Craft vs Art

Craft Vs Art

• Q.  What are crafts?
• A.  Things made to be used by people in daily life, such as clothes and furniture.  Something different from fine arts, such as pictures made to look at.
• Q.  What is the particular kind of beauty in crafts?
• A.  Beauty that is identified with use.  It is beauty born of use.  Apart from use there is no beauty of craft.  Therefore, things made that do not stand up to use or that ignore utility can barely be expected to contain that kind of beauty. – Soetsu Yanagi, 1927

Quote Highlights

“Things made to be used” “Something different from fine arts” ”Beauty that is identified with use” “beauty born of use. Apart from use there is no beauty of craft.”

Soetsu Yanagi’s quote perfectly encapsulates the separation felt between art and craft, he states craft is “something different from fine arts”. Even though this quote was made in 1927 artists and craftsmen are still arguing over this same topic, Grayson Perry once stated “I see the craft world as a kind of lagoon and the art world in general as the ocean. Some artists shelter in this lagoon, because their imagination isn't robust enough to go out into the wider sea.”

The original quote was written just after Japan’s rapid modernization and the traditional (handmade crafts and traditional beliefs alike) was rapidly disappearing. Yanagi clearly loved the aesthetics and tradition of everyday utilitarian objects created by local craftsmen;

• ·         He founded the Korean Folk Crafts Museum in 1924.

• ·         And coined the term mingei meaning “hand-crafted art of ordinary people”.

Yanagi’s point is difficult to argue, I completely agree that craft has to have a use (jewellery is to be worn, ceramic cups are drunk from, etc). It always bothered me as a child that when I would visit galleries or museums you couldn’t touch anything because “it wasn’t made to be touched”. I think that is why I like craft’s so much, because you specifically make something to be used, touched, held and it can be beautiful too.

It is important to note that I don’t believe that just because an item is handmade it is beautiful. Useful items are not inherently beautiful, despite the idea of “beauty born of use”.

I would say that not all useful objects are beautiful, but that beautiful objects are more so when useful.