What is it?

[Elgarian]

[At the risk of seeming to make the discussion "about me,"]

I think the discussion is necessarily about you, Karl: I presume the individuals who make art are in the best position to describe how and why they do what they do.

[jochanaan]

This separation of art and craft is a recent development.  Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael (to name three great geniuses that everyone recognizes as masters of many disciplines) were poets, musicians, architects, as well as being painters and sculptors (which is what many people think when they say "artist").  Their poetry related to their architecture, which related to their painting and sculpting, which informed their music-making -- you get the picture.  Johann Sebastian Bach had enough craft to tune and regulate his own harpsichords, and enough science and math to be the primary developer of the tempered scale.  Art, indeed, was seen as something useful. -- But now, there is this prejudice against art being useful at all...

[Elgarian]

This separation of art and craft is a recent development.  Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael (to name three great geniuses that everyone recognizes as masters of many disciplines) were poets, musicians, architects, as well as being painters and sculptors (which is what many people think when they say "artist").  Their poetry related to their architecture, which related to their painting and sculpting, which informed their music-making -- you get the picture.  Johann Sebastian Bach had enough craft to tune and regulate his own harpsichords, and enough science and math to be the primary developer of the tempered scale.  Art, indeed, was seen as something useful. -- But now, there is this prejudice against art being useful at all...

I think this is all spot on, and there's not a sentence I'd disagree with (though I'm unsure about the last one). However, it's not really what I was getting at. I'm looking for a tool of thought to help steer a course through an area where definitions are notoriously slippery. I'm putting forward definitions that might help to clarify the discussion. So I'm not arguing that the distinction between art and craft that I made has historical foundation; I'm suggesting that it's a helpful tool of thought for anyone trying to navigate the more bewildering developments in art, in order to understand how the absence of apparent craftsmanship does not automatically devalue the art. The spectrum of overlapping activities, with 'pure art' at one end, and 'pure craft' at the other, is a very wide one. (I'm assuming, here, my definitions of art and craft, as stated above.)

As an example: consider the Forty part motet installation, by the artist Janet Cardiff, for which Tallis's Spem in Alium was specially recorded, with one microphone for each singer. Each of those 40 recorded tracks is played through a single loudspeaker - 40 of them arranged in a rough circle - so that the listener is free to roam among them as the music unfolds. The result offers quite a profound, even disturbing, experience, as the balance of the music shifts according to how you move around, or where you position yourself. I spent two hours engrossed in it - remarkable for a piece of music that only lasts about 20 minutes, and merely repeats shortly after it ends.

Now, Janet Cardiff brought no craftsmanship to this at all - merely the concept. Even the music is ripped off from Tallis - not to mention the skills of the singers and the recording engineers. But - I would argue from experience - she created a conceptual work of art that can be said to 'matter'.

[jochanaan]

Points well taken.  However, I've done enough studio recording to know that there is indeed craft in setting up the speakers and working with a 40-channel recording!

[Elgarian]

However, I've done enough studio recording to know that there is indeed craft in setting up the speakers and working with a 40-channel recording!

Ah yes, and there's craftsmanship in the making of the speakers, and the singing of the singers etc etc. But I don't know what part Cardiff played in any of that - I suspect none, and it doesn't matter whether she did or not. In the installation I heard, in Liverpool, I doubt she was consulted personally about the arrangement in the exhibition space: given her general instructions, and the 40-track recording, anyone could set it up. What I'm getting at is that what she brought to the project was purely conceptual, not craftsmanlike, but that doesn't diminish the artistic achievement: the art was capable of moving visitors to the verge of tears, and did.

There may well be better examples, but this is the one that came most immediately to mind.

[Karl Henning]

I think the discussion is necessarily about you, Karl: I presume the individuals who make art are in the best position to describe how and why they do what they do.

I can only do my best.  I am not convinced that I can completely understand the process, myself.

[Elgarian]

I can only do my best.  I am not convinced that I can completely understand the process, myself.

Perhaps not, but you are 'our man at the front'. All you can do is report on what you find, and if we're sensible, we'll listen.

[EigenUser]

As a tangent to a post in another thread which spoke of some music which matters and some which does not . . . just what is it which makes music matter?

I dunno. Ask James. He seems to have an idea.

[Karl Henning]

He's the only one who does, because he's the only one who thinks for himself here