I recently had the opportunity to address the topic of ‘Origami and Art,’ and in response to a question, I wrote what you find below (revised to present it to this group).
I would like to clarify that it is not my intention to spark controversy, raise barriers or trigger an endless debate, but rather to contribute to encouraging those who, perhaps uncritically, elevate Origami to Art without asking themselves any real questions to reflect more deeply. I have tried to keep what I have written below on the level of ‘facts’, reducing the ‘opinions’ part as much as possible, because opinions, however interesting, often do not contribute to increasing knowledge and the usefulness of a debate. === To the objection I get when I say that ‘Origami is not Art per se’, I reply that Origami is a technique, just like watercolour painting, papier-mâché or crochet. And making Origami is what we might call craftsmanship, manual craft creation. If the motivations and intentions behind it are specific to art, then certainly the technique of origami allows you to produce a piece of art, but origami as such is not art, and this is a pretty important aspect to consider. We can all pick up a brush and paint a watercolour, but few of us can reasonably be recognised as artists, not because the finished product is “ugly” in our eyes, but because the mere act of painting (whether “well” or “badly”) does not make us artists (this aspect is explained in more detail below). Even in origami (a.k.a. creating something with the Origami technique), therefore, only a (small) part of us can be considered an artist, and the created origami a piece of art, whether “beautiful” or “ugly”, because it is not the fact that we aesthetically like an origami that automatically makes it art. So let's not be fooled by books entitled “The Art of Origami” or “The Art of Cross-Stitch” or “The Art of Fly Fishing” (I'm trivialising, but not too much)... because to make art, you need much more than what the vast majority of creative people have and do, starting with what you have inside you, your motivations and the way you express yourself or your feelings, your own artistic language and a recognised and recognisable ability to express yourself... These and many other aspects that underpin the making of art and are a fundamental part of art academy courses. Virtually anyone can certainly sculpt and create something similar to what Giacometti created (for those of you who love modern and contemporary art, like me), but he was an artist and most of us are not. What I have written may seem obvious, or trivial, or unnecessary to reiterate, but I consider it extremely important for an aspect that I believe to be pivotal in the evolution of origami, which is the deep respect we must have for ourselves and for origami itself, and avoid praising origami by attributing a value of “art” to it regardless, and thereby intrinsically praising ourselves (even without defining ourselves as artists) baselessly thinking that your passion is an art form is gratifying. === Ciao, Lorenzo Lorenzo Lucioni Duesseldorf - Germany [email protected]
