Art and Craft

There is an ongoing struggle between what is craft and what is art.
Art gets at least one extra zero and usually a comma in the price.
Craft work and artisan work is usually what is considered functional while art knows no boundries of function. In fact, art eschews function. It is all chiseled in some stone somewhere and cannot be overturned.......

Georgia O'Keeffe was an artist....her work art. She did pottery vessels among other things. They are art (price one, it's art)

So, were I to buy a O'Keeffe pottery vessel at auction I'd pay a very arty price. It is art.
I bring the vessel home and put it on the mantle, as art.
Years later someone uses the vessel for apples on a table at lunch......
Later still, I decide to sell the vessel, art that it is, but in my haste I forget to remove one apple.
It sells at auction for more than I paid.....art appreciates.
BUT, upon getting their art vessel home the new owners discovery an apple left from when it served part of lunch. They were robbed, it had function....remove a zero or two and sell it at a craft fair or remove the offending apple and call it art again?


Art is long - Life is short - Get Going!!!


In truth the art V craft debate is shallow.
Finely worked door hardware, functional though it may be, can convey all of the same forged form and visual meaning as if they had no function but were just adorning the door. Conversely, a red box with FEAR stenciled on it or a stack of ocean buoys may be sans function but only an emperor in seach of new clothes would call them art.