Creating solid art requires craft, not pleasing displays

Evidence

Seated at her desk, musing over vague stories, the woman acquires a peaceful alibi in imagining she is a writer: but she must at some point make signs on the blank page; they have to have a meaning in the eyes of others. So the trickery is exposed. To please one need only to create mirages: but a work of art is not a mirage, it is a solid object; to construct it, one must know one’s craft. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1943

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the distinction between mirage (display to please) and work of art (solid object requiring craft) — a core existentialist distinction between appearance and constituted existence.