Saturday, July 11, 2009

Creating versus Making


Collingwood in his book "The Principals of Art" attacks the modern (circa 1933) concept of the artist as craftsman. The characteristics of craft he defines as:


  1. Craft always involves a distinction between means and end, each clearly conceived as something distinct from the other

  2. Craft involves a distinction between planning and execution

  3. Means and ends are related in one way in the process of planning; in the opposite in the process of execution.

  4. There is a distinction between raw material and finished product or artifact

  5. There is a distinction between form and matter
  6. There is a hierarchical relation between various crafts, on supplying what another needs, one using what another provides.

Through an analysis of the concept of craft and its related notion of technique, Collingwood calls into question the prevailing conceptual models based on economics (the specialized group of industries where the artist is the producer and audience is a consumer) or psychology (audience consists of persons reacting to certain stimuli provided by the artist) based conceptual models). These world views, which have craft as an underlying assumption, defines art as a made product, which is a finished, complete totality.

Art, Collingwood claims is not made, it is created and is an unrealized process which, through the imagination, must be re-created each time it in comes into being.