What Is Crafts For? 1 2 3 - PRINTER VERSION
>> While the modern crafts movement may believe that the only way crafts can be viable in modern contemporary culture is to abandon its historical associations with use and the home, other solutions and value systems do exist and can furnish crafts with a way to participate while not only maintaining the integrity of their its, but also exploiting its richness to address some of the alienation individuals experience at the hands of modern culture. John Dewey offers that, "A conception of fine arts that sets out from its connection with discovered qualities of ordinary experience will be able to indicate the factors and forces that favor the normal development of human activities into matters of artistic value². He further suggests that, "The enemies of the aesthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual. They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in practice and intellectual procedure".4
Those of us, who have been moved by crafts eloquence in the past and find those kind of feelings absent from the contemporary milieu, and who are struggling to form our own expression inside crafts' historical language have to adopt a more rigorous and aggressive philosophical position about crafts' role in modern society if we wish crafts to be an essential structure within our cultural life.<<
References:
1. Reynolds Price, Out On The Porch, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 1992).
2. Ellen Dissanayake, What Is Art For, (University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 41.
3. John Dewey, Art As Experience, (Perigree Books, 1980). p. 29.
4. Ibid. 11, 40.
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> While the modern crafts movement may believe that the only way crafts can be viable in modern contemporary culture is to abandon its historical associations with use and the home, other solutions and value systems do exist and can furnish crafts with a way to participate while not only maintaining the integrity of their its, but also exploiting its richness to address some of the alienation individuals experience at the hands of modern culture. John Dewey offers that, "A conception of fine arts that sets out from its connection with discovered qualities of ordinary experience will be able to indicate the factors and forces that favor the normal development of human activities into matters of artistic value². He further suggests that, "The enemies of the aesthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual. They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in practice and intellectual procedure".4
Those of us, who have been moved by crafts eloquence in the past and find those kind of feelings absent from the contemporary milieu, and who are struggling to form our own expression inside crafts' historical language have to adopt a more rigorous and aggressive philosophical position about crafts' role in modern society if we wish crafts to be an essential structure within our cultural life.<<
References:
1. Reynolds Price, Out On The Porch, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 1992).
2. Ellen Dissanayake, What Is Art For, (University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 41.
3. John Dewey, Art As Experience, (Perigree Books, 1980). p. 29.
4. Ibid. 11, 40.
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign