Albrecht Durer, Melancholy, 1514
Copper, engraving. 23.9 × 18.8 cm
Hermitage Museum
The engraving on which Dürer actually portrayed the areas of the artist’s spirit, i. his state of affairs at three levels of knowledge, where:
-the lower is the craft, the result that can be sold.
-Medium – intellectual knowledge, the area of the craft, the result of efforts that are not valued with money, i.e. This is an area of creativity and inspiration.
– most – the field of infinite and boundless knowledge, the giving of freedom.
The question is: is it possible to stay at an average level without visiting a lower one?
Obviously not. After all, the craft is the base of the art of creation.
Can an artist create without professional craft skills?
Probably not! Because, as a result of the artist’s inspiration, does he take on a material form with an artistic structure? Thanks to craft tools. The painter has a brush, the sculptor has a chisel, the photographer has a camera, the makeup artist has a brush and cosmetics, etc.
It turns out that the craft is a necessary “tool” in the hands of the Artist, which gives him the opportunity to choose his sole precision in many ways, and how much he owns defines him as a Master.
Then, why don’t artists grow out of all the artisans?
The topic is very complex and extensive. Many scientific works are dedicated to the process of artistic creation, from which even its laws and categories are derived.
Obviously, the Artist, Creator, Teacher should possess not only talent, ability for vivid feeling and deep experience, passionate desire for expressing spiritual overflow by possessing professional craft skills, but also strict discipline and presence of controlling self-awareness – only these qualities can give little hope for birth a work of art.
Thus, creativity is the result of the maximum tension of spiritual and physical forces multiplied by self-control and self-discipline.
At the same time, keep in mind that the result, in a material sense, can be zero.
Do we have a lot of heroes who are ready for such an act, such self-denial and, to some extent, self-torture?
But will we not have to answer this self-directed question honestly?
The artist is able to express the state of the world and the human world; it is inconceivable without an emotional attitude towards them, but it is inconceivable without a high intellectual culture, without the ability to subordinate its irrational insights to rational deepening in the subject of its work.
Only in this alloy is a true work of art born, only such unity gives true inspiration in his work. But before an artist “visits” an inspiration, he must go with the thorns, doubts, and pursuits, piling up that rough material in his day-to-day exhausting work, without which creatively inspired burning does not occur.
A lot can be explained and understood by the artist. Yet, his personality carries a certain secret that attracts and invites him, encourages him to seek within himself the hidden forces that make man the creator of new values, cultures and beings. “
