The Art / Utility Schism Paul Melser August 2008

Transcription

1 The Art / Utility Schism Paul Melser August 2008 Introduction I am interested in the way people make a distinction between art and craft and how that happened. I hope this talk will encourage discussion of some of those distinctions in order to encourage the production of craftwork made for use in the domestic environment. That this discussion needs to be held stems from my observed lack of hand made objects in the shops and homes I visit. Since I make domestic ware and have done so for the last forty years you may consider that I have a vested interest in trying to encourage people to make things for that domestic environment. I most certainly do, not only to justify my own doggedness, but also to encourage some diversity and competition. I started to make pots in the late 1950 s in the pottery run by Peter Stichbury at Ardmore Teachers College where my father was a lecturer. The fact that such a facility was available was a reflection of the values of that era and for a full explanation of that history I can recommend to you the forthcoming book Cone Ten Down by Moyra Eliot and Damian Skinner due out in March next year. From the 50 s until around the mid 1980 s production of useful objects for the domestic environment was a highly valued pursuit. This was not only the heyday of the craft of ceramics but also for hand made furniture, fabric, basket making, jewellery, glass. The general population was very aware of the subtleties and distinctions around the handmade object. A story that circulated at the time told of a visiting potter who when asked to unpack the pots he was bringing with him for an exhibition was engaged in a very discerning discussion of the work by the customs agent. That potter s surprise and delight, and the frequency that I heard the story from a number of sources was illustrative of the pleasure taken generally in the business of craft production. The level of awareness claimed by that story is now very rare. The number of people who come into my showroom and know the difference between a wood-fired pot and one from the gas kiln or know the difference between say a Celadon and a Chun glaze is very small indeed. A craft object whether it be a chair, a garment or a pot revolves around three distinct relational elements. Those relationships between the maker, the material and the user are potentially very rich and fruitful. In the current context of global overproduction and consumption any concentration on the material world and the world of the other is to be encouraged. A full discussion of the issues around craft in the twenty-first century is obviously impossible here. What I would like to concentrate on is the seductive effect of the idea of Art for many engaged with ceramics. I must confess to being a victim of that seduction myself not so much in the pots I have made as in the fact that I have recently spent some years in Auckland and Wellington at Art Schools studying painting. It has actually been this time

2 2 spent studying art that has fashioned my current beliefs in the value of craftwork. The position I argue for is that art and craft embody differing value systems and that those embodied within the philosophical and theoretical craft paradigm have at least equal relevance today when compared with the values embodied in the art paradigm. History The argument between art and craft has not been one-sided. Advocates for both have at times tried to argue that their particular discipline was more worthy. I remember one discussion in the early sixties when Bernard Leach (or it might have been Michael Cardew) described with disapproval that one of his acolytes had made and glazed a little transistor radio out of clay. Being a very young idealist enthused with socialism and the idea of East / West fusion, I can imagine myself agreeing with Leach that this was a rather silly and frivolous use of pottery materials although I do remember thinking that this was not a very important issue. Leach s position had some ascendance in New Zealand until about the mid eighties the mug triumphed over the ceramic transistor radio. It was about the time of the removal of import restrictions by the Douglas Labour Government of 1984 to 87 that the pendulum started to swing in the other direction. By the late nineties the craft is best argument was totally dead and buried, there were very few mugs being made and potters renamed themselves ceramic artists in order to make transistor radios. Hand made utilitarian objects had ceased to be regarded as valued desirable life accessories. The re-branding of pottery as ceramic art was partly an economic response to the floods of imports that undermined the price structure around our rather inefficient pottery production. It was also an attempt to recapture the zeitgeist of the hand made object and its ability to reflect the new prosperity. The mug, except perhaps those made by such as Len Castle or Barry Brickell, struggled to stand as an icon of affluence or even difference. In the sixties both of these potters made domestic ware but by the mid eighties both had completely reoriented their production away from utility. After import restrictions were removed and the New Zealand economy was fully exposed to world production, locally produced luxury items especially those that were tainted by the somewhat puritan ideology that Leach espoused were very much a second choice. Ideologies and Influences The Craft Movement is not fully described only in terms of its place in the hierarchy of commodities to be manufactured and sold as a fashion brand; it is also involved in the market of ideologies. You could say that the work produced by both art and craft are the commodities that signify subscription to either one value set or the other. Leach s Craft ideology was evolved as a reaction to the industrial revolution and influenced by the socialist William Morris amongst others. Like Morris s, Leach s philosophy was an attempt at finding meaning in both the physical labour and living environment of the ordinary working men and women. His

3 3 discovery of eastern and particularly Japanese craftwork gave him a readymade value-system that interlocked very neatly with the philosophy of his anti-industrial antecedents. The equally influential Bauhaus movement of the same era advocated similar values in emphasising the dignity of domestic life through the objects used in that domestic arena. While the Bauhaus stressed hand made less, and focussed more on design and architecture, the notion of materiality - the nature and constitution of the materials used was important for both movements as a way of stressing the importance of man s relationship with nature. It is relevant to note here that Bernard Leach s Bahai belief system was an important influence on his assimilation of the Zen ideologies inherent within Japanese craft which placed stress on humility and simplicity. The Zen emphasis on hand making, simplicity, nature and discipline within everyday life was a package that he translocated almost holus bolus into post-industrial Britain. Even though that package did have considerable appeal in Britain it was an even better fit for the developing identity that was the do it yourself New Zealand of the sixties and seventies. It is worth a brief reference to the New Zealand painter Max Gimblett (currently living in New York) to give an example of the way external ideas and philosophies are incorporated into western culture. Gimblett has combined the Zen ideas of gesture with abstract expressionism and Jungian psychoanalysis. He marketed this particular fusion in a documentary film of him painting in which he acts out that mastery of gesture with paint to the accompaniment of noises that are reminiscent of Japanese martial arts. It is difficult to imagine the Tea Ceremony and Gimblett s painting performance having an underlying commonality, but they do. A major difference between the two lies in the understanding of the relationship of the practitioner with the medium being used. The tea ceremony is characterised by restraint, discipline and ritual, which focuses on the objects as the embodiment of Zen. Gimblett s performance is notable for the attention drawn towards him. The Art / Craft Schism Utility The Art / Craft distinction revolves around ideas of utility. There are two historical developments that go towards making this distinction. The first occurred during the Renaissance when massive resources were invested in publicly displayed religious works designed to express the importance and power of the Church and the political powers which underlay them. The theological changes of the Reformation, in establishing the possibility of an individual relation with God, also assisted in making a distinction between the elevated discourse of art and the more humble limitations of craft. It might be noted that this idea of an individuals particular relation with God laid the foundation for our modern individual centered society and capitalist consumerism. The second development grows from that consumerism and the availability of those marks of distinction that are now used to distinguish us from others

4 4 around us. Put simply, the commonality of the utilitarian object tends to contradict the contemporary aspiration for difference; whereas the art object tends to emphasise the ideas around individuality and personal branding that are valued within consumerism. That alienation between the art gallery and the utilitarian hand made object is a relatively new situation. In those halcyon years I referred to earlier no such distinction was made. Craft and art were shown in the same spaces and often at the same time in places like New Vision Gallery in Auckland. Now however the separation between these two expressive modes is complete. Douglas Lloyd Jenkins in the catalogue accompanying Martin Poppelwell s touring exhibition Serviette says: Innovative contemporary craft has come to be represented by a type of culturally inane non-functional object. Functional craft has become something almost entirely unplaceable at least within the art gallery context The response of many crafts people to this banishment from spotlights of the gallery has been to explicitly renounce function. Examples of this repudiation are legion: Rick Rudd s teapots, Martin Poppelwell s jugs with broken handles or Grayson Perry s vases. In all cases the pots even when they conform to a traditional or useable form use their similarity as a reference, which combines a rejection of use, the domestic environment and physicality with an affirmation of visual or cerebral values. This aspect of the art / craft distinction is based on a very narrow idea of utility. Although art is not useful in the sense that it is a tool in the way that a jug, plate or chair is a tool it is a tool, and it is useful, in the sense that it is a vehicle for saying or embodying something. The utility of the art object is as paramount as the utility of the plate or chair. It is used as a surrogate for its owner and its maker as an expression of signs of value on behalf of both. The objects we surround ourselves with make statements describing the way we want to be regarded and provide tangible evidence of the claim this is what I am. This suggestion is not unfamiliar. I am sure it would be possible for most people, if they worked hard at it, to describe a stranger almost as effectively by being introduced to their kitchen or lounge, as by being introduced to them in person. It needs no great leap of logic to see that utilitarian objects those teapots, vases or jugs are also the surrogate expression of their owner. Any object associated with a person, useable or not, is equally expressive of a value set, and / or, their circumstances. We are described by our choices. The demise of the craft movement of the sixties and seventies was caused by the failure of the objects produced to affirm the ascendant values of the time. But that failure does not imply that those values do not have relevance in today s circumstances.

5 5 The Avant-garde Another ideology with some responsibility for the art / utility schism is the development through the last century of the avant-garde in art. Avant-garde makes a distinction between tradition (the Academy) and new discoveries. It privileges the new over the old. This value of newness and originality or innovation is accepted and proclaimed generally throughout our society in sectors as diverse as the medical or fashion industries. If art were said to make any one claim about itself it would be that it is at the forefront of this affirmation of innovation. Privileging the new is also the foundation of free market and the basis of much of our global material consumption. In art, as in fashion, within modern economies, the emphasis on the short-term value of any particular object is an implied affirmation of the temporary value of any utility. Art avoids that early death sentence by claiming uniqueness and through its false rejection of utility. That art should be accorded such longevity is actually rather perverse since both art and craft are equally tied to passing cultural circumstances. The positive side of the avant-garde idea lies in its potential to expand the language of experience. In our current consuming context however, even this expansion of horizons and expectations, has potential downsides in that it emphasizes the consumption as a value in itself rather than the assimilation of that experience. Tradition is the accumulation of work within any particular discipline over time, but also across cultures. The postmodern ability to recognize value in diverse cultural production, and to fuse and morph it, might be seen as an equal resource for both sides of the avant-garde divide. There is however a different emphasis in the way these diverse cultural productions are assimilated. Within the craft movement more emphasis is placed on the technologies that produced the particular craft object. In embracing the technology the practitioner is enabled to come into direct contact with the value system inherent in that technology. When art refers to the past, as say Gimblett has, the reference concentrates on the outward manifestation of that tradition which is generally simply its appearance. The idea celadon for example encompasses a regard for subtlety, nuance and fine variation. This encourages a sensibility that is quite rare in contemporary society because it emphasizes contemplation and observation of subtlety rather than the spectacular. Additionally, the finest technical achievements of the past are so easy to achieve and even surpass with modern equipment that their significance is nullified unless their production utilizes traditional technology and materials. A copper red glaze from a modern gas kiln is not the same thing as the copper red from a seventeenth century Japanese wood-fired kiln. This distinction acknowledges that an aesthetic appreciation is concerned with an understanding of the relationship between materials and process and not simply concerned with superficial appearance. Pots fired in the anagama kiln you have here in Wellington, incorporate a value similar to say slow food. By contrast fast food incorporates its own implied affirmation of a particular set of values. The important thing

6 6 about this is that our understanding of process changes not only our preferences but also the actual taste of the food. Virtuosity The display of virtuosity provides another descriptor of the art /craft divide. In the past for both activities virtuosity was most often a display of technical expertise through the mastery of the medium. While crafts continue to emphasize the idea of mastery of the medium and the ideas of discipline and control and materiality that describes that mastery, art tends to emphasize a brilliance particular to the individual especially as that relates to ideas. The virtuosity of the art maker is harder to isolate and recognize through the relationship with materials in the current digital era since it is now possible to make things or present performance in almost all media with more finesse using outsourced skills or processes. Additionally currently available industrial processes are much more sophisticated and demonstrate greater precision and accuracy than is possible for any hand-making practitioner. More relevant and interesting these days is the evidence of the hand of the maker, not as in the past showing its command of the material, but for the relationship it expresses in its engagement with materiality and the buyer or user. The contemporary craft virtuoso leaves a mark of fallibility in order to make a contrast with the anonymity of the industrial process. For the Love of God I will finish by presenting a very short critique of an artwork that presents many of the arguments that I have made in this talk. That work is Damien Hurst s diamond encrusted skull entitled For The Love of God. Most of you will be familiar with photos of the work. It was first exhibited in the prestigious White Cube gallery in St James London just over a year ago. The work is a platinum sculpture, cast from a human skull, encrusted with eight and a half thousand diamonds and inset with the teeth from that skull. Most of Hirst s work, including this one, is made by others. No mention is made of the craftsman / jeweler who did make the work. The work reputedly cost fourteen million pounds to make and was put on the market for fifty million pounds. It is not known whether the work did indeed sell, or for what price, but Hirst has claimed that it sold for the asking price. If true, he has achieved the highest price for the work of a living artist through that sale. As you will all be aware the work created a great deal of publicity and controversy in keeping with other works from this artist like the shark or cow in formalin. For The Love of God is not valued so much for its exquisite manufacture or as an object of beauty as for the extravagance and outrageousness of its very being. Its utility as a tool is nil and yet its utility as a wealth-branding device is enormous. I am interested in this work because its statement as a claim of values is contradictory. It is obviously an icon of affluence; it certainly proclaims the financial power of its maker and owner; it is a modern day Fabergé egg that is accorded virtue and status on the basis of its sumptuous presentation and ostentatious cost. At the same time just because of the

7 7 gross overstatement of its sumptuousness and its very direct affirmation of cost as a value in itself, it can be regarded as a somewhat wry and cynical comment about the art world and therefore its owner. I m sure that Hirst would have been thrilled to capture the best of both worlds in making an object which appears to critique itself but which still sells for a ridiculous multi million pound sum. I am reminded of Leach and the transistor radio and wonder whether the radio is a critique or a promotion of the consumerism it represents. In spite of the fact that I have probably made this talk too long I have only canvassed a very few of the issues around the current favour for art over utility. I hope that airing these issues will encourage craftspeople to examine the reasons they make what they do and allow them to understand that making objects that are useful for the domestic space can be as expressive, interesting and valuable thing to be doing as making an art object to be looked at only.