Art, craft. The Ming Chinese had the same obsession. The mark of art was that it was made by amateurs, professionals, or people who get payed for their work, were just craftsmen, no better than post-card sellers. In other words, rich do-nothings who desultorily dash of a little painting during a moment of boredom, were artists. The guys who worked at it were just proles.
European 'artists' were just craftsmen, until we invented the myth of the renaissance beginning the process of unshackling the artist from church patronage, culminating in the "art for arts' sake" of the romantic period. The myth of artistic freedom.
In fact, the economic dependence of the 'artist' on the patron never changed. The patron changed. And 500 years ago, the patron found that it was a good thing to shape the artist into a hero. "I have a Caravaggio!" "Way cool! But I have a Michelangelo!".
The artist then had to reinvent himself as a hero, which get us 'art' as being the strongest expression of his deepest emotion. The artist becomes a sort of priest, the guy who can channel our emotions, make them visible to us poor sinners and philistines.
The Iconoclasts of the twentieth century were quite right in making a frontal attack on the whole sorry myth built around the artist, but they failed to demolish the pedestal on which he is still standing. The artist became a commentator of society, a purveyor of truth.
But the fact that the artist has the same relationship to his patron as the cobblers' relationship to the guy who buys a pair of shoes hasn't changed at all. The artist is at best a good artisan, who sells the nice things he makes. If he sells sports photo's to a newspaper, that's just what it is : an honest job. But when the artist acquires heroic status, we enter fantasyland.
Chuang Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher, has this wonderful story about this butcher who was called in to perform a sacrifice of a buffalo for the king. His work was beautiful, a dance as fast as the whirlwind, the buffalo seemed to fall into pieces all of itself. When asked about his knife, the butcher said he hadn't sharpened it in four years. He said that, at first, he saw just the buffalo, but over the years, he'd learnt to see the spaces between the pieces of meat, and now he just needed to insert his knife into the right spot, and everything falls apart naturally. The King walked away declaring that he had learnt a lesson for life.
If art is anything, it must be this : the most perfect, most elegant, most beautiful job well done. Fine craftsmanship forged in years of repeatedly trying to do better, until it becomes seemingly effortless.
The fact that the name of the artist has become important is quite recent, and mostly superfluous silliness. Tenth century Icons from Byzantium have at best their owners' name attached to them. We don't even know what Altamira and Lascaux were about, let alone who were the artists - except that they were probably girls, from the size of the hand prints.
And the internet sinks us all into a great anonymous mass of named non-entities.
Art Fart.
