What Is Crafts For? 1 2 3 - PRINTER VERSION
Published in Studio Potter, 21(1), December 1994.
While I was thinking about this article, I came across a book called Out on the Porch. I realized that if architecture with all its pretense at greatness, could be compared to the fine arts, then the porch with its domestic grounding was certainly the crafts. While architecture is responsible for the buildings where momentous occasions in our public life occur, the porch is a private space where the personal aspects of our life are played out. Reynolds Price in his introduction describes that kind of experience.
"The average literate American especially one who's well-read in American fiction is likely, at the mention of porches, to think first and last of a rangy white house...banked with old trees and dark green shrubs, and fronted or ringed by a broad shady porch with rocking chairs and a hanging swing that will seat at least two peaceful adults or (better yet) one drowsy adult and a much-loved child, stroked by the merest trace of a breeze and engaged in a soft-voiced dialogue of no great moment as to subject or theme, though deeply rewarding to heart and mind through a whole life's memory".1
In my mind I have always thought of crafts role in culture in exactly the same way as the porch's. Rather than attempting broad, sweeping statements on the state of society or creating heroic interpretations of man's position in the universe, like the fine arts; the crafts have historically provided a background for, or in some cases facilitated the kind of heightened moments of pleasure and awareness that Price describes. For me this is a noble goal with enormous possibilities for personal expression. Western culture, as it is represented by the fine arts, however, has not placed much value cultural or monetary on the traditional role of crafts. The result has been an effort over the past 25 or 30 years by the American crafts movement to redefine the term "crafts" in order to gain acceptance by the fine arts. It seems, on the face of it, ridiculous that any field with a visual language and history as rich as crafts', would trade it for a view of art as narrow and ephemeral as modernism's. A view, which Ellen Dissanayake in her book What Is Art For, puts into historical perspective for us.
"...it is assumed by the art world that a work of art has its own autonomous value, apart from being useful (a goblet), or skillfully made (an engraved snuffbox), or impressively carved (a monument). An art object need serve no purpose other than its own existence as something for aesthetic contemplation. In this view, art is "for" nothing except itself. It need have no other justification such as accurately depicting reality, or putting the spectator in touch with eternal verities, or revealing phenomenological or emotional truth. The primary value of a work of art need no longer be that it edifies or instructs, that it is rare or uses costly materials, that it is well made.
Yet neither in classical or medieval times, nor indeed in any other civilization or traditional society that we know of, have works been made to serve as "art objects", to be judged by aesthetic criteria alone, or appraised primarily for their power to evoke aesthetic enjoyment."2 >>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
Published in Studio Potter, 21(1), December 1994.
While I was thinking about this article, I came across a book called Out on the Porch. I realized that if architecture with all its pretense at greatness, could be compared to the fine arts, then the porch with its domestic grounding was certainly the crafts. While architecture is responsible for the buildings where momentous occasions in our public life occur, the porch is a private space where the personal aspects of our life are played out. Reynolds Price in his introduction describes that kind of experience.
"The average literate American especially one who's well-read in American fiction is likely, at the mention of porches, to think first and last of a rangy white house...banked with old trees and dark green shrubs, and fronted or ringed by a broad shady porch with rocking chairs and a hanging swing that will seat at least two peaceful adults or (better yet) one drowsy adult and a much-loved child, stroked by the merest trace of a breeze and engaged in a soft-voiced dialogue of no great moment as to subject or theme, though deeply rewarding to heart and mind through a whole life's memory".1
In my mind I have always thought of crafts role in culture in exactly the same way as the porch's. Rather than attempting broad, sweeping statements on the state of society or creating heroic interpretations of man's position in the universe, like the fine arts; the crafts have historically provided a background for, or in some cases facilitated the kind of heightened moments of pleasure and awareness that Price describes. For me this is a noble goal with enormous possibilities for personal expression. Western culture, as it is represented by the fine arts, however, has not placed much value cultural or monetary on the traditional role of crafts. The result has been an effort over the past 25 or 30 years by the American crafts movement to redefine the term "crafts" in order to gain acceptance by the fine arts. It seems, on the face of it, ridiculous that any field with a visual language and history as rich as crafts', would trade it for a view of art as narrow and ephemeral as modernism's. A view, which Ellen Dissanayake in her book What Is Art For, puts into historical perspective for us.
"...it is assumed by the art world that a work of art has its own autonomous value, apart from being useful (a goblet), or skillfully made (an engraved snuffbox), or impressively carved (a monument). An art object need serve no purpose other than its own existence as something for aesthetic contemplation. In this view, art is "for" nothing except itself. It need have no other justification such as accurately depicting reality, or putting the spectator in touch with eternal verities, or revealing phenomenological or emotional truth. The primary value of a work of art need no longer be that it edifies or instructs, that it is rare or uses costly materials, that it is well made.
Yet neither in classical or medieval times, nor indeed in any other civilization or traditional society that we know of, have works been made to serve as "art objects", to be judged by aesthetic criteria alone, or appraised primarily for their power to evoke aesthetic enjoyment."2 >>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign