I have adjusted the way I hold knife while preparing vegetables. It used to be the case that I would hold the handle with my fingers wrapped all the way around. After all, wasn’t that why the grip had been so ergonomically molded in just such a way?
After spending a couple of months working in a commercial kitchen, however, I quickly adapted to a different grip. Now I hold the knife much higher up, with only my last two fingers curled all of the way around. My index finger, middle finger and thumb clamp the sides of the blade at its base. This provides much more control for angle adjustment, and also prevents the blade from rolling side to side, especially when trying to cut rapidly.
It is a handy adjustment to technique that I continue to use while cooking at home. Part of me realizes that it has practical advantage, and part of me simply enjoys the thoughtfulness of execution. perhaps by sharing this I have introduced someone to a new “kitchen hack” (double meaning unintended), but another way to describe it could be “the art of handling a knife properly”.
The phrase “the art of” shows up regularly as a catchy headline and is often followed with phrases such as “not giving a damn”, or “waking up earlier than everyone else” or “creating long lasting habits”. The image clip below taken from a simple search for the word “art” is a great example.
Language is spectacularly tricky. The ways in which multiple meanings can masquerade together under one word lull us into a false sense of understanding. We may find that we have wandered far under certain impressions only to be awoken suddenly to realize that the path we believed we were on has long since disappeared over the horizon.
Art is just such a word. How many miles have we travelled using this word only to find ourselves on opposite ends of the map?
When did it become the case that we associate those who paint, draw, sculpt, design, orchestrate music, write poetry and other forms of the “fine” arts with their output? Why is it that when we think of the use of the word art, it often comes down to this strange split: when talking about capital “A” artists, the word art refers to the output, the thing which has been created.
To talk about “the art of” we are referring to the crafting of something and the process by which one may produce a desired result, rather than the result itself. The art of artists is an output, but the art of an action is the method?
The art of artists is simply what they make. To be an artist is to make pieces of art. To be artistic is to have the capacity to create works of art and perhaps a desire to bring art into the world. To be artful is to execute in a way that demonstrates skill and technique and character, not just in the final product, but in the doing of the thing. The artisanal is that which has been thoughtfully crafted.
This appears to be a divided word. Are we interested in the what, or the how?
A wonderful story of the artful in practice can be found within the third section of chapters of the Chuang Tsu, which is a collection of Taoist writings held in great regard within the canon of religious thinking.
The translation which I have at hand is itself a work of art, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, and embellished with calligraphy by the former, and photography from the latter. Though the book has clearly been artfully created, I find myself desiring to use other language to describe it. Rather than leaning on the phrases I have been highlighting I feel drawn to something more like “crafted with love”, curious indeed.
The story goes like this:
“Prince Wen Hui’s cook was carving up an ox. Every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every step of his foot, every thrust of his knee, with the slicing and parting of the flesh, and the zinging of the knife – all was perfect rhythm, just like the Dance of the Mulberry Grove or a part in the Ching Shou symphony.
Prince Wen Hui remarked, ‘How wonderfully you have mastered your art.'”
There is is on the page. It is in this way that I think we often frame “the art of”; as a skillful wielding of technique. The tips and tricks learned through use of the tool. Certainly we can assume that this butcher knows the proper way to hold his blade.
The butcher has not yet had his say in the matter, and he answers like this:
“A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts, while a mediocre cook has to change his every month because he hacks. I’ve had this knife for nineteen years and have cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the edge is as if it were fresh from the grindstone.”
Masterful technique indeed.
Appreciation of skill in action is often the only perception we have from the outside. It is an aspect we can point to because it points to an outcome. Through execution of the technique something is achieved, and the reasoning works just as effectively in reverse. Often we, lay people observing someone else’s field of expertise, have no perspective to bring to what we are witnessing except for the outcome achieved. Working backwards from an outcome we can reason that the necessary technique had been in play.
Like watching an episode of Cake Wars we are provided clear perspective on who has accomplished the challenge. No matter how amazing the pastry looks, if the judges do not approve, the lack of skill is apparent.
Skill is just a bar to be crossed. An unassuming cake may taste amazing, and a bungling contestant can ride the brink of kitchen disaster only to pull it off in the end. It is when we see two people achieving the same objective side by side that we suddenly notice which one has the artful approach.
From cakes back to oxen, there is more the butcher has to say. The hardest work is separating the joints and working through tendons and ligaments that connect the great beast into a synchronous animated whole.
“When I come to a difficulty , I size up the joint, look carefully, keep my eyes on what I am doing, and work slowly. Then with a very slight movement of the knife, I cut the whole ox wide open. It falls apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground.”
Or a dropped cake perhaps.
Where, when and how exactly to apply technique. Artfulness as discretion. As decision-making.
Our word for making decisions comes from a linguistic heritage which means “to cut”. For when something has been cut there is no returning to the way that it used to be. The rope is severed, the bridge falls, the cake collapses and the ox crumbles.
And from now on I will substitute “ox” for “cookie” when I shrug and remind myself that is simply how things go sometimes.
If artfulness, the art of something, has more to do with how we choose to execute it, then we place ourselves into a curious relationship with art, craft and trade.
Suggesting that “fine” art has more to do with the output, the finished piece, is perhaps to remove it from being “artfully” done. How can that be the case? Can a masterwork be pulled off on a wing and a prayer or a hail Mary pass? Do we want to imagine that the artifacts we value so highly were created thoughtlessly?
This may pose issues for the non-representational artists, the abstract expressionists, the automatic painters and those who create interactive works.
Or are the decisions being made in the preparation, the parameters that bound the work?
Artfulness, while perhaps a stranger to the capital “A” artists becomes friend to the tradesperson, the craftsperson and the hobbyist. For those are the ones whose work is focused within the overlap between technique and judgement. The art of table-making, plumbing, graphic design, heart surgery
Do we live in this polarized world of art making? In which one group, hailed as champions and creators of culture, are only judged on what they make and now how. While the majority hone their art day in and out without recognition for their artistic achievements?
Leonardo da Vinci, in his extensive notes, describes the artists’ special ability of composition as the ability to hold the potential image within one’s mind. He describes an understanding of what one wants to paint that is built up on experience and study. One uses experience and skill to imagine any possible variation of the image before it comes into being. This is the technique.
The real skill is in the choosing which variation to execute. With enough experience and study the artist should have limitless options from which to choose, but it is the decision which defines the art.
Not unlike AI, which can generate images of whatever we wish, and stands in for our individual experience and technique, it nevertheless cannot replace the true act of art making: the final determination of what “should” be created.
Making art becomes synonymous with making choices. Liberated from the challenges of technique, we must still accept ownership of our decision.
The word acts as a one-way mirror.
From the outside we can only speculate about the forces at play within the moment. it is through the demeanor, the flow, the theater of execution that we infer art at work.
From within we understand the choices we are making, the skills being tested in each moment. It is in the odd juxtaposition of our efforts and the outcome which has been birthed that we struggle to accept the art at our fingertips.
Perhaps the word is not quite so divided. Perhaps it is simply that we ourselves are divided, and the word reflects what we bring to it.
To accept that our output must stand on its own, and that our own efforts will mostly go unrecognized, is to begin to see the art in everything. From crafting a masterwork, to sweeping the floor.
What a world to live in, where each of us can be an artist moment to moment.
Perhaps it is best to let the butcher have a final word in the matter.
After reducing his oxen to a crumbled clod of earth, “I stand there with the knife in my hand, looking about me with a feeling of accomplishment and delight. Then I wipe the knife clean and put it away.”
A good time to accept my own conclusion, wipe my pen off and put it away. Best to leave the last word to the man with a knife.
Wandering Path Arts 