So, reading some of the comments on my Artistry/Artisanry post, and being a journalist trained in summing up years of patient complications in a catchphrase….how about this:

Art focuses on communications first, aesthetics second. (or maybe not at all).
Artisanry focuses on aesthetics first, communications second (or maybe not at all).

Does that work?

–cynthia

P.S. Hmmmm. For some reason this question has turned up quite a bit for me in the weekend’s online forays (and I wasn’t even looking for it). Here are some other takes:

Tom Wolfe: “By 1982, no ambitious artist was going to display skill, even if he had it…Art worldlings regard popularity as skill’s live-in slut. Popularity meant shallowness.”
Tom Stoppard: “Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.”
Toni Sikes (runs Guild.com): “Here at The Guild, we consider work produced by a talented and skilled artist to be a piece of art.”
Robert Wittig: “…I realized the meaning of art, as opposed to the skill of painting…I also realized that I was right about most of the modern art stuff. Most of it is not very good…mediocre, and downright lousy…but some of it is art.”