1987

In this time line I pull quotes to illustrate a thread in popular and scholarly writing and criticism about glass. Here we will see current glass artists defending their art against the accusations and separating themselves from these stereotypes and, hopefully, find out how and where the now-common opinion was born. Fundamentally, the general thesis seems to be born of the question, What Is Art? This question I will leave to others to answer, here I am only documenting the written history of a popular way of thinking and a popular taste.

1987 Christopher Knight:

[excerpted] “The most common question asked about the rather extraordinary state of the crafts today is perhaps the least productive: Have the crafts become a form of fine art? The issue raised by such a question is a false one. Art is a concept whose clusters of moments is perpetually reconfiguring itself. To attempt to answer the unproductive question is to assume that the art-cluster is timeless and eternal—that a woven basket or a beaded collar, a crystal goblet or a maple rocking chair need only be slipped into the timeless and eternal mold of art to see how it fits. If enough fit seamlessly, there follows the erroneous declaration, ‘Crafts are art!’

…On the surface, things have never been better in the craft arena. For one, business is booming. A whopping 286 artisans are represented in the show [American Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, traveling exhibit, sponsored by Phillip Morris Cos., Inc.]… The range of materials and kinds of crafts included—ceramics, jewelry, weaving, furniture, glass blowing, basketry, etc.—seem endless. The numbers alone suggest demand for the crafts is high, and the general assumption is that the explosion of interest, which began well over a decade ago, hasn’t yet peaked. If this huge exhibition truly represents its curator’s assessment of the cream of the crop, think how enormous the rest of the field must be.

Almost all of the work in the show could be divided into one of two groups. One is objects that try so hard to be hip you want to gag (most of these have pastel color schemes, jagged edges, and asymmetrical designs). The other category encompasses objects so ‘sincere’ in the old-timey goodness of their natural materials and painstaking methods that you want to gag twice.
What is the primary source of the affliction that has kept the crafts, as a whole, becalmed and bereft of anything but the most tepid excitement? It is instructive in this regard to consider that art critics are forever being berated for not giving adequate attention to the crafts, be they baskets, quilts, or ceramics. Certainly, there are critics who have written well about one or another medium in general or artisan in particular. Yet, if the crafts today had any genuine vitality, as the contributors to the show’s weighty catalog keep insisting they have, it hasn’t surfaced in anything but the most sporadic and ineffectual way. What such a complaint actually reveals is a queasy but unspoken sense that, in the whole explosive phenomenon that has taken place since the 1960s, not a single persuasive critical voice has emerged from within the burgeoning crafts movement itself. The whole arena is marked with a near total absence of criticality.

Much of what passes for critical discussion in the show’s catalog is, in fact, nothing more than moony atavism. I had to blink my eyes when I read the following, which appears early in the catalog’s introduction: ‘As our world becomes more dependent on technology, we are required to do specialized tasks that often disassociate us from a sense of total accomplishment. Craft, which by its very nature represents a unity of hand and spirit, counteracts this alienation, reaffirming the human element in daily life. Amid mass production the craft experience can impart greater meaning to individual expression.

Surely that bit of charmingly old-fashioned nonsense was written circa 1886 by William Morris, the founder of the arts-and-crafts movement in England, and not 100 years later, as credited in the text, by Paul J. Smith, director of the American Craft Museum! Smith left a few rather important words out of his exhortation, which ought to have gone like this: ‘Amid mass production, the craft experience can impart the myth [italics Knight’s] of greater meaning to individual expression.’

The perfume of nostalgia has never made for a healthy environment in which to think clearly, but it surely is a tried-and-true technique for selling wares. As I said, business is booming in the craft world. The poetry of the fiscal and not the physical, is a big part of the store of American craft today… Spurred on by endless urgings from the leisure industry, a vast and solid body of ordinary people who quilt, throw pots, build bookshelves, and make jewelry is loose upon the land... Why the do-it-your-self, artsy-craftsy phenomenon really began to take off in the 1960s is a complicated and not uninteresting question. (Goodbye William Morris, hello Phillip Morris.) Needless to say, it never gets addressed in Lucie-Smith’s often stupefying essay tracing the history of contemporary craft in America. Instead he winds up flailing about the quagmire-issue of whether or not the crafts have become art.

‘Poetry of the Physical’ claims that mastery of materials is the highest aspiration of craftsman and thus the lesson we can learn from studying these objects. Another name for mastery of materials is technology. As with all material objects that are solely the product of applied technology, an art based on mastery of materials is simply design. As long as mere design remains the guiding spirit of American craft, I wouldn’t count on the kind of radical disruption of that could pump some juice into this mostly tire stuff. Technology has never been a cause for faith. Meanwhile, it would appear that the illusion of a vital crafts movement might spell trouble for those very few artists who actually are producing extraordinary work. (Yes, there most certainly are a few superb artists in the show.) How? At the moment, the craft world provides a parallel universe into which a gifted artist will periodically disappear, his sharp point dulled and eloquent voice muffled in a space where mushy paeans to ‘the craft experience’ are taken seriously. I don’t worry that these artists will somehow contaminate their own work on such voyages; I worry that we will pillory them with guilt by association.

The attentive reader will have noticed by now that I’ve managed to get through this entire review without mentioning the name of a single craftsman or craftswoman. The omission is intentional. Since the show is essentially about nothing other than shopping, far be it from me to write ad copy….”

Knight, C. Unknown Title. September 13, 1987. American Craft Today magazine. Included in “Last Change for Eden: Selected Art Criticism by Christopher Knight 1979-1994.” Edited by Wilson, M. The Foundation for Advanced Critical Studies, Inc. 1995. (p 289-292).

[Transcribed by ABJ Seattle Glass Online]