This is based on the interview that I did for my topic:
What is the difference between art and craft?
Lichengyu Ding
Adrienne Reynolds/Nicola Tulk
Integrative Studio/Seminar 2
07-21-2014
Bridge# 2: The Difference between Arts and Crafts
After the interviews with 10 people in different ages and areas, some facts about people’s opinion of arts and crafts are observed. All of them are both directly and indirectly answered my curious about the topic.
Firstly, the answers of questions about whether they have artworks and crafts at home exposes the fact that not everyone owns artworks, but everyone has crafts. Then this leads me to think how they define the crafts, which is the next question.
Most of the people define the crafts as a skilly handmade decoration. The rest of them think that craft should be functional and three-dimensional. And 6 of them said that arts and crafts are not the same thing. The rest think they can be same but also different. Most of the answers about this question are similar, but there is one answer that stands out. The interviewee said that the origin of arts and crafts is same; they are both designed and made by human being. However, nowadays, crafts are given too many commercial values. They get quantity produced in factory. Because of the huge number of the copies, crafts lost its value.
For the last question, I asked whether they would spend a lot of money on a beautiful but anonymous crafts. Nine of them said yes as long as they like it. One said no, because himself is an artist. In spite of that 1 person, those 9 people, to me, violate what they answered before. If they could buy a craft with a huge amount of money, then whether this craft to them has had been an artwork. In this case, the bound between art and craft is unclear.
In fact, both artworks and crafts are not just limited in two-dimensional or three-dimensional products. For arts, there are dance, music, and other performance arts. For crafts, the particular skill of an act in dance can also be defined as craft. Till now, my question of the difference between arts and crafts hasn’t been solved yet. However, I believe that arts and crafts are mutual indispensable. Arts need ideas as well as craft knowledge. Also, crafts need a certain amount of design. For the conclusion, I am going to do further research and analysis. I believe I will get the answer in the final paper.