Concept tag
#techne
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I make cedar doors. Am I an artist, a craftsman, or is that the wrong question?
Tourists photograph my work and call it art. Gallery people, when they come, call it craft, and they say it a little differently. I read recently that this division is young. Before the eighteenth century in Europe, making was one category judged…
Started by Hicham Ouazzani5 replies -
Did Plato’s Republic X really attack “art”, or is that a translation problem?
Every year in my class we reach the moment where a student says, "Wait, Plato wanted to ban poets?" I usually say yes, and we have a lively argument about censorship. But I've just read an argument that this framing misleads. Plato…
Started by Keisha Monroe5 replies -
Does every culture have a word for ‘art’? Technē, kalā and the Japanese ‘ways’
I spend a lot of time warning people about false friends in comparison. One of the biggest sits under the whole debate about defining art. Greek technē is usually translated "art", but it means skilled making of any kind: medicine, shoemaking, navigation,…
Started by Kenneth Lam Chi-ho5 replies -
Reading group: Aristotle’s Poetics as a craft manual, with the Nāṭyaśāstra beside it
I've always read the Poetics as "Aristotle's theory of art". Recently I came across the argument that this is a mistranslation of the whole enterprise: the Greek technē covered medicine, carpentry, navigation and poetry alike, and the Poetics is less aesthetics than…
Started by Kavya Menon4 replies