

than collective production.

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.

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.

In the mind of the public,

painting, sculpture and architecture

were now considered art,

and their makers creative masterminds: artists.

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.

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.

In many cultures of the world,

the distinction between art and craft

has never existed.

In fact, some works that might be considered craft,

a Peruvian rug,

a Ming Dynasty vase,

a totem pole,

are considered the cultures' preeminent visual forms.

When art historians of the 19th Century

saw that the art of some non-Western cultures

did not change for thousands of years,

they classified the works as primitive,

suggesting that their makers were incapable of innovating

and therefore were not really artists.

What they didn't realize was that

these makers were not seeking to innovate at all.

The value of their works lay precisely

in preserving visual traditions,

rather than in changing them.

In the last few decades, works such as

quilts, ceramics and wood carvings

have become more prominently included

in art history textbooks

and displayed in museums

alongside paintings and sculpture.

So maybe it's time to dispense with vague terms

like art and craft

in favor of a word like visual arts

that encompasses a wider array of aesthetic production.

After all, if our appreciation of objects

and their makers is so conditioned

by our culture and history,

then art and its definition

are truly in the eye of the beholder.