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This is one of those things that continually rubs me the wrong way. There seems to be a perversion of the term "artist" to mean "someone who create stuff" or "
by wheels 16y ago
This is one of those things that continually rubs me the wrong way. There seems to be a perversion of the term "artist" to mean "someone who create stuff" or "someone who creates stuff that I find inspiring". But artists are people who create art.
Founders are (at least in some cases) craftsmen. That's the word that they're looking for. There are all sorts of craftsmen who are not "artists". It sounds cooler to style ourselves artists, but that doesn't make it true.
There's a spectrum between functional craft and pure art, but it's not entirely clear to me that startups are even on that spectrum and if they are, it's hard panned towards the functional side.
- silves89 16y agoI guess everyone loves a story that makes themselves special.
- george_morgan 16y agoI think it’s partly to do with the (over) use of the phrase “x is an art,” usually meaning “x is a very skilled and hard thing to do successfully.” For example, it feels quite natural to say something such as “running a business is an art.” Which is fine, but the natural corollary of x is an art is that whoever does x is an artist. Which leads to this confusion.
- jaxn 16y agoIsn't that just semantics? Is a master woodworker not an artist? I have seen some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional furniture too). Don't the best craftsmen consider themselves artists?
- jamesbritt 16y agoIsn't that just semantics? Is a master woodworker not an artist? Do you mean a highly skilled crafts-person, i.e. an artisan? Or do you mean someone who creates experiences that challenge one's understanding and perception of themselves and their world? I have seen some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional furniture too). So have I, but I've yet to see any furniture that created an experience for me similar to to that of seeing certain works by van Gogh or Delacroix or Duchamp, or hearing works by Tchaikovsky or Reich.