MANUAL CRAFT

The analogue drawing, is a piece of manual craft.

“…the drawing arts become manifest through manual craft – that they inherently posses a basis in artisanship- even when they allow us to see nonesistent or incorporeal realities, ideas, or phantasams.”p34.

When we think of craft, we think of labor intensive.  We think of a manual skill, generally done with our hands.  Generally there is a technical knowledge.  We think of small scale production.  And what is produced is generally useful, such as a piece of pottery made by hand.

The first definition of craft in Webster’s is

“skill in planning, making, or executing.”

Yet we don’t typically apply the term craft to drawing.  Does Nicolaides, for example, ever use the word craft?  Neither does Ching.

The absence of the word craft in these contexts clearly illustrates the cultural predisposition that making drawings is making art.   We are culturally conditioned to think that we have to make art.  See ANOTHER VIEW ON ART.

Yet when craft is involved, it is generally not art.  One of the basic mantras of Transparent Drawing is that we do not make art. Who has time to make art when there are so many problems to solve?

We need to think of drawing as craft.  We make it with our hands.  We draw to plan so that something can be made.  There is utility:  we draw to solve problems.  We are making working drawings.  We require a technical understanding of the forms that we are drawing.  Our drawings have utility.

From here on out, our drawings have craft.

1.  Kantor, Jordan.  Drawing from the Modern 1975-2005.  The Museum of Modern Art:  New York.  2005.