Handmade and Craftsman

Teaching goal 1 what is different between art and handcrafts? 2 what is design? What is art?

Question 1 What is design? What is art? 2 Why the experience of faulty function is very useful? 3 What is mean “abstract expressionism”? 4 What is formalism? 5 How to understand art and handicrafts?

Homework Dictating CET-4 word list 1-3 Reciting CET-4 composition Simulating CET-4 test Reading aloud the text at least twice.

What is design? What is art?

David Pye’s work contains elements of the designer and the craftsman. His bowls and boxes are easy to understand forms and they present none of the complexities that some kinds of contemporary art present to the understanding. He represents design rather than art in crafts.

For, broadly speaking, the contemporary craft world divides between those people who are making object that can bee used, or look as if they can be used, and those who produce objects that are plainly useless and have ambitions to be taken seriously as art objects. This distinction is rather crude because even function can be compromised.

For example, fans of handicraft can enjoy the experience of faulty function. A famous American potter, Betty Woodman, produced some beautiful scalloped, large cups. A delight to clash in both hands, the cups were popular but hopelessly unusable in their saucers. It never mattered.

Why the experience of faulty function is very useful?

One owner remarked that the fault made him more careful; it obliged him to pause and think about drinking the tea, making it a little ritual. It is important to recognize, however, that although a lot of craft work has function much further down the list of priorities than would be acceptable in design, there remain for a number of potters, weaves and furniture makers the idea that good service to the client rests in object being able to perform well.

The crafts world divides between those who have a conservative ideology, of whom Pye is a good example, and those who seek a form of decorative arts Avant garde based often on a denial not only of function but also the primacy of skills. Certainly, in the 1980s we have seen a considerable growth in the category or unusable craft-a proliferation of objects that are inclined towards painting or sculpture.

In a sense, although they would loathe the idea, Bernard Lcacd and Michael Cardew are the fathers of the the upswell in art-crafts objects. For, as soon as people were willing to buy handmade pots because they liked their look rather than because they were cheap and useful, a trend begun whereby craft objects could be sold for their aesthetic content alone. And once the process had begun it was (and still is) unclear where you should stop.

Once function has been set aside as a controlling criterion, the craftsperson runs into a peculiar area of no rules: if a thing has no longer to contain soup or be sat on or to keep someone warm, then it might as well take any form that is fancied.

What is mean “abstract expressionism”?

Look, for example, at the United States. There exists in the United States some of the finest craftsmanship in the world-the traditional or, as one should say, the quasi-traditional craftsman in America is often awesome. At the same there is a large and growing industry in art-craft, much of it abstract or non-figurative and all of it non-functional. The development of this phenomenon in the United States is not surprising because it is rooted in that peculiarly American invention-Abstract Expressionism.

Obviously the craftsperson, especially the art-school trained craftsperson, was bound to be fascinated by developments in this kind of painting-even more so than with more formal, European abstract painting of the 1920s and 1930s-because of the presence of gesture, the mark of the land and the arm.

he mark of the hand is a very important element in the twentieth-century crafts, as will be discussed below. When craftsmen looked as a modern painting they recognized that painting was no longer fulfilling any particular function other than simply to be there. When they reflected on the role of craft work, they recognized that, once the function of a craft work was taken away, what remained was a thing: a “thing” in the same sense that a Jackson Pollock is “a thing” and for all intents and purposes without much content.

What is formalism?

Moreover, as the craftsperson saw, what gave a Pollock or a Kline its content was gesture and “expressiveness”-naturally, obviously, the craftsperson thought: “I can’t do that”. Expressionism gave way to various kinds of other abstractions-formalism in which shape and texture and color and line were the prime considerations: really very much like flower arranging. Inevitably, many people in the crafts disciplines followed suit.

For example, the Dutch ceramicist Irene Vonck makes vessel-like objects from sausages of clay. It is not a greatly skilled activity, although often the results are, to my taste, extremely attractive. In the rough, spontaneous fashion they are a pastiche. For, when you first glance at them you think they are richly embellished with modeling. Take a second look and you see the rough, scalloped trough where her hands have pulled and dug at the damp clay.

Question 1 What is design? What is art? 2 Why the experience of faulty function is very useful? 3 What is mean “abstract expressionism”? 4 What is formalism? 5 How to understand art and handicrafts?