Craft: Still The Enemy
James Kochalka got a group of illustrators up in arms recently when he once again explained how "Craft is the enemy," a philosophy he details in his new graphic novel THE CUTE MANIFESTO, as well. Speaking in San Francisco, Kochalka said "There is no art in illustration."
The reaction of the assembled illustrators won't be unfamiliar to anyone who has tried to explain that work-for-hire and enduring art are often mutually exclusive, especially when explaining this fact to someone whose income or sense of self-worth largely derives from the work-for-hire system or its mostly-shoddy products.
Much more on the San Francisco Illustration Conference and Kochalka's comments at art.blogging.la.
The reaction of the assembled illustrators won't be unfamiliar to anyone who has tried to explain that work-for-hire and enduring art are often mutually exclusive, especially when explaining this fact to someone whose income or sense of self-worth largely derives from the work-for-hire system or its mostly-shoddy products.
Much more on the San Francisco Illustration Conference and Kochalka's comments at art.blogging.la.
posted by ADD at 2:22 PM
2 Comments:
Many people in the commercial arts--advertising, magazine illustration, etc--have convinced themselves that what they do is art. Hence all of the hissing. It involves some of the same skills and tools, but the intent and the finished product are wildly different. I write ads for a living (not for evil companies, mind you) and even at my drunkest or most self-aggrandizing I would never claim it could be "art." That's why I can't stand reading Ad Age or Communication Arts, or paying attention to anything in the industry for that matter--there are always creative teams being hyped and hyping themselves as artistic geniuses. As James said, there is craft, which is used to create a style, which is then directed. There's nothing wrong with that; people gotta eat, and there's a demand for illustration. If they'd really thought about it, though, James' audience shouldn't have taken his comments as criticism, just a statement of fact.
Style is to art as personality is to character? I went to the talking-out-your-ass school of art criticism, but I think you develop a style, then apply that style to create either art or something else. For instance, you can devlop a style of directing film, then use it to make beer commercials.
As I've thought about it more, I realize I had my advertising tunnel vision turned on, and I neglected to consider book illustration--having spent considerable time at the Eric Carle Museum of Childrens' Book Art, and reading countless illustrated books to my kids over the past few years, it's hard to deny that some of the greatest children's book illustration isn't "art," or that it's useful to draw disticntions that would exclude it.
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