The Craft vs Concept argument is a continual sticking point in my work which
raises many questions; as central to my practice is a craft and skills
based approach in detailed paintings. Often this has caused trouble as
teachers have regularly encouraged me to break from my strictly
figurative style and into more experimental concepts, to push beyond my comfort zone. Although I agree with this in a sense as it is easy to lapse into complacent habits, and part of being an artist is constantly challenging and pushing yourself and your medium further, I also feel that sometimes there is an immovable sense of negativity towards representative art, that it is not challenging, subversive or 'risk taking' enough. I feel often that
the idea of beauty is missold as 'decorative', serving no purpose other
than to fit into a desired setting as decoration, however beauty is a
much more transient quality of excellence, defined in one sense as "a
combination of qualities that pleases the intellect", and it is this
which I seek in my work. I think he captures this sense very eloquently
in his writing, and not only provides a well thought out argument for
the value and celebration of craft or as he calls 'tacit knowlege' but
also generates a wide variety of relevant real world examples
demonstrating the application of this knowledge to strengthen his point. He also takes into account the way attitudes have changed over time, and provides social and politically observant theories for what has incited this change.
In
comparison to PARTICIPATION by Clare Bishop I found the language of
this book much easier to grasp, due to the length and structure of it's
sentences. Because of the simplified grammatical composition, Dormer was
still able to use specialist terminology to greater effectiveness
without the reader feeling intellectually swamped or ineligible. However
the format differed from being a collection of essays in Participation,
to a single continuous thread by a single writer, which may have been
why it was able to convey it's ideas more consistently.
I
also found his repeated referencing of other useful texts highly
insightful, and found several titles which piqued my interest for
further reading. When halfway through I found myself so interested that I
began to consider this as a subject for my 2000 word essay, however by
the end I realised this was far too expansive a topic for the number of
words, and decided to put this idea on hold until next year, when I
could explore it fully and do justice to the complexities of the
discussion. I thought also that having an idea now would allow me to
collect a diverse range of sources and make sure that I produced a well
rounded, well prepared essay.
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