Exploring the Relationship Between Art and Craft
Arts, Craft and Design
Arts, craft and design offers learners opportunities to develop their creative potential and gain the skills needed for career pathways in the creative, heritage and digital industries. It also promotes an appreciation of images and artefacts from different times and cultures.
The line between craft and fine art is often blurred. For example, artists like Judy Chicago used crafts skills to make her mixed-media artworks.
Definition
Art involves the creative expression of feelings, imagination and vision in a visual form that cannot be reproduced. Examples include painting, sculpture and drawing.
The Arts and Crafts movement emphasized the importance of nature for artists. Its founder, William Morris, encouraged the Pre-Raphaelites to study plants and the environment for inspiration. Morris also wanted to encourage a return to craftsmanship, which he believed had been lost in the industrial revolution.
Today, the boundaries between art and craft are increasingly blurred. In fact, a new trend in art is to incorporate craft skills into fine art. For example, Judy Chicago’s mixed-media installation artwork “The Dinner Table” features ceramics and needlework. The overlapping boundaries between art and craft create a complex relationship. The ambiguous distinction between the two disciplines contributes to the misunderstood and undervalued status of both.
Purpose
Arts and crafts are concerned with the making of things that serve a practical purpose. This is in contrast to art, which is primarily about self-expression and aesthetics.
Those who supported the Arts and Crafts movement did so out of a sense that society needed to change its priorities about the manufacture of goods. Its leaders were influenced by the ideas of historian Thomas Carlyle and of art critic John Ruskin, who believed that a healthy and moral society required handmade products that merged dignity with labour.
Today, the values of the Arts and Crafts movement continue to have resonance in our lives. For example, it was the Arts and Crafts movement that inspired the Pre-Raphaelite group whose members wished to return to simpler times and a more responsible consumption.
Techniques
There are a multitude of art techniques that can be used to create works of art. Examples include etching, which involves scratching an image into metal; screenprinting, which involves stencilling onto fabric; and lithography, which is drawing on a stone or plate with greasy substances to create an impression.
Painting methods include watercolor, acrylics and oil paintings. Other art techniques include sketching, cartooning and pyrography.
The founders of the Arts and Crafts movement were disenchanted with the quality of industrially produced goods and believed that design should be based on the principles of craftsmanship. They also wanted to revive traditional craftsmanship and hoped to raise the status of craftspeople. Morris, for example, sought to reintegrate artistic aesthetics into everyday craft objects, such as wallpapers.
Materials
A variety of materials can be used for art and craft. These include paper, wood, leather and clay as well as plastics and other synthetic materials. All crafts and art activities are regulated by consumer product safety laws. For example, 3D art materials such as plaster and plaster gauze, polymer clays, sculpting wire and foam shapes must be safe for use by children.
The Arts and Crafts movement was founded by people dissatisfied with the industrialization of modern society in the late 19th century. They believed that people should connect to the things they use through handcrafts made with quality materials. This approach was in opposition to the strictest minimalism that dominated contemporary artistic practice at the time. Handmade items based on the Arts and Crafts style are rare today.
History
The Arts and Crafts movement (which grew from a reaction to the shoddy quality displayed at the 1851 Great Exhibition, the very first world fair) promoted craftsmanship as well as a moral code. Figures like William Morris promoted a design philosophy based on the ideal that ‘a happy worker makes beautiful things regardless of ability’ and advocated truth in the use and nature of materials.
He encouraged designers to revive traditional techniques and set up workshops, and established progressive new art schools and technical colleges. He also helped establish London retailing firms to promote and sell their designs, such as Morris & Co and Heal’s. The Arts and Crafts style influenced many other design movements, including Art Nouveau. It is also associated with architects like Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School.