Art or Craft?

[Theiresias]

Well if it's not useless, then it is not art.

I love origami and I don't like it when someone considers it to be a craft! So I wantet to prove that it !cannot! be a craft because no craft is ever useless!

I feel misunderstood.

I meant is has no practical use like a building has. Architecture for example is a craft because you need houses. There is certainly an art factor in architecture, too, but its primarily a craft.

Whereas origami has normally no practical use at all! Like a paintng or opera have no practical use.

"Useless" has a positive meaning here. It means origami is so great that we just do it as an end in itself!

[origamimasterjared]

Origami is no more useless than scrapbooking.

[Joseph Wu]

The problem, Theiresias, is in your definitions of "art" and "craft". They appear to be quite different than what other people are using. And origami has found applications in architecture, science and engineering...

[araknoid]

I don't know if it's an art or craft, it doesnt really matter to me. What I do know is that it is fun and mentaly stimulating.

yeah! i like your style quentin.

to me is more on the artsy side, but i'm not always so sure about it.

[Theiresias]

Joseph, yes, there is of course scientific origami, but I beleive that is not the subject of this thread. So lets not additionally complicate things. Scientific origami is certainly not useless.

This whole thread is linguistically very subtle, especially for a second-language speaker like me. So I'll try to clarify with what I found on English wikipedia so that we don't talk at cross purposes:

@ Joseph Wu: I looked it up, you're right, the definition of "craft" that I had in mind is a bit different, I did not know the following:

"The term is often used to describe the family of artistic practices within the decorative arts that traditionally are defined by their relationship to functional or utilitarian products [...]"

Craft. (2008, April 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:49, April 15, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =205682510

But even here the utalitarian aspect that I mentioned is involved, so my argumentaion was not that far astray.

Am I correctily assuming that the question was actually whether origami is a decorative art or a fine art?

"The final cause of fine art is the art object itself; it is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those who behold it."

Fine art. (2008, March 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:47, April 15, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =201758813

[qtrollip]

Don't worry Theiresias, I understood what you meant in your first post!

[Jonnycakes]

Am I correctly assuming that the question was actually whether origami is a decorative art or a fine art?

"The final cause of fine art is the art object itself; it is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those who behold it."

That sounds about right. But I also think that when people say 'origami is a craft', they mean that origami does not have merit as a fine art-in other words that it is more like finger-painting than oil-painting. By craft they mean not art, be it fine art or decorative art (I certainly don't think that origami has a practical purpose), but rather a pastime or hobby.

[angrydemon]

I bet many of you have already heard of it, but some Japanese scientists plan to send a bunch of origami planes into space.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/03/2 ... plane.html

I don't know about you guys, but if I found one of those planes, I'd keep it as really cool souvenir.

[Joe the white]

A masterwork katana is considered a piece of art, as well as many high fashion desses. They may not be considered practical and more for display, either by use or by cost, but come from what many would consider a craft.

You can make fine art practical, such as the Mona Lisa as a dinner platter, or The Thinker as a foot stool. You could also make crafts impractical, such as adding a bed of nails to the bottom of a finely made chair. ;p

[Ondrej.Cibulka]

I am sorry, I have again problem with English words. My dictionary says that "art" and "craft" is the same. How you sense its difference?

[origami_8]

I don't know how good the Czech Wikipedia entries to these topics are but here are the related Czech articles:
Art: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Um%C4%9Bn%C3%AD
Craft: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98emeslo

Hope that helps.

There isn't a good translation for craft in German as well. And then there is this funny thing here that is in German described with only one word:
English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_crafts
Czech: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aplikovan% ... %9Bn%C3%AD
German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunsthandwerk

For me it doesn't matter what category Origami falls into, I just love it and that's all that counts.

[Cupcake]

Ondrej: This is how I have been taught

A craft is when you make something and it can be reproduced, and look pretty much the same as the original. The materials are available to anyone who looks and diagrams or charts for them can often either be found or bought.

An art is something that can't be reproduced exactly the same way as the artist did it, but it can still look like the original piece. Art takes more effort to make. Sometimes, diagrams of some sort can be found, but they are rare.

Personally, I think that origami currently fits into both. The traditional origami models are a craft, but folding from CPs can be an art because of what you can do with the flaps.

[HankSimon]

I like Cupcake's direction.

Just as there are few Musical artists and few painting artists, there are relatively few Origami artists. I would not call Eric Demaine an Origami artist (I may be wrong). And I think we all agree on the artistry of Lang, Wu, and Trollip.

But the rest of the world see mostly the craft folded by most of us who can't even do a CP. We don't design and we don't do much more than paint by numbers or play piano by sheet music ... Pretty, perhaps, beautiful, maybe...but not original Art.

So, Origami is Art, but some of us are crafty
[Both a floor wax and a dessert topping.]

- Hank Simon

[ahudson]

The problem, Theiresias, is in your definitions of "art" and "craft". They appear to be quite different than what other people are using. And origami has found applications in architecture, science and engineering...

And that would be the problem, wouldn't it? The words "art" and "craft" mean different things to different people. They have been used in many different ways, sometimes even contrasting meanings. I think the biggest problem we run into is when we decide on a definition, and then discard anything that does not fit that definition.

By the way, IMHO you all are missing his point completely. I think he means that origami is not generally practiced to create functional objects, but instead as a decorative/expressive medium. In comparision, Drawing and Painting also have a few practical applications (communication, advertisement, explanation) but they are primarily used as an art form, to create non-functional objects. With art there are no rules that stand for long, and any rules we try to impose will not last very long at all.

Origami is especially this way, as it stands at the intesection of art, craft, mathematics, and science.

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Not entirely related, but Hank brings up an interesting point: are non-designers also artists? True, they do not produce an original design. But does a concert pianist produce an original work when they perform Mozart or Chopin? And yet they are still considered artists... I would argue that when someone folds a model, they interpret it just as much as the concert pianist would; that is, they add their own emotion and interpretation into the piece that they are working on.

The folding of a model is at least as important as the quality of the design, if no more so; I've seen a lot of techinical designers whose work is largely ignored because they fold badly, and fail to incorporate emotion into their work. Like it or not, emotion is what allows the viewer to empathize with an artwork, and make a connection that is more than pure technique.

[notefolds]

I would argue that when someone folds a model, they interpret it just as much as the concert pianist would; that is, they add their own emotion and interpretation into the piece that they are working on.

Yes I totally agree with this statement. In folding from a diagram, I often add my own twists or improvements to the original design. This is especially true when folding from a crease pattern.