Where is your fine line between furniture and art?

[Greedo]

For me it's when the object is not useable for instance a chair you can't sit on as it is uncomfortable, topples over etc but looks good.

Also find that over produced woodworking craft things are almost art. IE boxes, jewellery boxes etc... full of fancy dovetails, carvings etc... I have a real bee in my bonnet about these things. I know there seems to be a market for them but to me it's just OTT. Saw a box the other day that had dovetails in every join as it was built as a solid then the lid cut off with a bandsaw. 2 contrasting woods as well. It was so busy to the eye. No design thought at all as 2 bog standard brass hinges used and no lining as well as the dovetail overload.

Bit like a chef getting a lovely bit of halibut and cooking it with 30 other ingredients. No need. Less is more sometimes

 

[o0dunk0o]

For me they're 2 different things,

Furniture is used to make a space suitable for living or working in,

Art is the creation of objects or images who's only purpose is to provoke an emotional response.

Some furniture does provoke an emotional response but it isn't art (I have an emotional response when i smell bacon cooking, but that ain't art)

Furniture that is so overly designed that it no longer works as furniture isn't art, it's a waste of time money and materials.

 

[Jacob]

.... Saw a box the other day that had dovetails in every join as it was built as a solid then the lid cut off with a bandsaw. 2 contrasting woods as well. It was so busy to the eye. .....

That's the legacy of the Cotswold etc school and others. They weren't too hot on design so made a feature of the 'craft' instead. A very English thing. In the meantime modernism was taking off elsewhere.

Fine line between furniture and art? There's no connection is there? Unless you are thinking of Tracy Emin's bed.
Or those lovely bits of peasant furniture in Van Gogh's paintings. Come to think there's a lot of furniture 'in' art i.e. paintings.
Dali's settee? He also did this interesting chest of drawers:

 

[matthewwh]

That giraffe in the background looks like he could use a bit of ambre solaire.

 

[Jacob]

Well they do get a bit overheated.

I googled 'furniture in art' and got this lot.
I'd call that 'decorative' art. Art is another thing altogether IMHO.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Steve's interesting fact of the day:

The colour of giraffes is dependent upon their diet.

I thank you.
S

 

[matthewwh]

This week, giraffe ar been mostly eating;

Fahl.

 

[Jacob]

Well they do get a bit overheated.

I googled 'furniture in art' and got this lot.
I'd call that 'decorative' art. Art is another thing altogether IMHO.

So if we are looking at 'decorative' art as applied to furniture then almost everything has had some effort put into perking it up a bit, sanding, finishes, mouldings etc. Strictly utilitarian objects are relatively rare.
But the appearance of plainess and utility can be applied as a style in its own right, so the fine line is blurred at that point.

 

[Doug B]

Art has a title.
Furniture has a use.

 

[Sgian Dubh]

I wish I could remember where I read a definition that went something like:

Applied skill without imagination results in a product, whereas applied imagination without skill results in art.

A bit cynical I suppose, but it has a point. Slainte.

 

[Jacob]

Google:
"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." Tom Stoppard

I think he's utterly wrong on both counts!

 

[marcus]

I think that the two were once much closer than they are now, and a bit of a false dichotomy has grown up over in the last few centuries. In medieval times the artist (as in the chap who painted pictures) was viewed as just another craftsman playing a part in making buildings; on the whole art was seen as an integral part of a building rather than something you would go and see for its own sake. It was in the renaissance that the idea of the artist as someone apart, as a superstar, started to take root, and it's a divide that's been growing ever since.

I think this is a shame in some ways, as I'm much more interested in places where art is an integral part of the whole, and serves that 'higher purpose'.

The Costwold School and the Arts and Crafts movement in general are interesting. They certainly weren't uninterested in design. All of the major luminaries of the movement were trained architects, and they did bring a highly developed design sense to what they were doing — but they wanted a closer relationship between the processes of making and designing, and they hoped to reintegrate art and craft. In this they were consciously harking back to medieval practice; their belief was that certain important qualities in building had been lost since the renaissance.

Unfortunately for them they were on the wrong side of history, and society decided that modernism was the answer to it's problems thank you very much. And it was probably right to do so, notwithstanding the new sets of problems that modernism brought with it.....

Still the Arts and Crafts movement produced some lovely things as well as some less lovely ones, and the best of them do, to my mind, manage to be both Art (in the big sense of the word) and craft. Like this table by Sidney Barnsley. It's a personal thing of course, but it's my favourite piece, and if I make anything half as good in my career I will be well satisfied....

(sorry, picture could be better, it gets bigger if you click on it!)