Page 80 - Constructing Craft

apart from being élitist, to argue that the useless things be
called art, and the useful, craft. These distinctions are
reflections in the art world of older, more hieratic, class
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societies, and have no place in a modern democratic society.

Smith then linked the abandonment of the distinction with changes to arts and crafts

education and suggested that students should be required to study both art and,

ideally, two crafts so they could become flexible. Smith’s call for a more conciliatory
approach to the division in some ways reflected the movement of the debate over

the previous thirty to forty years. The earlier discussion had taken place almost

exclusively on the pre-Second World War, Northern Hemisphere stage where art
was compared to traditional craft. When Smith presented his ideas it was in the

Southern Hemisphere in a less class-conscious society and craft was no longer
bound by traditional restraints. In addition, in Australia craft education was

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becoming more common and establishing a more formal academic structure – a
trend that New Zealand followed in the 1980s.

Pierre Bourdieu

Discussion on the art/craft debate in New Zealand before the 1990s did not call on
the ideas of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to any great extent. This was

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largely because his work had not been widely translated into English, his writing –
even in translation – was particularly dense and his research into French cultural

taste and the relationship between cultural preference and class seemed too

obscure and remote for any meaningful analysis of art and craft in New Zealand.
However, his writings offer a theory of human interaction that help explain why

craftspeople in New Zealand found it so difficult to be accepted into the world of fine

art.

Bourdieu’s work emphasised social and cultural factors in maintaining established
patterns of social stratification and power. He explained society as a social space

where people exist in relation to one another primarily based on economic capital
(money and property); cultural capital (cultural goods and services, and educational

credentials); social capital (networks and acquaintances) and symbolic capital which

is identified with the components of legitimacy such as honour, prestige and
recognition. Symbolic capital could also be linked to other elements that are

Constructing Craft