My dear friend Will and I argued long ago about whether the acoustic guitars and mandolins he makes are Art objects or Craft objects. He argued that from society’s point of view his instruments were categorically not the product of an artist, but of a craftsperson. And this seemed to bum him out mightily. If I remember correctly, he was lamenting the lack of respect society gives to craftsmen in general, and luthiers in particular. The attitude that bothered Will might be expressed like this:
A musical instrument is fundamentally a utilitarian object. Its creation is not meant to be the aesthetic expression of an artist, but the merely the work of a talented craftsman or artisan. It may be decorated and ornamented, the skill involved may be awe-inspiring, it can even be masterful, but a musical instrument is only a tool to be used by a real artist to make the real art of music. Be definition, it is a “lower” form of creation, less worthy of respect and of intrinsically less value.
I was dismissive of Will’s question as only a world-weary twenty something year-old can be. I held that the question was founded on a false dichotomy. The traditional distinction between the artist and the artisan–I read somewhere or pulled out of thin air–was primarily one of class and education, not specifically function and certainly not ability. Simply put: the artist could read, the artisan could not. At the time, I hadn’t read John Berger’s takedown of the traditional fine art world, Ways of Seeing, but I had a rough intuition that “Fine Art” was less about refined human sensibilities than the public demonstration of that refinement for purposes of social status.
Since then, of course, I have read Berger and Derrida and encountered Warhol and the denizens of the wrecking crew that pretty much dismantled the crustified definition of Art at least a decade or two before Will and I even started talking about it. No one, now, will much venture to say what is and is not Art in the classic sense. Art is what an artist says it is. It’s a corollary of what our beloved Art teacher/ band mate from Fresno City College, Kent Steadman, said about how to be an artist: “You want to be an artist? Get your self some art gear and call yourself an artist. ”
But this is one of those conversations that has stuck around like a single fiber of corn between some back molars of my brain and one I keep tonguing at every so often. Why should we bother thinking through what to call what Will does or what I do in the shop? Why does this question haunt me? What it comes down to, I think, is that for someone working with wood, it is important to understand the real differences between the artist and artisan, and to behave accordingly in our work.
The Japanese philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu (1889 ~ 1961) coined the term “mingei“, meaning everyday utilitarian objects that were made in the preindustrial age by unknown craftsmen and yet were genuinely and unconsciously beautiful. He wrote that a work of mingei is:
- honest to utility and “healthy” in form
- particular about quality
- produced without being forced, artificial or self-imposing
- conscientious of the user.
An object is healthy in form if it can become a pleasant natural companion in your life, that is “natural, genuine, simple, durable and safe.” Think of that hand-thrown cup that you reach for every morning to fill with the day’s first coffee. That friend. Who made it? Doesn’t really matter. What is significant is the cup itself. Its shape, its heft, the way it fits your hand and draws your eye.
In contrast, “bourgeois fine art” is not intended to be manhandled. It’s to be collected and displayed, kept safe, kept distant. It’s precious, rare, and made by what Yanagi called a “hero.”
I remember the first Sam Maloof chair I ever saw — at the San Francisco De Young Museum: on a pedestal, behind a velvet cordon–a chair not to be sat in. On the one hand, the display of it like that made me stop and really look at its sensuous curves, its elegant lines. Truly. Beautiful. But I don’t think Sam would be happy if that chair was doomed to live a life on display, not in use. Maybe I’m wrong, but from what I gather, Sam’s art was meant to be comfortable. Meant to be used. There is something deeply haywire in turning a perfectly good, comfortable chair into an objet d’art.
This is definitely the way of the American craft movement: making heroes and turning folk craft into bourgeois fine art, with big city galleries selling high-end famous maker objects. The PBS program “Craft in America” is all about this: hero stories. One imagines that immediately after a craftsperson is profiled on the show, all the price tags on their work sitting in galleries around the country get updated.
Fair enough and why not? But Yanagi observered that this hero worship can be a trap for both society and the individual craftsman:
In Japan the greatest problem is to set the individual artist free from his individuality. Japan is suffering from the flood of too many worthless artists. She is also suffering because objects made by second- and third-rate artists are selling well. This is due to the excess admiration of signed goods. Shoji Hamada and the late Kanjiro Kawai do not put their signatures on their pieces… When someone asked Kawai (why), he said, “My work itself is my best signature.” –Mingei, Two Centuries of Japanese Folk Art
Yanagi’s utopian vision was for a society happy and content enough not to need heroes of any sort, including the Artiste. Given his infatuation with Blake and Whitman, his yearning for an aesthetic Eden is predictable enough, I suppose. But his point in general about beauty being the product not of a inflated ego but rather of sensitive hands and hearts is spot on. And his call for artists to “get over themselves” rings true to me.
There is, it seems to me, a curious parallel to be found among musicians themselves. Even among musicians playing “traditional” forms of music (folk, blues, Irish, etc), there is a great temptation to “put one’s mark” on the music, to make an “individual statement,” and be a hero — Lord save us all from lead guitarists — instead of simply trusting the music to be enough on its own. The result can be interesting in its own way, but since it is so fused to a single player, a distinctive individual style of playing cannot hold up over time the way the broader, richer tradition will. It’s more likely to be an interesting artifact, a cultural “terminal seed” if you will. After awhile, you want to tell all these would be heroes, “Just play the damn tune.”
Sam Maloof (himself!) pointed out that there is nothing really new under the sun. He recounts a tale of designing this table with four drawers, two on the sides and two on the ends. He was quite pleased with his originality until he came across the exact same design in a cabin in the mountains. “His”design was at least 100 years older than he realized.
So where does that leave the craftsman/artisan/woodworker? If he is not to be an artist, can there be any art in his work? Well of course.
When I set out to make a table, I draw the forms and select the wood so that it all goes together with as much beauty as I am capable of. I am much more likely to succeed in this if focus on simple forms than if I try for originality. I can, I assert, make lots of bad “art” furniture rather easily. But to make one simple table with the humble beauty of a mingei craftsman… that’s a lifetime’s work.
If I ever succeed, however, that will be something to be genuinely proud of– I will have given a gift to the world. Lethem says, “where there is no gift there is no art.” The gift is the exchange that happens that is not monetary. Beauty serves no function except to delight. The person who owns an object doesn’t own the delight others take in it. You can buy or sell access to objects, but you cannot buy or sell access to delight. That’s negotiated between the object and the audience–and the coin of that exchange is an openness to the find the familiar wondrous and the breadth of experience to recognize it.
When I make a thing, I make it to fill a function well. But I also try to make it beautiful, not because it requires beauty, but because I do.
Which makes me an artisan, at least on my better days.
