The Ambiguity of Modern Craft   1      2      3      -      PRINTER VERSION

Published in New Observations, Issue 98, Nov/Dec 1993.

It is rather ironic that in the "Year of Crafts" there is still a question about exactly what crafts is. What is it trying to say, who is it speaking to, what language is it speaking and what is its intent? This question of what crafts is exactly, seems harder, not easier to answer with every new survey exhibition of modern crafts. Indeed, from observing the content of these exhibitions and examining the field's publications, one could not be blamed for arriving at the conclusion that this highly ambiguous picture of modern crafts is something that is carefully cultivated.

There are two predominant factions in modern crafts, each reflecting distinct (if immature) philosophical positions. One group is composed of so called "traditional" craftspeople that are engaged in the repetitive creation of useful crafts. These crafts people, more often than not, market their work at crafts fairs and sell it wholesale to crafts shops and measure their success, more or less, by their sales. The other group (who abhors the title craftsperson) is comprised of university instructors. They were trained in the university system and took jobs there immediately after graduate school. Unlike their colleagues in painting and sculpture, however, who evaluate each other in terms of what and where they exhibit, these academic craftspeople have tended to measure each other in terms of where they teach. While they do exhibit, their exhibitions have almost always been reciprocal affairs in each other's university galleries. Because they are subsidized by university salaries, materials and studio space, they have been not only sheltered from the kind of critical scrutiny most painters and sculptors have to submit to, but also have been free from the need to interact with the messy and demanding marketplace which traditional craftspeople have been forced to depend on. These two groups do, to some degree, overlap and have maintained, over the years, an uneasy relationship—attending their own media specific conferences, competing in the same category for NEA Fellowships and sharing the same publications. But there is a certain amount of antipathy between them. The academic craftspeople generally view traditional craftspeople as romantics who are more involved in lifestyle issues than artistic issues. Traditional craftspeople, on the other hand, see academic craftspeople, for the most part, as dilettantes who live in the proverbial ivory tower.

Academic craftspeople, however, have been the main force behind modern crafts' rush for cultural and economic parity with painting and sculpture. The strategy in their campaign to gain fine arts recognition seems to center around two maxims. First, an object cannot be useful because they believe that use is what the fine arts disapproves of most about the crafts. An object, however, can look like (the parlance is "refer") a teapot as long as it is not functional. Second, objects should reflect fine arts trends but employ only recognizable crafts techniques and materials. Traditional crafts, which have focused on use and have seen the home, not a museum, as its final destination, are viewed by academic crafts as a stumbling block to this pursuit, and, consequently, have been portrayed as a vehicle unfit for the expression of serious artistic thought. While there are a few traditional craftspeople left in academia, most have been exorcised and traditional crafts has been forced to secure patronage from crafts fairs and crafts shops. The result is that more and more traditional crafts have started looking like shallow, commercial boutique ware. Meanwhile, academic crafts, which has held sway over modern crafts edu-
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