Craft and Art Essay Example For Students

Craft and Art Essay As a work ideology, an aesthetic, and a form of work organization, craft can and does exist independent of art worlds, their practitioners, and their defini tions. In the pure folk definition, a craft consists of a body of knowledge and skill which can be used to produce useful objects: dishes one can eat from, chairs one can sit in, cloth that makes serviceable clothing, plumbing that works, electrical wiring that carries current. From a slightly different point of view, it consists of the ability to perform in a useful way: to play music that can be danced to, serve a meal to guests efficiently, arrest a criminal with a minimum of fuss, clean a house to the satisfaction of those who live in it. To speak of usefulness implies the existence of a person whose purposes define the ends for which the objects or activities will be useful. Those pur poses arise in some world of collective action in which they arc characteristic, part of the definition of what kind of world it is. Serving a meal to guests efficiently might, for instance, be part of the world of commercial catering, in which the development of a stable clientele who can be fed at a profit is the end in view. Or it might be part of one’s domestic world, in which case the object is to satisfy the appetites for food and graceful social intercourse of one’s family, friends, and acquaintances. In both cases, utility is measured by a standard which lies outside the world that is or might have been con structed around the activity itself. For there is a world of haute cuisine and etiquette which treats the enjoyment of food and its service as ends in them selves, the measurement of utility referring to standards developed and ac cepted by knowledgeable participants in that world. (The distinction be tween utilities which are part of the world constructed around the activity itself and those measured by standards imported from other worlds—call them â€Å"intrinsic† and â€Å"extrinsic† or â€Å"practical† utilities—will occupy us throughout.) Defining craft as the knowledge and skill which produce useful objects and activities implies both an aesthetic, standards on which judgments of par ticular items of work can be based, and an organizational form in which the evaluative standards find their origin and logical justification. The organiza tional form is one in which the worker does his work for someone else usually a client, customer, or employer—who defines what is to be done and what the result should be. The employer understands that the worker   possesses special skills and knowledge but regards it as appropriate to have the final say himself as to the suitability of the result. The worker may know better ways of doing things, not known to someone outside the craft, but recognizes the employer’s right to the final word. Both recognize that the object of the activity is to make something the employer can use for his purposes, whatever they may be. Although a worker sometimes makes things for his own use, that does not alter the point I want to emphasize, that the object is made to serve someone’s need for a useful object. If a person defines his work as done to meet someone else’s practical needs, then function, defined externally to the intrinsic character of the work, is an important ideological and aesthetic consideration. If the piece that is made has no evident or possible practical use or if it is totally unsuited to its ostensible use, the craftsman who made it (a craftsman being someone who accepts the craft ideology I am describing) will probably receive and feel vulnerable to severe criticism from his colleagues. I will give some exam ples later. In addition to function, craftsmen accept a second aesthetic standard: virtuoso skill. Assyrian Art EssayUnder the heading of â€Å"minor arts,† beautiful craft objects are displayed in shows and museums, win prizes for their beauty, contribute to the reputations of the craftsmen who make them, become the subject of books and the occasion for demonstrations of â€Å"how to do it,† and even furnish the basis on which teaching jobs are given and held. In short, not only do some people care to make the distinction between beautiful and ordinary craft objects, but there are substantial rewards for making more beautiful objects while adhering to craft standards. Artist-craftsmen have higher ambitions than ordinary craftsmen. While they may share the same audiences, institutions, and rewards, they also feel some kinship with fine art institutions. They sec a continuity between what they do and what fine artists do, even though they recognize that they have chosen to pursue the ideal of beauty they share with fine artists in a more limited arena. What constitu tes beauty can of course be the subject of con siderable controversy, but it is the third major criterion according to which people judge work and to which they orient their own activity. We might imagine the differentiation of craftsmen and artist-craftsmen as a typical historical sequence. A craft world, whose aesthetic emphasizes utility and virtuoso skill and whose members produce works according to the dictates of clients or employers operating in some extracraft world, develops a new segment.2 The new segment’s members add to the basic aesthetic an emphasis on beauty and develop sonic additional organizational elements which in part free them from the need to satisfy employers so com pletely. These artist-craftsmen develop a kind of art world around their ac tivities; we might reasonably call it a â€Å"minor art† world. The world contains much of the apparatus of such full-fledged â€Å"major arts† as painting or sculpture: shows, prizes, sales to collectors, teaching positions, and the rest. Not all craft worlds develop such an artistic beaut)-oriented segment (plumbing, e.g., has not). But where an art segment develops, it usually co exists peacefully with the more purely utilitarian craft segment.