Whenever you feel reluctant to call what we do with paper, even at the most
basic level, "art," reread the wonderful quote by Leo Tolstoy from his essay of
1896 "What Is Art?" that was reprinted in British Origami #186:
'This winter,' he writes, 'a lady of my acquaintance taught me how to make
cockerels by folding and inverting paper in a certain way, so that when you
pull them by their tails, they flap their wings. This invention comes from
Japan. Since then I have been in the habit of making these cockerels for
children. This would unfailingly amuse not only children, but all the
grown-ups, who happened to be around. The servants, as well as the ladies and
gentleman, would brighten up and draw together under the influence of these
paper cockerels. Everyone smiled and looked happy, exclaiming, 'They're just
like real birds - look how they flap their wings!'The person who invented these
cockerels must have been enchanted by his own discovery, and the joy is
transferred to others. And that is why the making of a paper cockerel, strange
as it may seem, is real art.I cannot refrain from observing that this was the
only new work in the sphere of paper cockerels that I have encountered during
the last sixty years. At the same time, the poems, novels and musical opuses
that I have read and heard during the same period run to hundreds, if not
thousands. This is because cockerels do not matter, you might say, whereas
poems and symphonies do. But I think that the reason lies in the fact it is
much easier to write a poem, paint a picture, or compose a symphony than to
invent a new cockerel.And, strange to say, the production of a cockerel like
this is not only art, but good art. At the same time I maintain, that the state
in which people sit on their little settees in front of the Sistine Madonna,
straining to recollect other people's recollections about the picture, has
nothing whatsoever to do with the aesthetic feeling.'
http://www.britishorigami.info/practical/highlite/180-189.php#186
-Joel