Hello everyone, Goran's comment is interesting because it provides a concrete example that covers various aspects, thank you for your contribution.
However, I would like to clarify that this thread started with me and my desire to try to calm the spirits of a community (ours) that is increasingly eager to see art everywhere, in the beautiful origami we see every day. With my initial comment, I tried to say that “not everything we like and are enthusiastic about is art” because, in the end, this is what I think is happening among us, where every day I see a new origami artist emerge (who until yesterday was “just” a creative origamist). My intention seems to have failed, because we have now come to say that “not all origami is art”. Well, this is obvious and certain, just as it is certain that the sun will set and that sooner or later we will die. The point is much more complex (and, in my opinion, interesting) than simply concluding that “not all origami is art”. Can art be made with origami? Yes, but I think that's pretty obvious. Just as Kounellis made art with rusty camp beds from an orphanage, or Beuys made art with a lemon and a bulb, or Burden made art by getting shot at, folded paper allows art to be made. But how? Is it enough for the finished product to be beautiful to our eyes for it to be a work of art? No. This question, which may seem philosophical to many, is actually a great way to learn something new, and this question is actually at the heart of my attempt to calm the spirits of the many self-styled origami artists and ourselves all, to get back down to earth and learn (a little more) to understand art. Among the many criteria that can be cited to recognise a work of art is that of the expression of a need, a feeling, an inner urge, a concept that one wants to express and that the act of expressing it involves the artist himself not only manually (concretely), but in a much broader sense, from past life to experiences, from one's own beliefs and ideologies to sufferings, pains and passions. Being creative and being an artist are very different things. And promoting yourself from creative to artist is, more often than not, a risky and unfounded act, which (no offence) shows ignorance, if not presumption. Somewhere I read, “At a certain point in my life, I chose to be an Origami Artist”, which, in my eyes, speaks volumes about the degree of arrogance, conceit and... Underestimating the importance of “being an artist”, not understanding what it means, and therefore seeing artists everywhere around us (as long as they have folded a “wow” origami) is what the vast majority of us do. With that, I conclude: it is not up to us to say who is an artist and who is not, which origami is a work of art and which is not. Because making art, and being an artist, is much (much, much) more than the simple aesthetics of one's creation. Those who have seriously frequented the world of contemporary art for a long time, to the point of developing specific awareness and sensitivity, would be very cautious in defining the (albeit beautiful) origami we see every day as art. Lorenzo On Fri, 12 Sept 2025 at 09:51, Tung Ken Lam via Origami < [email protected]> wrote: > Thanks to Madonna and Goran for their specific examples and insights. > > I think some of the examples support Eric Kenneway’s belief that an > origami model “can look charming, as can many objects which are not art > works, but it is the rhythm of fold lines and balance of shapes apparent on > the surface which are admired in such a case.” > > Kenneway also wrote, “If there is an art in origami then it exists within > the sequence of folds [transforming] a sheet of paper into a model.” That > has influenced my origami, but of course others are free to disagree. > -- Lorenzo Lucioni Duesseldorf - Germany [email protected]
