artist vs artisan

[ratliff]

Riffing off Ratliff, besides other forms of musical improvisation, I can't think of another art form where the moment of inspiration/creation and audience reception happen simultaneously. Navajo sand painting? It's definitely the biggest appeal of the form to me.

Yeah, it used to bother me that the only parallel I can think of is free jazz, which does absolutely nothing for me. I like my music PLANNED OUT WELL IN ADVANCE.

[Marc Majcher]

Riffing off Ratliff, besides other forms of musical improvisation, I can't think of another art form where the moment of inspiration/creation and audience reception happen simultaneously. Navajo sand painting? It's definitely the biggest appeal of the form to me.

There are those, of course, who would argue that all performance is improvisation. It doesn't happen until it happens.

[shando]

This is some improv:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzOzgYL1-o[/youtube]

This is other improv:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2s6LZUdYaU[/youtube]

Extra points for those who can tell me how this pertains to what we're talking about.

[shando]

Riffing off Ratliff, besides other forms of musical improvisation, I can't think of another art form where the moment of inspiration/creation and audience reception happen simultaneously. Navajo sand painting? It's definitely the biggest appeal of the form to me.

There are those, of course, who would argue that all performance is improvisation. It doesn't happen until it happens.

I agree up to a point. But most modes of performance are interpretive arts, as opposed to, I don't know what you'd call it, generative arts. Which speaks to what Emily was talking about. Personally I think of interpretive artists as artists full stop, but how that is expressed is almost always through an exercise of craft and technique, which gets murky given some of the ways we've been talking about art. I think craft and technique for interpretive artists are vehicles for putting the artist in a state as if they were the author of the work they are interpreting.

[ratliff]

I think craft and technique for interpretive artists are vehicles for putting the artist in a state as if they were the author of the work they are interpreting.

Well, if you accept that how you do it is just as important as what you do, they become co-authors, right? There's not a playwright in the world who thinks her work is better on the page than it is embodied by actors. And songwriters are often not the best interpreters of their own songs.

One of my favorite examples: Here's Bill Withers singing his own song "Who Is He (And What Is He to You)?:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FbUGkouIPg[/youtube]

Is he angry? Sure. But he also sounds whipped. He seems resigned to being used, maybe to the point of paranoia. It almost doesn't matter whether she's sleeping with that guy, because the suspicion is always gonna be there, unearned or not.

Now the Gladys Knight and the Pips version:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLpZb_2W ... re=related
[/youtube]

Gladys is not resigned, whipped, or paranoid. Gladys is pissed. (I love how she restrains herself until the middle of the second verse and then starts yelling in public.) This is not expected and it's by god unacceptable and Gladys is going to set her house in order. This is a mistake somebody is not going to make again.

So sure, for copyright purposes it's the same song: same tune, same lyrics, similar arrangement. But I'd argue that the act of interpretation created a completely different meaning even though what happens in the song is pretty much the same. Because how it happens becomes just as important.

[shando]

I don't think there's anything we're disagreeing on here, John, or at least I can't find anything.

I do think the Gladys example has a lot to do with agency and cultural traditions--in covering an R&B song the interpretive artist has a whole lot of agency to rework the source material to suit their needs. Not only is she calling the shots in the studio presumably, she's working in a tradition where this kind of reworking is part of the landscape. Make that song your own! So yeah, she's co-authoring that shit.

I think, though, that interpretive artists in more constrained forms--Kabuki, traditional south Asian and southeast Asian dance, a very traditional production of the Ring cycle or a Shakespeare play (note--these have directors! a whole 'nother kettle of interpretive fish), third oboeist in the orchestra playing Mahler's Fifth Symphony--are still artists in my book even though they have much less agency than, say, the owner a very fine Chicken and Waffles emporium in Atlanta has. The ideal there isn't to make a practically new work out of the source material, but to capture some (Platonic?) iteration of the source.

That ability to stitch together (conform?) one's inner state as an artist and someone else's vision isn't for everyone (I for one am not that good an actor), but I think the end result is (or at least can be) still art and not just technique.

What were we talking about again..........

[sara farr]

What about Dance Improvisation?

"Dance improvisation is not only about creating new movement but is also defined as freeing the body from habitual movement patterns". Contact improv:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvFM0H-AsZc[/youtube]

Dancer and singer Michael Jackson combined improvisation in both of those definitions, insisting that he had interest in performing a dance to Billie Jean only if he could do it a new way each time.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWULhhL2F18[/youtube]

vocal improvisation by Freddie Mercury

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwDuipYrUqE[/youtube]

[KathyRose]

Artist (noun)
1. a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.

Artisan (noun)
1. a person skilled in an applied art; a craftsperson.

I'd say, the only distinction between the two is the nature of the end product. An artisan creates a tangible thing that his/her audience can put to some practical use - a table, a watch, a fly-fishing rod, a fish en papillote, a puppet, a software application, a prosthetic leg. The artist creates something that is primarily intended to be experienced aesthetically, regardless of it's practical use or value. Yes, I can store earrings in my Faberge egg, but that certainly wasn't the artist's primary intention.

When a useful object is also aesthetically exquisite (which often happens in woodworking, for example), the creator can be considered both an artisan and an artist.