Art and Craft
Richard Sachs has been crafting handmade bicycle frames for five decades. Roughly the same amount of time that I’ve been making wine. I’ve seen his work and it is stunning – masterful! He’s also a gifted writer who is fond of digression – my kind of guy. Some categorize the bikes he creates as artworks. However, he disagrees, saying, “A bicycle is a sporting good, … its aesthetic should please the maker, the owner, or both.” Reading his thoughts on this yesterday prompted me to pen a few words on the subject. I had already been thinking about the distinction between art and craft for several days, so Sachs’ thoughts were all it took to get me going.
A day spent with my wife at a few museums in LA last week led me to thinking about what differentiates between art and craft. Our first stop was the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Included in the Monuments show currently exhibiting is a short film by Julie Dash. It is a musical piece. In it Devone Tines and a handful of fellow musicians perform “This Little Light of Mine” in Mother Emanuel AME Church is Charleston SC. This was the site of nine murders in 2015 when a young white racist joined a prayer group and opened fire. The film is incredibly powerful musically and emotionally. One would need to have a heart of stone not to be moved by it. A woman in the audience wept. It shattered me.
Later in the day we went to the Norton Simon museum – by far my favorite museum in the LA area. There’s a famous still life by Zurbaran here that is considered one of the finest ever painted. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at it. It prompted me to write a long essay about still life paintings a few years ago that I’ve included at the end of this short essay. As we entered the gallery that contained it, I caught it out of the corner of my eye as I was looking at another painting. It hangs on a small wall by itself next to a doorway. No one was paying the least attention to it. I was suddenly overcome by emotion. I teared up and came close to sobbing aloud. This was not the first time that a painting has brought me to tears, but it was one of the most powerful. I’m sure part of it was being so moved earlier in the day by the Dash film. Part of it was also that here was certainly one of the great paintings of the world just hanging publicly on a wall in LA where any citizen could walk in and view it – and perhaps have their life changed. I loved how democratic that seemed.
Being so profoundly moved by these two pieces of art emphasized that for me what distinguishes art from craft is the capability of art to evoke deep emotions. I have devoted my life to crafting fine wine. I have drunk the finest wines on the planet and eaten some of the best food to be found, but never ever has a wine or meal brought me to tears. The same holds true for Richard Sachs’ bicycles. Yes, they are beautiful just as fine wine is, but their beauty is limited to an intellectual sort of pleasure. Only in the realm of art does beauty strike the heart and elicit emotional response.
If you’ve an interest in the visual arts, here’s a link to my essay on still lives for a deeper dive. https://www.avoluptuary.com/writings-blog/still-lives-and-emotional-content