Teens/adults - Lesson 4: In praise of craft
Arts and crafts
If you have ever thought of “craft” as a disparaging term, if you’ve considered “art” to be the highest compliment you can pay—”Sally, that cake’s a work of art!”—, if you see the phrase “arts and crafts” and consider such activities beneath you…get over it.
It’s time to retrain your brain. Objects can be every bit as fine as fine art.
For example, go to a local art museum or gallery and look at any work on the wall, then compare it to the cell phone in your pocket: Which is the greater work?
Ask yourself:
Which one is more artful?
Which has made a bigger impact in your life?
Which has contributed the most to society?
Which has the most creativity in it?
Which is the most historically significant?
Which is the most original?
Which best embodies the principles of beauty?
Which provides the most value to you?
Unless your local art museum is the Louvre, chances are your phone—the same object owned by 2 billion other people—is going to win that battle of “would you rather?”
When did the division of art/craft begin?
At some point in Western culture, we came to prize fine art above other arts such as industrial arts, graphic arts, and so on. For example, take the word, “masterpiece.” The term came from the European guild system where journeymen and apprentices spent years to learn the crafts of making objects—baking, leather working, silversmithing, songwriting, and such. When the apprentice’s education was nearly completed, he undertook a final project to prove mastery. This project was his “masterpiece.”
The concept of art, as a distinction meant to elevate it above other objects, is a relatively recent phenomenon, unique to Western culture. Before 1400, authorship and originality, for example, were valued much less than the ability of the maker to continue the traditions of the culture in the production of its most prized objects. A fascinating, brief overview of this issue is a TED-Ed Animation, Is there a difference between art and craft? by Laura Morelli. View it here.
It takes nothing away from fine art to remind ourselves of the value of craft or to contextualize different kinds of objects in the long lens of history and the broad spectrum of world cultures.
One question that Aesthetics seeks to answer is this: Does the functionality of an object negate its artfulness? Perhaps the best way to reframe the discussion of the place of craft in the overall picture of art is to examine one institution that changed the way industrial objects are conceived.
The Bauhaus
Beginning with the Arts and Crafts movement in England between 1880 and 1920 and spreading throughout Europe, Asia, and America, the decorative arts have gone through a steady rehabilitation regarding its importance relative to fine art. Some art schools 100 years ago taught industrial design right alongside fine art courses. The most important of these schools was the Bauhaus in Germany (1919-1933) that combined craft and fine art education under one roof. Bauhaus students studied architecture, weaving, pottery, graphic design, typography, and other crafts as well as fine arts. Echoes of the Bauhaus pervade our culture, even today. Its influence on architecture, graphic design, industrial design, interior design—among others—is profound.
At the Bauhaus, these areas of study were not seen as second-rate skills. Quite the opposite. The Bauhaus taught that there was “no essential difference between the artist and the artisan.” In its manifesto, is this statement: “The ultimate aim of all creative activity is a building.” Who were the teachers at the Bauhaus? Merely some of the titans of the early 20th century: Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Lilly Reich, and many others.
After the school was closed as the country fell into the chaos that led to World War II, these pioneering teachers of the Bauhaus scattered to other nations, including the United States. Josef Albers, for example, settled down in North Carolina and transformed the faculty of Black Mountain College into the premiere creative school in America—students included Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Creeley, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Ray Johnson, and Cy Twombly. The Bauhaus’ impact was (and remains) monumental because these artists, in turn, spread Bauhaus-derived ideas even more broadly throughout the world.
Learn more about the Bauhaus by visiting these website pages:
“The Bauhaus, 1919-1933”, Metropolitan Museum of Art essay
“Teaching and Learning at the Bauhaus”, Getty Museum podcast
“Bauhaus”, Tate Museum website
“Bauhaus: Design in a Nutshell”, OpenUniversity YouTube video
The Museum of Modern Art
In the U.S., the Museum of Modern Art in New York established its Industrial Design Department in 1934—just five years after its founding—and since then it has collected things that it considers well designed and important for historical value. For example, in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, you will find Tupperware, fishing poles, Slinky toys, chess sets, typewriters, chairs, lamps, leg splints, sewing machines, record players, radios, movies, computers, phones, dishes, movie posters, emoji libraries, type faces, even a full-sized helicopter and a race car. These are the same objects to be found in stores at the time the items were made. From its first exhibition to include design, MoMA has emphasized the balance of form and function. In a Time magazine article in 1953, the Modern’s curator said, “Is there art in a broomstick?” It answered its own question, “Yes, if it is designed both for usefulness and good looks.”
“The importance of the industrial arts as a factor in the life of a nation lies in their constant and direct contact with every individual. The quality of objects that are in daily use by everyone cannot fail to affect the taste and visual imagination of society of a whole.” This quotation by Serge Chermayeff, curator of MoMA’s Design for Use exhibition in 1944, is full of interesting concepts. The term “industrial art” is not as common today as it used to be, but here’s a question for you about the artfulness of industrial-made things: What objects in your house do you consider both useful and beautiful?
In 2019, MoMA created an exhibition drawn from its permanent collection in its design departments. Curators Juliet Kinchin and Andrew Gardner wrote an interesting article about design that may help you reevaluate your consideration of objects. “What Do We Mean by Good Design?: Ten objects from The Value of Good Design highlight the democratizing potential of design”