Thoughts about Art, Crafts and Design in the Contemporary World David Clowney – Rowan University...

Thoughts about Art, Crafts and Design in the Contemporary WorldDavid Clowney – Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ, USA)

My coffee table

(hand-made a long time ago in China, recently altered and sold in the USA)


How shall we think about craft and design now? Especially, what is their relation to art? Start with history.

1)Historically, craft and art are the same thing. “Ars” in Latin, “Art” and “craft”, in English, just mean “skill”, or “skillful making”. The Greek word is techne, from which we get the English words technique and technology. (What’s the Farsi word? Is it cognate? What’s the word in Arabic, and how would it translate literally?)2)People have always admired skill, and invention, and things that work well, as well as things that meet our needs and please our senses. Of course!3)As civilizations developed, division of labor brought artisans, who could concentrate on refining and expanding their skills. Eventually, there were guilds, castes, family trades, and other continuing social institutions through which crafts (arts, skills) could develop. Painters, shoemakers, saddlers, armor-smiths, wheelwrights, musicians, playwrights, stonemasons, actors, potters, weavers, poets, bards… All of these people learned a craft, practiced it, and sometimes helped to develop it. Artisans made what people needed (and what the wealthy wanted and could afford.


Differentiation and relationships among the arts:

1)As traditions developed, and societies became larger and more stratified, more arts provided luxury goods for those who could afford them (elaborate costumes, textiles woven with gold or died with purple, statues to commemorate emperors, musicians to play at court, poets and painters to exaggerate the beauty of the Duke’s daughter, celebrate her wedding and decorate her palace.) Ritual contexts (civil and religious, usually both at once) call for many highly skilled artisans (the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal). Very complex traditions of arts develop: think of Renaissance European music, Indian Ragas, Persian miniatures.2)Some natural relationships developed between the arts, but these were not the same in every culture. Music, drama, poetry and dance were frequently combined, for obvious reasons. In China, poetry and painting are still thought to be the most closely related, probably because of the strong pictorial element in Chinese writing, and the high value placed on calligraphy.3)There was no one idea of Art in the modern sense (=Fine Art). There were divisions in the arts, e.g. between the liberal arts and the mechanical arts, but these were not a division between Art and Crafts.


The 18th century western division of art from craft: Fine Art

1)In 18th century Europe, the idea of Fine Art emerged. Several existing arts were grouped as fine arts. At first five were usually listed, variously including painting, sculpture, poetry, music, architecture, dance. The system of Fine Art has several main elements:

a) Art is for pleasure rather than for utility. It may portray the Beautiful, or the Sublime.

b) The proper appreciation of Art requires a judgment of refined taste (later defined as an aesthetic judgment). Such a judgment is free from any other interest or prejudice, and simply attends to the perceived qualities of the work and enjoys them for their own sake.

c) The Artist is (or at least hopes to be) a creative Genius, who is not bound by rules. While the artist must make a living, he (or in rare cases she) does not serve at the whim of the public or a patron, but at the inspiration of genius. The emerging market economy means the artist makes and then sells the work (or not).

d) Institutions develop to support the fine arts: museums, galleries, concert halls, reading rooms.


The 18th century western division of art from craft: Craft

2)What happens to the crafts when the new Fine Art category emerges? They, of course, lose status. Here are some of their characteristics in the new system:

a) The crafts serve our needs, rather than our pleasures. They are useful rather than beautiful.

b) The artisan (craftsperson) works according to rules, is not creative, and is understood to work for money, at the will of his or her employer.

c) When buying or using a craft item, you are not mainly concerned about how it looks or feels, but about how well it works, how long it will last, whether it is a good value for the money, whether it meets your needs, and so on.

3)The division between Fine Art and Craft appears here as a kind of neutral distinction in what things are and in the purposes they serve. But it is a class distinction as well. Another name for the fine arts, at first, was the polite arts. Polite arts for the polite classes, those with the refined taste and education to appreciate them, the money to afford them, and the leisure time to enjoy them. This separated the middle class from the laboring classes, with their vulgar popular entertainments and ordinary utilitarian possessions.


What they did after the divorce: Fine Art

1.From being focused on Beauty, and the imitation of beautiful nature, Fine Art increasingly focuses on The Sublime, therefore on Meaning. This makes Arthur Danto’s definition of Art by Meaning (somewhat) plausible now, where it would not have been in earlier days. 2.Increasingly, Art acquires a kind of religious significance, and is meant to lead us beyond the mundane to a realm of freedom and transcendent meaning. The Romantics think this way, and so do the moderns. Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art is a classic statement of this notion of the purpose of art, from the beginning of the 20th century.3.The Artist becomes a Visionary Genius, outside social norms as well as those of previous artists, pulling the rest of us along to new spiritual heights. Whatever he or she does, it must be new and creative, and in some way it must overthrow the past. The artist is a beacon of Freedom. Of course he or she will be misunderstood.4.Even if artists identify with the masses (and they often do), their attempt to be avant garde means that their work will generally be appreciated, at first, only by a small number of culturally literate people, not the masses.5.But the circle of Fine Art has been expanding with mass culture, so that


What they did after the divorce: Fine art (continued)

movies, popular music, even graffiti art and comic books sometimes get serious attention from critics as Art. And certainly in the world where they are made and consumed, many of their makers claim to be making Art rather than mere commercial entertainment.


What they did after the divorce: Craft

1.The divorce between Fine Art and Craft happened at about the same time as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine was invented in 1769; by 1786, English textile workers were complaining that machines were putting them out of work. 2.Mass production (even without machines) was already beginning in Josiah Wedgwood’s pottery operation. His factory had different stations where workers did one operation on a vase or a plate, and then passed it to other workers at the next station. No longer did one artisan make a whole piece.3.At the beginning of the 21st century, most of what we need – even food – is produced by industrial mass production. That is entirely true in the “developed” world, and increasingly true in the “developing” world.4.So the village craftsperson who makes furniture, or shoes, or weaves cloth, or makes tools, is being replaced, just like the small farmer. This is happening all around the world. 5.Result: in the developed world, and increasingly in the developing world, fiber arts, wood-turning, furniture making, ceramics, plastering, glass-blowing, metal-working are all done by machine. To have something hand made by a modern craftsperson is now a special thing. It costs more, it means more, it is not a utilitarian but a luxury item.


Craft and Design at present: craft

1.The fact of mass production and mass culture makes craft work much more of a rarity. In the US and in Europe, and in world metropolitan centers, handmade work is much more expensive than mass produced items, unless the maker lives in a developing country where the work of artisans still meets some daily needs, and the price has not been inflated along the way by too many “middle men”.2.“Hand-made” now means something special, because it is one-of-a-kind. It represents a different choice from the mass-produced and the ordinary. Kind of like Fine Art!


“Fine Crafts”: A double relation to Utility

1) Craftwork remains useful; or at least it must show a high degree of the skill required to make useful things. Fine Art furniture can be sat on, eaten at, used. A fine ceramicist or wood-turner or weaver will not sell anything unless it is clear that he or she knows how to make an excellent vase, bowl, tapestry or garment.

2) But you don’t buy this expensive craftwork because it is useful. You buy it because it is unique, because it shows creativity and has the individual human touch rather than the stamp of the machine. It represents freedom from mass-produced sameness. You buy it for reasons very similar to the reasons for which you buy Fine Art.

3) So what does the Craftsperson do in this situation? The next slides show three typical approaches:


What to do with Albert’s Toothpicks if one has false teeth

Ron David, 1992. Maytree, turned Japanese Toothpicks

Fine Art recognition strategy number one: make deliberately useless craft items, because Fine Art is supposed to be useless


Self-PortraitKim Kamens, 2005. Thread, wire brads on wood, 50” x 52”

Fine art recognition strategy 2: Just use your craft materials to make some fine art. Who cares what the materials are?


Anonymous

Czeslaw Podlesny. Handbuilt stoneware and metal.

Flying below the radar in Soviet-era eastern Europe: ceramics stands in for “Fine Art” and beats the censors. (It’s just craft, they ignore it.)


Dinnerware by Christa Assadfrom the Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA

Strategy # 3: Just make really great, beautiful things for use. Quit worrying about whether it counts as art!


DeskWendell Castle, 1967

(But it can look like a sculpture if you want it to!)


The odd relationship between new craft and old


New craft and old:

1.Someone in a village in China sells this old table. It was handmade many decades ago, fitted together with pegs and wedges rather than nails, and has obviously seen a lot of use. It is not an example of especially fine skilled work; it is just a utility item from a village. Very possibly (I don’t know it in this case, but it often happens), whoever got rid of it was glad to see it go. If they got a bit wealthier, they would be glad to replace it with a brand new, shiny, mass-produced item, perhaps even one made in the west.2.A wonderful store called “Material Culture”, located in a huge warehouse space near my house, buys up a lot of old Chinese furniture like this. They clean this table up a little bit, and they trim the ends and nail some pine strips on them so that their customer won’t come back and sue them for cuts and splinters. 3.My wife sees it, falls in love with it, and buys it to serve as our coffee table. She (and I) like it a lot better than a mass-produced new table from Ikea or some furniture store, such as a family in a Chinese village would be very happy to own.


Authenticity

One of the prized features of objects like this is “authenticity”. Larry Shiner, in his contribution to an anthology edited by Stephen Davies and Ananta Sukla called Art and Essence, talks about the contradictions produced by this category in the case of African masks.1.African masks are popular with western collectors, who exhibit them as art objects.2.To be valuable, a mask needs to be authentic, which means that it has been used in a ritual dance. If it has, it is said to have been “danced”. A mask that has not been danced is considered to be an inauthentic item, merely made for the tourist trade, and is worth very much less.3.As it turns out, artisans in the very same workshop make the very same masks in the very same way for modern ritual use and for sale to tourists. Shiner points out that when they make the masks for traditional use (utility), westerners classify them as art; whereas if they make them to be hung on the wall and looked at (aesthetic contemplation) westerners classify them as mere craft-work, not the real thing.


Future possibilities for craft:

1.We are not going back to the pre-industrial age; that is clear. Skillfully hand-made items will continue to be prized more and more, because they are so special. Certainly, more and more of them will play the role of Fine Art, and the line between Fine Art and Craft will become less and less clear.2.Will there be more such items, at a price more people can afford? Who knows. One utopian vision: small, though globally interconnected communities, whose members depend more rather than less on small growers and artisans. This may never be the dominant model. But there are such communities, and the availability of micro-loans, especially to women entrepreneurs, is bringing more of them into existence. Maybe there is a possibility for the return of a contemporary version of more everyday craft-work. We need such visions.3.A recommendation for reading: Yuriko Saito, Everyday Aesthetics. (Oxford: 2007)


Closing thoughts about design

1.Design, like craft, is often thought to be “not art”. The reasons, according to the original assumptions of the modern system of the arts, are about the same. Design is paid work done for a client, to meet the client’s specifications, rather than being the product of inspiration and carrying a message of the designer’s own choosing. In any case its purpose is utilitarian; it is meant to make products or messages work well and look good.2.The relationship of design to mass production and industry, however, is exactly opposite to that between industrial production and craft. Modern industry replaces craft work, but it absolutely depends on design. Design sells products, design creates new styles, which prompt consumers to buy new “in-style” products before their old ones wear out, thus keeping the capitalist economy growing. 3.The content of design is very closely tied to movements in Fine Art. Yves St. Laurent made Mondrian dresses; Elsa Schiaparelli was friends with Picasso and his friends, and her hats and dresses are exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Most major art museums now have a design section.


Closing thoughts about design:

4.Design, through mass production, shapes modern culture. The messages it communicates are the messages we eat, drink, wear, use and display. Of course it takes creativity and skill to make good design. But the status of the designer is hardly the main question here.5.Rather, it seems to me, the question is this: will we, as a now global human community, take responsibility for the aesthetic messages we put out there, be they verbal, visual, auditory, or for some other sense, and for the results they produce? (Back to Adorno and Benjamin, right?) Every manufacturer, every designer, every consumer is a node in the cultural web, taking information in, altering or adding to it in some way, and sending it back out. 6.So in a way, I guess I am saying that the most powerful artist in the modern world is the designer. And if, in the company of the Fine Artist and the Craftsperson, this person seems the least free, still that too may be an advantage. It does not appear to mean that nothing can be done. Maybe Al Gore will hire you to promote green energy. If you do it well, it will probably have an effect!

Thoughts about Art, Crafts and Design in the Contemporary World David Clowney – Rowan University...

Documents

Transcript of Thoughts about Art, Crafts and Design in the Contemporary World David Clowney – Rowan University...