Page 71 - Constructing Craft

The academies and exhibitions, the critics and connoisseurs,
had done their best to introduce a distinction between Art with a
capital A and the mere existence of a craft, be it that of the
painter or the builder. Now the foundations on which art had
rested throughout its existence were being undermined from
another side. The Industrial Revolution began to destroy the
very traditions of solid craftsmanship; handiwork gave way to
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machine production, the workshop to the factory.

The leaders of the Arts and Crafts movement had attempted to counter the

perceived loss of craftsmanship by focussing on craft, while new art movements

such as Dadaism and Surrealism challenged the whole concept of ‘art with a capital
A’. Throughout the nineteenth century painting, sculpture and printmaking –

sometimes referred to as the fine arts – no longer filled the traditional role of
portraying reality in ways that had been conventionally understood ‒ art reflecting

nature. By the middle of the twentieth century the crafts – often called the ‘applied

arts’ ‒ were also producing objects that appeared to have no discernible function

other than to be looked at and admired. In the twentieth century defining the
difference between art and craft had become more complex and problematic.

The roles of artists and craftspeople had also changed. During the late nineteenth

century and for much of the twentieth century artists were ‘understood to be unique

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individuals, dedicated to their “vocation”, imbued with special charisma’ and often
appeared to exist in a realm apart from the rest of society – a form of modern-day

sage. However, as Bernard Smith, an Australian art historian, suggested in 1976,

whereas in the past the artist had served as a hero – to enrich civilization –
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increased democratisation had eroded that privileged position. The economic
structures of the late twentieth century had made artists increasingly more
dependent on the patronage of grants and public funding thus drawing artists back

closer to their position in pre-Renaissance times when the terms ‘artist’ and
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‘craftsman’ were intertwined. In the meantime, craftspeople had been working in
the other direction and many discovered that they could exist without government

support because their work was in demand.

Some commentators in New Zealand were aware of the changes but their critique
had to be expressed carefully. New Zealand in the early 1950s, when the studio

Constructing Craft