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Book: Appreciating contemporary art
Picasso was not an ‘artist’
He was just a very creative craftsman
Let me explain. Why was Picasso not an ‘artist’? Because all he ever did was create pretty and interesting pictures. Creating prettiness (and variants thereof, including ‘the interesting’) is the realm of crafting, not of ‘art’. For something to reach the level of art, it has to show you something fascinating/unusual/unsettling — in other words, it has to reveal something to you you don’t already know. Art reveals the disturbing; craft prettifies and decorates.
Wait a minute. Isn’t this just seriously counterintuitive, and contrarian? Everybody thinks Picasso is the quintessential ‘artist’ — his is the first name that springs to mind when you think of modern art — so what’s the point of redefining things so that nobody knows what’s going on? All you’re doing is twisting the obvious to make a point no one is going to accept. ‘Hey man, what’s your problem? Picasso is the artist — everybody knows that — so don’t tell me otherwise!’
While it’s true that this strict new definition of the difference between art and craft is unlikely to catch on, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have enormous conceptual and explanatory value. It illuminates and clarifies the crucial distinction between technical skill in the…
