Antoine Leperlier gave another talk at college yesterday. This time it was about art and craft - how the two needed to be re-integrated and how this required making skills to be preserved and cultivated at a local level.
He's clearly a huge fan of Marcel Duchamp (who I've written about in previous posts). Leperlier credits Duchamp with pioneering the separation of art and craft with his "readymades" - citing his "fountain" (urinal) and bottle rack.
The bones of Leperlier's talk were that this could go too far. With some works of art, the person that comes up with an idea needs to be in control of its implementation. You couldn't design something and send it off to be made in China because its artistic quality is bound up with lots of small design and process decisions - in other words, with the skill with which it's made.
That's clearly true for Leperlier's work. He's spent a lifetime perfecting what he does, which includes opening the kiln and peeping inside to see that everything is going well. In other words, he definitely needs to be there during the making process, even though he has an assistant (and at one stage had eight assistants).
I experienced a similar issue myself with the Devonport Column gate, where I came up with the concept and then worked with Art Metal (now called Formlite) to develop the detailed design and make it. Throughout the project there were lots of detailed design decisions to make, some of them related to the way in which it was being made, so I needed to be there.
On the other hand, I don't know whether the integration of art and craft is always necessary. What about designing something in 3D and then uploading the file to a 3D printing service to get it made? Does this not count as art?
I should have asked this question to Leperlier!
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