ABSTRACT
The connotation of skill is preserved in many words derived from the same roots and that remain in common currency today. On the one hand we have ‘technics’ and ‘technique’; on the other hand such terms as ‘artless’ – meaning clumsy or lacking in skill – and, of course, ‘artefact’. Yet the apparent continuity masks an important shift, towards abstracting the components of intelligence, sensibility and expression that are essential to the accomplishment of any craft from the actual bodily movement of the practitioner in his or her environment. Thus the technique of the pianist comes to refer to the practised ability of his fingers to find their way around the keyboard and to hit the desired notes, as distinct from the inherent musicality of the performance. ‘A player may be perfect in technique’, wrote Sir Charles Grove, ‘and yet have neither soul nor intelligence’. Likewise, we have come a long way from the days when, as in the year 1610, it was possible to eulogise a certain composer as ‘the most artificial and famous Alfonso Ferrabosco’ (Rooley 1990: 5). As David Lowenthal has observed, ‘time has reversed the meaning of artificial from “full of deep skill and art” to “shallow, contrived and almost worthless”
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to the ‘merely technical’ or mechanical execution of predetermined operational sequences went hand in hand with the elevation of art to embrace the creative exercise of the imagination (Gell 1992b: 56). As a result, the artist came to be radically distinguished from the artisan, and the art-work from the artefact (Coleman 1988: 7).
