The Art World’s Five-Letter Dirty Word
Craft in America
A three-part PBS documentary (in HD) airing May 30,2007
Includes companion book and traveling national exhibition
How many times have I heard a glass, wood, ceramic, metal or fiber artist lamenting that their work is too often only relegated to the ghetto of craft?
Too many.
Take a look at the prices at high-end studio craft fairs like SOFA and then look at the prices at the contemporary art auctions, and you can understand their frustration. (Especially since photography, which two decades ago occupied its own market ghetto, has successfully crossed over into the big leagues.) Ask contemporary craft dealers how often their galleries get visited by reviewers from The New York Times and you’ll see eyes start rolling faster than pachinko balls. The fact is, most so-called “craft” artists want to be seen as contemporary artists who happen to work in glass, wood, ceramic, metal or fiber. (The double entendre of Freddie Robin’s work Craft Kills, above, seems pretty obvious…) What, after all, differentiates these “craft” media from other sculptural media, in terms of their ability to convey artistic intention?
In a word, history. Many craft media are weighed down with centuries’ worth of tradition. Most were used for decorative or functional purposes, often fashioned by anonymous guild and factory artisans. Only those pieces produced in the workshops of master designer/marketers (I’m thinking Faberge and Tiffany) remotely held the same artistic or monetary value as paintings and sculptures by artists who wrapped themselves in the cloak (and myth) of solitary genius. But hey, do you think Peter Paul Rubens cared whether his patrons were paying for a large-scale painting or a large-scale tapestry? They both conveyed grand historical and mythological themes. They both covered massive wall space. Both were created with armies of skilled assistants….
Okay, okay, I know. The argument is easier if I focus on porcelain vases and silver ewers.
Consider this: Over the last few years, several important institutions in the craft world have plucked the dirty word from their name, like a tick from a dog’s fur. Among them, the California College of Arts and Crafts became the California College of the Arts. And perhaps most famously, New York’s American Craft Museum morphed into the Museum of Arts & Design. Have they flung open the gates of the craft ghetto and escaped into the more profitable—and respectable—blue yonder? Or have they muddled their brand identities? Or both?
American Craft magazine, the in-house organ of the American Craft Council, is currently undergoing a long-needed overhaul to emphasize craft’s dynamic intersection with the worlds of fashion, design, architecture, fine art and folk art. In doing so, the Council hopes to significantly broaden and reshape the dialogue in the field. Let’s hope they succeed brilliantly.
Meanwhile, back in the artists’ studios….as the semantic “craft” debate rages on, important artwork is being made in a wide variety of traditional media. Vibrant, provocative, original works that slap traditional notions of scale, beauty and function upside the head. Works that dare to be ugly or useless. Works that not only make you sigh, or instinctively reach out to touch them, but works that make you think. Works by artists like Martin Puryear, Wendy Maruyama, Michael Lucero and Josiah McElheny (winner of a MacArthur “genius” award last year)—to name but a handful.
So I’m interested to tune in to the big craft hoo-hah being put out on PBS next month. Let’s hope that the usual public television reverence is spiked with some real rigor and feistiness. Let’s hope that they trot out not only the usual suspects, the “acknowledged masters” of their media. Let’s hope that they also spotlight the boundary pushers and pull back the curtain on the market bias in a constructive, non-whiny way.
In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you. Let me know which craft artists you think are furthering the dialogue in the most thoughtful and provocative ways.
April 6th, 2007 10:19
Your concern about crafts as “Art” really goes to the deeper issue of “what is art?”. However, before I go off the deep end I might point out that the Boston Museum of Fine Arts currently has an exhibition of Japanese basketry (http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=2453). The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA has an exhibition of native American art (which is really crafts).
In a pragmatic sense, one could compare objects that are considered to be “Art” (a pickled shark, a rumpled bed littered with condoms) with things that are considered to be merely “Crafts” (a knitted tea cozy, a wood carving of a New England sea captain smoking a pipe). The operative word here is probably “considered”. The perception of the viewer should carry more weight than the intentions of the artist. One should explore the thought processes of people viewing the Yosemite Valley with what they think when they observe a painting by Caravaggio. Too often the discussion revolves around what an artist or craftsperson is thinking when they create an object. If a person wants his creations to be treated as Art he should educate himself in the ways that people perceive art. Once an object leaves the artist’s studio and is in the hands of a buyer or museum, the thought processes of the artist are almost irrelevant; this is particularly true after the artist has died.
Ron Ratney
April 6th, 2007 17:46
Thanks for your thoughtful comments. You’ve gone to the heart of the debate: what is art and who gets to decide? Right now, it seems like the rich collectors who overpay for decaying sharks in formaldehyde have taken the bully pulpit, letting their sheckels do the talking.
But speaking of tea cosies, take a look at the Museum of Arts and Design’s recent exhibition Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, which shows that even the homiest of crafts can be reinterpreted in surprisingly original and innovative ways. Why can’t they be used for cultural commentary? Why can’t they be considered contemporary art? If you’re saying that the hearts and minds of the beholder need the attitude adjustment in order for that to happen, then allow me to stand up and make the case. When it comes to craft, curators are beginning to seeing the light. But I think the market (dealers, critics and collectors) lag behind.