[Jewelry making - Article 00340] - Re: [Orchid] Is Jewelry Making an Art?

[Andrew Werby]

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>     Sounds to me like - If it's easy and takes "no" skill - like
>     moving a rock from one place to another... and it's cheap, 'cause
>     the rocks are free... it ain't art? 

    Certainly the use of inexpensive ingredients doesn't disqualify
    something from being called art in this day and age, although this
    might bar it from certain jewelry stores. The question of skill is
    another red herring that often comes up in this perennial debate.
    Even if the art-making act involves nothing more than moving rocks,
    as is supposed here, that can be done with more or less style and
    grace. A dancer, after all, is just moving about, but these motions
    can convey meaning and may require a lot of practice to get right. It
    might be that an artist uses rocks to make a large structure, which
    only acquires meaning when seen from the air. Or ones art might
    consist in constructing and siting delicately-balanced piles of
    rocks in a landscape. There's a fellow near me who has devoted years
    of his life to this - if he's not doing art, what's he doing? I'd
    agree that a certain amount of skill is necessary to accomplish
    specific things one may set oneself to do, but the amount required
    varies with the task, and worthwhile results can be achieved without
    a whole lot of it. Also, skills tend to develop with practice. Just
    because these skills may not be the traditional ones associated with
    artmaking doesn't mean they can't be used to make art. 

>     Brian has some good points, mostly that the debate of how many
>     angels can dance on a pin is no more useful than it ever was. What
>     I'm trying to get at - some would probably say "Pound away at", is
>     standards. It's just also not useful to say "Everything is art.",
>     even though on some level it's completely true. When your child
>     comes to you and says, "Look at the pretty rock I found", do we
>     need to put that in the Smithsonian? Do we gather every scrawl
>     that everybody ever did and put them in museums? Art school
>     idealism sounds good in the classroom, but like all idealism, it
>     doesn't hold up to examination. Imagine if you paid $50 for a
>     concert and when you got there there was some kid with an out-of
>     tune guitar struggling with Stairway to Heaven. Everything is Art!!
>     Of course everything is art. And of course NOT everything is art,
>     really. There is a thing that's called "An Artist", just as there
>     are bankers and shopkeepers. I'm not afraid to stand up and have
>     people take potshots at me (The Devil's Advocate), but I'm also not
>     presuming to say, "That is good, that's not". 

    Can we agree that while everything is not art, everything done with
    the intention of making art has some proportion of art in it, however
    small? We can certainly disagree about how successful a piece of art
    it is, how valuable it is in relation to other works of art, if it's
    competently done, whether it contains a higher proportion of craft
    (or commercial intent) than artistic impulse, and of course whether
    we like it or not, but if someone simply states that if they don't
    like it, then it's not art, it's hard to have a discussion about it
    at all. I think it's much more productive to say, from ones own point
    of view: "That is good, that's not", because we can then zero in on
    what it is that makes art meaningful (or not) to each of us. But if
    you simply say "That's not art", it's equivalent to a refusal to
    discuss the issues involved. In the example you give of the
    incompetent musician, are you really saying that music is not being
    made, or that while it's music, it's not worth the price of
    admission? I'd probably agree with the latter conclusion, but if you
    assert the former, then what standards - if not those of music - can
    be applied? 

>     I'm just talking about standards, and I'll say it again - a rock
>     is just a rock. A sculpture of a rock is the artist's VISION of
>     what a rock is about. THAT is the difference. 

    It seems that your rather rigid idea of "standards" is limiting your
    vision of what art can be without giving you much in return, unless
    it's membership in this "movement" you hint at. Sure, a rock's just a
    rock - but alter its context (set it in a ring, for example) and it
    is perceived in a different way. A sculpture of a rock can be an
    artist's vision of an ideal rock, or it can be a nice chunk of marble
    that has been ruined. There's no automatic privilege that comes from
    taking a chisel to it; that has to be earned by the final result -
    wouldn't you agree? 

Andrew Werby
www.unitedartworks.com
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