Post # 7: Wrestling with Glenn, part 2: Industry and Craft
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 12:36PM My intention here is not to pick on Glenn Adamson, but his willingness to call factory produced objects like slip cast diner mugs and toilets craft has stirred some interesting thoughts in my mind, just as Garth Clark’s “How Art Envy Killed the Craft Movement” did last fall.
First off, I was very pleased that Glenn posted a comment after my previous post and then posted the whole thing on Critical Craft Forum’s facebook sight. (If you missed his comment or mine back to him, check them out.) But as I have pondered the response, I have had to wonder if he understood my post. His major objection to my post was that it seems stingy and territorialist to exclude factory workers from using the term craft. Let me share a quote here (interrupted with my own thoughts).
Glenn: When studio practitioners try to retain proprietary relation to the term craft they are inevitably faced with the fact of high skill levels in non-studio, industrial situations.
My thought: Is taking slip cast toilets out of molds and fettling them roughly equivalent to designing and turning a large variety of pots by hand and carefully glazing drying and decorating them, then firing and marketing them. Yes there is some hand skill in factory manufacture, but most of that skill is directed at speed while the pressures of preparing the materials, designing, firing, and marketing are handled by other people.
Glenn: Usually they (studio craftsmen) end up directing attention away from actual skill, process, materials, technique etc., and towards social concerns like satisfaction, independence and aesthetics.
Me: My post did none of the above, unless you count my comment that the diner mugs appear subdued compared with peasant rice bowls as an aesthetic criticism. I actually turned that comparison into a form and function compliment that would favor the diner mug as craft.
Glenn: My feeling is that distinguishing craft from industry on this basis is just not going to work – the opposition between the autonomy of a studio craftsman and the alienation of an industrial worker is not total, and often doesn’t even apply. Many factory workers are plenty satisfied, precisely as a result of their skill.
Me: I agree with much of this, and have found in my personal experience that the reverse is sometimes true. That is to say although I am an autonomous studio craftsman, I feel alienated much of the time. My independence is a consolation, but it does not solve the problem of being a wage slave; it just means I am entirely responsible for whatever money comes in or does not come in. Even though I enjoy my work and relationships with customers, I spend a lot of time alone, and there is a lot of anxiety connected with getting the work made and to market on schedule. Again I agree that this type of anxiety is not a concern in a healthy factory situation, but it should probably be noted that not all factory situations are as happy and healthy as the Kohler plant in Wisconsin (mommy what’s a sweat-shop?).
I know. All of this seems a bit nit-picky, so lets get to the real issue. What is craft? Craft is essentially a summary of humanity’s efforts to provide useful and/or beautiful objects to comfort us both physically and emotionally. If we stick to this basic definition, both art and industry would be encompassed. But there are historical reasons why we have drawn lines between them. In Garth’s “How Art Envy Killed the Craft Movement,” he claims that Craft was born with a twin during the Arts and Craft movement in the mid-nineteenth century. This twin is Design, which (according to Garth) has flourished over the last fifty years as craft has languished, and together the twins make up the “applied arts.” The characteristic difference, which has distinguished the twins from one another is that Craft is made by hand while Design is produced by industry. Of course craft predates industry and design by thirty or forty thousand years, and design for industry was being practiced from the dawn of the industrial revolution (well before William Morris’s reactive arts and crafts movement). So perhaps Craft and Design were reborn during the arts and crafts movements and together make up the applied arts.
Certainly our modern understanding of what craft is was deeply influenced by the arts and crafts movement and has continued evolving since then. And of course the field of design has had its high points and low points, but why not preserve that original distinguishing characteristic? Glenn Adamson correctly argues that there is skillful hand-work being done in factory settings. And for Glenn this is grounds to call their efforts craft. It is worth considering. One thing that I keep stumbling over as I contemplate craft and industry is that a practitioner of craft (at least in the field of ceramics) actually designs or at the very least interprets the design as he/she makes, while a factory worker simply “finishes” a well designed product after springing it from its mold. That seems like a pretty substantive difference to me.
Part of Glenn's original argument for including industrial products with craft was that he bonds with the objects in an identical way. How does that hold up? Humans are programmed to bond with objects whether they are plastic Barbie dolls or corn-shuck dolls, styrofoam cups, industrial mugs, hand-thrown mugs, wheel barrows or i-pods. I don’t think i-pods styrofoam cups or Barbie dolls have any human “finishing” labor, but all of these could be called design or applied arts, and will be referred to as "artifacts" in the future. But only the hand-made mug and hand-made corn-shuck doll meet my understanding of craft. If we look at craft vs. industry in furniture, the arguments get more complex, as high-end factory made and hand-made to design methods resemble one another pretty closely. I don’t feel I have the expertise to address this aspect.
As I mentioned earlier Glenn’s primary objection to withholding the term craft from industrial products and the factory workers who help produce them is that it seems stingy and territorialistic. I can see what he means, and I am certainly willing to compromise by calling their work "factory-craft" (and i-phones “machine craft” for that matter) or "designer-craft," but to just lump it all together as craft ignores significant substantive issues and the history of each discipline. Perhaps I am protecting my territory. Is there anything wrong with that? I have a dog in this race. My livelihood depends on people being able to easily understand why my pots cost more than industrially produced products. My unions are craft organizations like the ACC and the Southern Highland Craft Guild understand the difference and the importance of maintaining a public understanding of the difference.
I am reminded of one of my favorite zingers from Garth’s “Envy” address. In noting the inherent conflict in William Morris’s socialist agenda and his production of high-end craft for the wealthy, he said “It wasn’t quite the same as Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess, but it came perilously close.” How is it that an art/craft scholar and critic with a doctorate working at one of the most prestigious museums in western civilization claims solidarity with factory workers while suggesting a practitioner of craft has no right to define craft narrowly. This is just an intellectual point for Adamson, not a manifesto, but I confess that it is a little confusing to me. If he is bored with traditional craft he is certainly free to write about design and factory craft, but why appropriate the word craft which refers to an independent discipline?
Do factory laborers want their work to be called Craft or have their craftsmanship recognized? I am happy to do the latter. Labor has a dignity that is separate from craft. I know this because I regularly cut and stack wood, dig and process clay and glaze materials, etc. As our society has become more reliant on machinery and technology we have begun to regard manual labor as loathsome or beneath us. I sympathize strongly with factory workers precisely because I understand hard physical work very well. But doing a job well is its own reward as the saying goes, and if Americans won’t do it, Mexican immigrants will (Our economy would fall apart without their labor). But labor and even skill or craftsmanship do not necessarily imply craft is being produced.
There is something Orwellian about calling industrial products craft. They may have already supplanted craft in many ways, but that doesn’t mean that they have become craft. A factory has the power of a corporation behind it, and regardless of what the US Supreme Court has decided, most people can readily distinguish between corporations and individuals. Corporations are not people, war is not peace and industrial products are not craft. Those things seem obvious to me, but language is a tool that is evolving constantly. Care and conscientious discussion must accompany the shifting meanings implied by language. I may well lose this debate but I hope this writing adds to the collective opinion of dissent.
Reader Comments (5)
Thanks again Mark for the comments - I'll keep this short (and also repost on the CCF). As you suggest, my position for some time now has been to refuse to define craft as a 'noun' or a category. One reason I've made this move in my work is that it simply doesn't work in practice, for the reasons I mentioned in my original article and subsequent post. The other is that I see the emergence of craft as a category of thing as historically specific - bounded geographically, as you say, but also chronologically. In my new book the Invention of Craft (out beginning of next year) I track the emergence of craft as a discrete thing, opposed to art and industry, to the period from 1750 to 1850. I also argue that this separate status no longer holds, either in theory or practice. So I am not actually calling industrial products craft - I am saying that they are crafted, which is a different thing, and also a matter of degree. See David Pye's work on this.
The question of whether I can 'bond' with the diner mug is actually a bit of a red herring, and maybe I made a mistake emphasizing that in the original article. You can love something completely mass produced just as easily as something handmade. Otherwise people wouldn't collect vinyl.
Thanks again Glenn for sharing your thoughts here. Your argument is interesting, but if as you say, craft as a distinct entity separate from art and industry no longer exists, what do studio craftsmen like myself actually produce? Is it art in the trappings of craft media? Is it extremely small scale and inefficient industry? Are you actually going further than Garth Clark by saying not only is the craft movement dead but craft itself is dead? Does it matter what practitioners want to call it? Just food for thought as you write your books.
OH MY GOD! How can you possibly have time in your life to keep this art and craft stuff alive. It's like talking about free will and predestination. It's all predestined, but we don't know what it is so we think we make decisions based on the concept of freewill, but aren't those so called free will decisions also predestined? Has anyone ever won an argument? Is it really worth taking the time. It's like telling a religious fanatic from any religion that Buddah, Krishna, Mohammed, Zoraster, Jesus, and Abraham are in reality, one in the same. What would be the point? Anyway I feel better. Now I'll take my meds and go to bed.
Rick Berman
rickbermanceramics@gmail.com
rickbermanceramics.com
Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.
Philo c. 50 AD
Rick,
I kind of love this comment. Perhaps as you say we are just fanatics with different points of view. I love craft and enjoy writing as a hobby, and I enjoy a good argument as much as anyone else. Garth and Glenn are craft writers and critics who take craft seriously too. So you might think of us as all arguing about the same faith tradition without trying to convert one another. Perhaps I am Martin Luther arguing with the catholic church. Luther may or may not have won his argument but he changed the debate and history.
Coincidentally you live in Atlanta where MLK Jr. was from. He didn't win the race argument, but he had a very positive impact by standing up for his beliefs. My argument certainly is not as important as ML's or MLK, Jr's, but as feeble as it is, it is my personal "great battle." Perhaps you should be more patient with me like the philosopher you quote suggests :)
Thank you for this and related posts and your perseverance in positing the value of using the word craft to identify a type of discreet object. In many of the art/craft/design discussions- the hierarchy of market value or prestige/opportunity value associated to each has been proposed as motivations for 'makers' to prefer one term over another. I think there is validity to that point.
I have been wondering for some time through these discussions though, why we do not discuss how those motivations may be influencing the curator/ critic field. In the name of progress or ideal of expanded creative realm, it distances itself from craft as noun and as an object based practice - which expands the institutions/curators resources and broader art world prestige instead of taking on the difficult task of advocating for the distinctive voice and value of craft as noun.
I understand why one would not want to be associated with every popular culture notion of craft- but I don't see for example, painting curators worried about confusion of what they deal with, and the $20. sofa painting market...It seems more revealing of a lack of confidence in the distinction of their own area, or the opportunity to borrow credibility and authority of more academically or economically advanced fields.
There are clearly overlaps and hybrids, but it seems to be presented as if maintaining the qualities of what has historically been crafts distinguishing characteristics, is inflexible or unprogressive. I think it is limiting, not expansive if our notion of progress of a field is that it becomes part of some homogenized ideal of contemporary expression. I think we should be conscious of what may motivate some strong voices and be mindful of the potential consequences.
As an educator I worry about the loss of knowledge, ( ie, why have a ceramics program, it can all be taught as sculpture ...) but also the loss of voices, as I observe constantly students from modest backgrounds who find their voice in a particular discipline/ medium, or who access their courage through formats associated with daily life.