Reading 1

Through reading “Art Versus Craft” by Nancy Selvage and “Towards a Standard of Beauty” by Soetsu Yanagi, I understand a little more about the difference between craft and art.

As described by Soetsu Yanagi, craft is relying on tradition to guide the production while art is about the innovation. I see this happen a lot in my own work as I am more keen to fall back onto historical vessels and try to reproduce for the sake of making something that I know is beautiful. A lot of artists are able to conquer that idea and make it art by going the next step and pushing the limitations of surface design or representation. For me, the innovation is the step that is the scariest step to take as an artist. I found this article fascinating as well when she talks about how traditions of Japanese art are depicted and how the crafts grew under the oppression of the samurai. In reading this article, I beg the question of why we celebrate the historical traditions as craft and classify it as art in a museum? Where are the boundaries of making art verses craft? This essay is older compared to Paul Greenhalgh’s essays on the topic of craft but states just the same of how the museums classify the artists rather than the artist’s classifying themselves.

In “Art Versus Craft,” Nancy takes another direction on the debate.  She gives examples of art that push the boundaries from tradition. A cup that isn’t a cup for use versus a plate that has only the intention to be a plate. When Nancy talks about being a potter involves, “aesthetic choices, commitment, and risk” (p 11), I think back to the fur cup and the risk the artist took taking a comforting object such as a tea cup but making it grotesque. The artistic quality of creating the fur cup was very beautiful and precise. The effort to put it out there was commitment and the statement that it conveyed was risk. How many times does my art meet all three? As a student I feel more reliant on aesthetics. But where can I push the envelope with my own art? How can my work become art on it’s own versus having the stamp: “homemade”?