Thursday, May 01, 2008

Art vs. Craft

[1 May 2008 - CEO for Cities] If everyone is creative, does creativity have any value? And who would you want on a desert island: an artist or a craftsman?
Rupert Christiansen, writing in the Telegraph, says that creativity has become the Holy Grail of life today. "Businesses hold creative-thinking seminars, universities teach creative writing, ministers makes speeches puffing our "creative industries". Even the splodges and squiggles that children daub in primary school are deemed creative. "One could even say that the idea of creativity has become thoroughly debased; very few of us are creators in the pure sense of using our imaginations to make something significantly new, let alone useful." And then he comes down hard on those who value creativity over craftsmanship. "As a society, we have arrived at a false valuation of the creative artist...We should be investing more respect and money in the acquisition of ordinary skills and practical crafts that would allow us to take more control of our own lives. 'The hand is the window to the mind,"'said the philosopher Kant, and the same relationship should be acknowledged as the hub of creativity, too." More

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