essay on art in craft

Essay on Art And Craft

Students are often asked to write an essay on Art And Craft in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Art And Craft

Understanding art and craft.

Art and craft are two different sides of a creative coin. Art is a form of self-expression, it helps us to show our feelings. Craft, on the other hand, is about making things with hands, it’s about skill and technique. Both are important in their own ways.

Importance of Art

Art helps us express our feelings and thoughts. It allows us to show our creativity. Art can be seen in paintings, sculptures, and even in our day-to-day life. It helps us to think outside the box and see the world in a new way.

Significance of Craft

Craft is about making things. It involves using our hands and brains to create something useful or beautiful. Craft includes activities like knitting, pottery, and woodworking. It helps us to develop fine motor skills and patience. It also gives us a sense of achievement.

Art and Craft in Education

Art and craft are important parts of education. They help students to express themselves and understand the world. They also help to develop creativity, problem-solving skills, and patience. So, art and craft should be encouraged in schools.

250 Words Essay on Art And Craft

Art and craft are two words that we often hear together, but they are not the same. They are both ways of making things, but they have different goals and methods.

What is Art?

Art is a way of expressing feelings, thoughts, and ideas. It is often made to be enjoyed for its beauty or emotional power. Art can come in many forms, like painting, sculpture, music, dance, and more. Artists use their creativity to make unique pieces that represent their personal vision.

What is Craft?

Craft, on the other hand, is a type of activity where people make things by hand. These can be useful items like clothes, furniture, or pottery. Craftsmen focus on the quality and usefulness of their work. They often learn their skills from others and follow set patterns or designs.

The Connection Between Art and Craft

Art and craft are connected in many ways. Both involve making things and both require skill and creativity. But the main difference lies in their purpose. Art is made to express and evoke emotion, while craft is made to be useful.

The Importance of Art and Craft

Art and craft are important parts of our culture. They help us express our thoughts and feelings, and they add beauty to our world. They also teach us valuable skills like patience, focus, and creativity. So, whether you’re an artist or a craftsman, keep creating!

500 Words Essay on Art And Craft

What is art and craft.

Art and craft are important in our lives for many reasons. They help us express our feelings and thoughts in a way that words sometimes can’t. When we create art or craft, we can show our unique view of the world.

Art and craft also help us relax and feel happy. When we focus on creating, we can forget about our worries for a while. It’s like a mini-vacation for our minds.

Art and craft can also improve problem-solving skills. When students create, they often have to figure out how to make their ideas come to life. This can involve solving problems, like how to make a sculpture stand up, or how to mix paint to get the right color.

Art and Craft in Culture

Art and craft are also a big part of culture. Different cultures have their own unique styles of art and craft. For example, in India, there is a craft called ‘Rangoli’, where people create colorful patterns on the floor using colored powders. In Japan, there is an art form called ‘Origami’, where people fold paper into different shapes.

Art and craft are more than just fun activities. They are ways for us to express ourselves, relax, solve problems, and learn about different cultures. So, the next time you pick up a paintbrush or a piece of clay, remember that you are doing something important. You are creating, and that is something to be proud of.

In conclusion, art and craft are important parts of our lives. They allow us to express our creativity, improve our skills, and learn about the world. Whether you are an artist or a craftsperson, keep creating. Your work is valuable and appreciated.

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My Passion for Arts and Crafts

Categories: Passion Personal Life

About this sample

Words: 455 |

Published: Jun 17, 2020

Words: 455 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Works Cited:

Chandler, D. (2013). Napoleon: A Life. Penguin Books.
Englund, S. (2010). Napoleon: A Political Life. Scribner.
Fisher, T. (2017). Napoleon. Oxford University Press.
Fremont-Barnes, G. (2004). The Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1792-1815. Routledge.
Johnson, P. (2003). Napoleon: A Life. Penguin Books.
Markham, F. A. (2018). Napoleon. Benediction Classics.
McLynn, F. (1998). Napoleon: A Biography. Arcade Publishing.
Roberts, A. (2014). Napoleon: A Life. Viking.
Schom, A. (1997). Napoleon Bonaparte. HarperCollins.
Thompson, J. M. (1951). Napoleon Bonaparte: His Rise and Fall. Oxford University Press.

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Essay on Art

500 words essay on art.

Each morning we see the sunshine outside and relax while some draw it to feel relaxed. Thus, you see that art is everywhere and anywhere if we look closely. In other words, everything in life is artwork. The essay on art will help us go through the importance of art and its meaning for a better understanding.

What is Art?

For as long as humanity has existed, art has been part of our lives. For many years, people have been creating and enjoying art. It expresses emotions or expression of life. It is one such creation that enables interpretation of any kind.

It is a skill that applies to music, painting, poetry, dance and more. Moreover, nature is no less than art. For instance, if nature creates something unique, it is also art. Artists use their artwork for passing along their feelings.

Thus, art and artists bring value to society and have been doing so throughout history. Art gives us an innovative way to view the world or society around us. Most important thing is that it lets us interpret it on our own individual experiences and associations.

Art is similar to live which has many definitions and examples. What is constant is that art is not perfect or does not revolve around perfection. It is something that continues growing and developing to express emotions, thoughts and human capacities.

Importance of Art

Art comes in many different forms which include audios, visuals and more. Audios comprise songs, music, poems and more whereas visuals include painting, photography, movies and more.

You will notice that we consume a lot of audio art in the form of music, songs and more. It is because they help us to relax our mind. Moreover, it also has the ability to change our mood and brighten it up.

After that, it also motivates us and strengthens our emotions. Poetries are audio arts that help the author express their feelings in writings. We also have music that requires musical instruments to create a piece of art.

Other than that, visual arts help artists communicate with the viewer. It also allows the viewer to interpret the art in their own way. Thus, it invokes a variety of emotions among us. Thus, you see how essential art is for humankind.

Without art, the world would be a dull place. Take the recent pandemic, for example, it was not the sports or news which kept us entertained but the artists. Their work of arts in the form of shows, songs, music and more added meaning to our boring lives.

Therefore, art adds happiness and colours to our lives and save us from the boring monotony of daily life.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Art

All in all, art is universal and can be found everywhere. It is not only for people who exercise work art but for those who consume it. If there were no art, we wouldn’t have been able to see the beauty in things. In other words, art helps us feel relaxed and forget about our problems.

FAQ of Essay on Art

Question 1: How can art help us?

Answer 1: Art can help us in a lot of ways. It can stimulate the release of dopamine in your bodies. This will in turn lower the feelings of depression and increase the feeling of confidence. Moreover, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Question 2: What is the importance of art?

Answer 2: Art is essential as it covers all the developmental domains in child development. Moreover, it helps in physical development and enhancing gross and motor skills. For example, playing with dough can fine-tune your muscle control in your fingers.

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American Craft Council

Craft: seriously, what does the word mean.

Confession: When I tell people I write for American Craft – something I’ve done for 35 years now – I brace for what I know is coming. If they’re not really familiar with our magazine, the reaction is almost always the same: a pleasant look of recognition and genuine interest, tinged with vague puzzlement. “Oh, yes,” they say, “I think I know it.”

Typically, they’ve confused it with a how-to or traditional handicrafts publication – not that there’s anything wrong with either assumption. So I always feel obliged to explain our subject matter. But I’m never entirely comfortable or satisfied with my answer.

You’re holding this magazine, or looking at it online. How would you describe, to the average person, what it covers?

Well, it’s handmade work today, I say. Ceramics and glass, quilts and weavings and furniture and jewelry, all kinds of beautiful objects. High quality, things you’d see in galleries and museums and design shops. Expressive, like painting or sculpture. Or just great everyday items to live with and use. Oh, some of it is a little out there – offbeat materials, giant installations, conceptual – stuff you might not think of as craft at all. Plus some traditional work, maybe with a twist. And there’s a whole history and philosophy in the field; a lot of the work now is socially conscious.

In other words, I struggle, I ramble. Somehow a single, concise, all-purpose definition of "craft”" eludes me. In the end, I just proselytize. Our magazine celebrates a world of amazing creation and inspiration, I tell people, and you should really check it out. When they do, they’re blown away by the work they see.

Let’s face it, "craft" is a curious word. We think we know it, but do we? Richly evocative of tradition, history, and a standard of quality, the word can connote many things: skill, art form, antidote to the machine, hobby, therapy, counterculture, deception. In the past decade alone, with the rise of a new generation, we’ve seen the field expand to include DIY, craftivism, and maker culture. Some artists and art institutions avoid the word – that’s nothing new – but other voices and audiences have stepped up to embrace and claim it.

It feels like a good time to get a sense of what craft means now. So we’ve asked around, seeking brief answers to two questions: "What is craft?" and “What person, object, event, or work of art epitomizes your view of craft?” We sought perspectives from dozens of artists, thinkers, and leaders in our own field and others.

The responses were thoughtful, heartfelt, provocative, some times vexed. While no consensus emerged, a few themes did.

Image Gallery

Exemplar: Windsor chairs by Peter Galbert. "His work is exquisite, and it doesn’t end with his seating," Offerman says. "He has even invented a couple of specialty tools – a nifty caliper for turning and a sharpening jig for the drawknife." / Cited by: Nick Offerman, actor and woodworker

Exemplars: Pat Metheny, Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright / Cited by: Nathan East (above), virtuoso bassist

Exemplar: Artist and furniture maker Wendy Maruyama (pictured: Orkanyawoi , 2014). “She can do everything from handcutting a dovetail, to making poetic/metaphoric work, to organizing a community to support an idea.” / Cited by: Fabio Fernández, artist

Exemplar: The late Anthony Bourdain’s TV show Parts Unknown / Cited by: Ivan Barnett, Patina Gallery

Exemplar: The force behind fashion and home goods purveyor Alabama Chanin, "Natalie Chanin absolutely epitomizes the embodiment of an artist who is wholly dedicated to her craft. She makes me want to be better at mine, just by being around her." / Cited by: Rosanne Cash, musician

CRAFT IS UNIVERSAL

This is a big one: craft as a value that can apply to any endeavor, be it music, gardening, food, film, even lifestyle. certainly it’s proved a marketable notion (craft beer, anyone). some might argue the trend jumped the shark once big consumer brands started advertising "signature crafted" fast-food burgers and "curated" salads. (quilted northern spoofed the aesthetic on april fool’s day by touting its fictitious "rustic weave artisanal" toilet paper.) still, there’s magic in handling materials with thought and care, an ideal all of us can understand, appreciate, and pursue. .

"Craft is the dovetailing of discipline and imagination, dedication and inspiration. When those spiral around each other, and serious attention is given over to that alchemy, then one’s craft can be realized. My particular craft uses notes and words, and sometimes they are difficult to wrangle into a pleasing shape, but no more difficult than thread and fabric, wood and knife, canvas and paint, flour and butter." ~ Rosanne Cash , singer, songwriter, author

"Craft is applied creativity. It’s the process of turning the spark of an idea into something tangible and beautiful using your own hands, skills, aesthetic, and vision. It could be a poem, a bowl, a pair of shoes, a plate of food, a sculpture, a building, a song. Marlee Grace embodies my view of craft today. Whether she’s writing, dancing, sewing, teaching, workshopping, or just living her life, it’s all a personal practice that’s very fluid and intentional." ~ Susannah Daly , founder and creative director, Renegade Craft fairs

"Craft, to me, is the skill developed, applied, and made manifest through practice and discipline in the fabrication of a work of art. Could be a chair, a lasagna, a painting, a symphony, or a monologue." ~ Nick Offerman , co-host, NBC’s Making It ; woodworker

"Craft is the universal language of the hand, a language that needs no words. It is a language steeped in the power of personal creativity and expression. The late Anthony Bourdain’s CNN series about food, travel, and culture, Parts Unknown , fully fits my view of craft." ~ Ivan Barnett , artist; director, Patina Gallery, Santa Fe

"I believe the way a cook handles ingredients, especially vegetables – like working with clay or wood or metal or paper – is the craft of the thing. The visual and tactile possibilities of each leaf, globe, tuber, bunch, pod, sprout, seed, stalk, and sprig enhances the medium. Makes us look again. Appreciate. Salivate." ~ Dorothy Kalins , founding editor, Saveur and Metropolitan Home magazines

"The idea of craft as we fundamentally understand it – as an approach to production and a category of object – was invented in the 19th century by the British Arts and Crafts movement. It was a counter-industrial ideology meant to eliminate the harmful conditions of factory labor and elevate the spiritual well-being of the consumer. The craftsman was a skilled tradesman who was employed to build someone else’s designs for useful, beautiful objects, from start to finish, in healthful surroundings. The 20th-century studio craft movement layered new meanings onto craft to turn it into a counter-corporate ideology – a rebellion against the facelessness and conformity of white-collar work. The craftsperson was a self-employed individual who sought fulfillment from within by creating precious objects that could only come from one person’s rarefied skills and singular aesthetic vision. The craft object expanded beyond the traditional sphere of the decorative arts to encompass related work that could be conceptual or sculptural in intent, although still fabricated from traditional materials and techniques. In our 21st century, craft has taken on a new life as a counter-virtual ideology, a counterweight to the insipidness of lives spent looking at screens and tapping on keyboards. Once again, people are turning to the demanding work of bringing new things into the world with imagination and skill as a way to forge better lives. Only this time, the category of craft has expanded to indicate the presence of individual agency in the creation of anything, regardless of material or technique, from custom-made chairs to craft beers to software to 'hand-curated playlists' on Spotify." ~ Peter Korn , director, Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Rockport, Maine; author, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters

"Craft is a broad and slippery word. It can refer to types of objects – 'contemporary craft' – especially those made of ceramics, fiber, glass, metal, or wood. These can be functional, sculptural, or conceptual. Craft can also refer to how someone practices a trade, whether an artisan, actor, playwright, or accountant. Someone once told me, 'If you give a darn about how something is made, then it’s craft!'" ~ Fabio Fernández , artist; past executive director, Society of Arts + Crafts, Boston

"I think it can best be summarized as a body of knowledge and hand skill that’s passed down from generation to generation. Who or what epitomizes it? It’s like food: It’s all around us, we need it, and there are infinite variations on it. And whether people are versed in its history and technique or not, they know what they like." ~ Sarah Archer , arts and culture writer, independent curator

"Craft to me is a particular skill combined with artistic integrity, created and developed into something that is appreciated by people. This can be applied to physical materials – wood, clay, stone – or aviation, music, visual art, etc. In music, guitarist Pat Metheny combines his compositional skills, soloing, and playing to achieve the epitome of what craft sounds like to my ears. Of course, any Frank Lloyd Wright structure or work of art by Picasso ultimately epitomizes craft." ~ Nathan East , musician, recording artist, longtime bassist for Eric Clapton

"In architecture, craft is the intelligent use of materials that unites beauty with function. Delivering that along with economy of cost is the holy grail for experienced architects. It’s understandable that architects often don’t master that challenge until late in their careers. As a young architect, I was in awe of what Louis Kahn did late in his career at the Salk Institute, where he raised the use of exposed concrete to the level of an art form. The quality of the concrete work there has often been emulated but rarely duplicated in the decades since it was built." ~ J. Peter Devereaux , chairman and CEO, Harley Ellis Devereaux

"I believe craft is anything you want it to be. It’s malleable, wild, and undefinable. Craft is fluid and queer. It wields the power to be all things at once, with no rules." ~ Faythe Levine , author and filmmaker, Handmade Nation ; assistant curator, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin

Exemplar: Weaver and designer Anni Albers (1899 – 1994) / Cited by: Jack Lenor Larsen, textile designer; Perry A. Price, executive director, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. "In her weaving, jewelry, or writing, Albers was open to craft as an idea rather than a category," Price says.

Exemplar: Lino Tagliapietra / Cited by: Erik and Martin Demaine, artists and scholars

Exemplar: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750), musician, composer, and teacher / Cited by: Judith Weir, official composer to Queen Elizabeth II

Exemplar: Sharon Church, metalsmith / Cited by: Judith Schaechter, glass artist; collector and scholar Helen Drutt English. Drutt English pointed to Church’s brooch Joy (2016) as evidence of her technical skill and creative vision.

CRAFT IS A DISCIPLINE

This view emphasizes craft as an earned skill in the service of creativity, a way of doing things exceptionally well through study, practice, and dedication. it’s craft as a commitment, a form of expression, a way of life..

"Craft exists at the intersection of skill and creativity. Judith Schaechter embodies craft, in my opinion, because she creates art that is simultaneously incredibly original, skillfully made, and inspired by the material itself." ~ Jennifer Zwilling , curator of artistic programs, the Clay Studio, Philadelphia

"Craft is the mastery of material and technique. Epitome: Lino Tagliapietra. ~ Erik Demaine , origami artist, professor of computer science at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Martin Demaine , mathematician, glassblower, MIT artist-in-residence.

"It’s impossible to define craft in a sentence or two. Sometimes in the US, people view craft as a laborer’s job, but in reality, craft is much more than that. In Europe, craft is an important and honored part of culture that is learned and dates back thousands of years. In Italian, the word for craftsman is artigiano , which means creating art with culture in mind." ~ Lino Tagliapietra , master glassblower, Murano, Italy, and Seattle

"I believe craft is the outcome of numerous small actions, carried out endlessly and sometimes repetitively. But after a while, something emerges which is substantial and has its own unique character, however commonplace the activity that produced it. As a producer of musical craft, I think above all of the composer J.S. Bach, working ceaselessly in humble contexts such as teaching, but somehow managing to produce wonderful art." ~ Judith Weir , CBE, Master of the Queen’s Music (official composer to Elizabeth II)

"What is craft? Broadly speaking, I follow the Richard Sennett line that craft is about someone doing a job well for its own sake. It’s important to stress that a sense of craft is present throughout all walks of life, from manufacturing industry to fine art, via technology and medicine." ~ Grant Gibson , immediate past editor, Crafts magazine, Crafts Council, UK

"Craft is a way of doing things involving deliberateness and attention to detail and representing the accumulation of skill over time. Craft invites a life in which the objects that surround us speak to us of what is important. For me, craft can be embodied in things as disparate as Cherokee baskets, a Sam Maloof chair, or – I hate to say it – an iPhone." ~ Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez , president, North Bennet Street School, Boston

"I view the notion of craft not as limited by materials, but as a process. I frequently use the term 'skilled making"' when discussing craft, which can encompass most materials. Craft to me is often an integral part of the process when making artwork. Craft, however, always exists as a physical artifact; it cannot subsist as concept alone." ~ Mia Hall , executive director, Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina

"Craft is a commitment to a lifelong conversation with material and process. While style and technique evolve over the course of a maker’s career, craft is that most fundamental desire to feel, articulate, and understand the complexity of your own work. The potter Byron Temple not only had an effortless and graceful touch with his material, but he also demonstrated that same level of finesse in his ability to contextualize, document, and market his own work. His beautifully designed catalogues showcased his work in such an elegant way and educated his customers on how simple, humble stoneware pots can be elevated to exquisite objects through the mastery of both making and contextualization." ~ Brian Giniewski , ceramist

"To me, craft is expressed by work that reads of the materials and process of its making and the purpose for which it was made – by hand or machine. Favorite makers: Wharton Esherick, Toshiko Takaezu, Lenore Tawney, Ed Rossbach, and Anni Albers." ~ Jack Lenor Larsen , weaver, textile designer, craft collector, and advocate

"We think of craft as the overlap of science, the technical aspects and boundaries of the medium; art, one’s personal touch and lens; and tradition, the time-tested vocabulary of movements and ideas that are shared generationally. At our distillery, [master blender] David Stewart relies on different makers and craftspeople to orchestrate the liquid as he imagines it. For example, our coopers dedicate their time to the casks for quality and flavor return, whereas our malters work to stimulate the best potential yield from the barley seed." ~ Jonathan Wingo , brand ambassador, The Balvenie scotch whisky, Dufftown, Scotland

"Craft is the intentional expression by hands of what is in the mind, melding respect for materials with mastery and purposeful use of technique. Three exquisite examples of craft: Soundsuits by Nick Cave, cloisonné jewelry by Aurélie Guillaume, and the Crochet Coral Reef , created and curated by Christine Wertheim and Margaret Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring." ~ Lisa Bayne , CEO, Artful Home, Madison, Wisconsin

"Craft is the quintessential conjoining of a strong point of view, appropriate materials, and a maker or makers. A great example is the work of David Pye, who approached craftsmanship and perception as a kind of spiritual personal growth commitment. Another example is the work of Tanya Aguiñiga, who uses craft as a form of political community building and communication." ~ Rosanne Somerson , president, Rhode Island School of Design; furniture maker

"1. No one thinks the word 'craft' is obsolete!! 2. Every artist has 'craft.' 3. Every artist’s so-called 'craft' is simply to *re-define skill.* 4. Now do you see? XO" ~ Jerry Saltz , senior art critic, New York magazine

"At its best, craft exhibits technical brilliance and innovative techniques and materials; most important, it relays an artist’s passion and ideas." ~ JoAnne Cooper , Mobilia Gallery

"Craft refers to works done where the imagination and the hand of the maker are evident. Often the value of a piece is in the workmanship of the artist rather than what it’s made of. Examples: Harvey Ellis of Stickley Furniture, Greene & Greene architects, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Dan Dailey, a glass artist with imagination and humor." ~ Collector Marian Burke , who with her husband, Russell, endowed the new Burke Prize, awarded by the Museum of Arts and Design

"We like our art well-crafted. Dale Chihuly crafts blown glass elements in the service of creating works of art. Sandy Skoglund crafts installations that she photographs. The photographs are the works of art but the craftsmanship of the installations makes them possible. Another example: sculptor Tip Toland." ~ Dale and Doug Anderson , collectors; co-founders, Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts

"At a gathering a few years ago, I noticed that Stoney Lamar called himself a sculptor and a maker but never used the terms 'artist,' 'artisan,' or 'craftsman.' The distinction is not about the object. Rather it is a celebration of and commitment to the process." ~ Carissa Hussong , executive director, Metal Museum

"What epitomizes craft? Two works come to my mind almost immediately: Joy , a brooch by Sharon Church of meticulously carved wood and fabricated silver; and Wayne Higby's majestic wall mural Earthcloud , of hand-carved, glazed porcelain tiles, commissioned for Alfred University. Both combine technical skill and understanding of material with a unique creative vision. These, for me, fulfill the concept of craft." ~ Helen Drutt English , former gallerist, collector, scholar

Exemplar: Born in El Salvador, Los Angeles artist Beatriz Cortez "crafts extraordinary machines and architectural structures from welded metal to engage the public in interaction, play, reflection, and discovery. These objects are designed to provoke conversation about the effects of war, migration, memory, and how we might envision the future." / Cited by: Suzanne Isken, Craft and Folk Art Museum

Exemplar: Chris Wight’s Portland Arcana . The artist used a computer, a water saw, and jasper clay to pay homage to an ancient vessel. / Cited by: Garth Clark, writer and critic

Exemplar: Sonya Clark’s Unraveling (2015 – present, above and far left) and Unraveled (2015) / Cited by: Stephanie Syjuco, artist and professor

Exemplar: Tanya Aguiñiga, artist / Cited by: Mia Hall, Rosanne Somerson, and Kimberly Winkle, artists and educators; Abraham Thomas, curator. Aguiñiga uses "the conceptual toolkits of craft to create communities and dialogue," Thomas says.

CRAFT IS ACTION

Craft is a verb – an active, activist one, evolving and involving. whether it’s an artist pursuing a personal vision or technical innovation, a community project to teach children the joy of handwork, a public performance or happening, or thousands knitting pink hats, craft is a moving vehicle. .

"Craft grows from everyday human experience, which makes it inherently social and political. It elevates the role that technique, method, materials, and community play in artmaking. The art of handcrafting imprints a piece with power – the power to educate, to challenge, to captivate, to provoke." ~ Suzanne Isken , executive director, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles

"I find it helpful to think about craft as a verb – an action, a community, something with agency – rather than simply a noun, an object. The upcoming 2018 Renwick Invitational (“Disrupting Craft,” November 9 – May 5, 2019) includes four artists – Tanya Aguiñiga, Stephanie Syjuco, Sharif Bey, and Dustin Farnsworth – who exemplify these ideas, working outside the conventional definitions of the craft world but using the conceptual toolkits of craft to create communities and dialogue, to be agents of social change. Using the potent combination of social practice and craft, they interrogate pressing contemporary issues of cultural identity and social injustice, and question established historical narratives." ~ Abraham Thomas , curator-in-charge, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

"The pushing and pulling of materials and processes in order to test their physical limits and perceptual boundaries. A cultural and critical response to the entire history of making 'things.' A verb. Exemplars include Sonya Clark’s work Unraveled , in which she picked apart a Confederate flag, thread by thread. Also, Jeffrey Gibson’s ecstatic and absolutely gorgeous panels and objects that place at the forefront a Native critique of contemporary visual culture." ~ Stephanie Syjuco , artist; assistant professor in sculpture, University of California, Berkeley

"Craft is a verb, an action, meaning to make or to process. I do not believe in craft as a noun, a thing, as in 'I make craft.' My best example is Chris Wight, who used a computer, a water saw, and a special gift of jasper clay from Wedgwood to make a futuristic homage to the Portland Vase [an ancient Roman cameo glass vessel]. The meticulous planning and hand assembly to make these works is awe-inspiring. No, they do not just pop out of machines; they require superb crafting. Nothing in the word 'craft' suggests that it must be by hand, be absent of machinery, require virtuosity, or have medieval roots. And Wight’s vases are breathtakingly haptic and beautiful." ~ Garth Clark , ceramics critic and historian; editor-in-chief, CFile.org

"Craft is a verb rather than a noun. It is a particular, sustained approach to making. In my 20 years at the California College of the Arts, I’ve seen craft applied to digital and analog tools across disciplines. What’s common is a sustained relationship with materials and a focused, iterative process. We recently awarded an honorary doctorate to Lia Cook, who epitomizes craft today. Her work celebrates material and process while exploring memory and the power of imagery" ~ Stephen Beal , president, California College of the Arts

"The word 'craft' signifies refined thought and execution. As an active verb, craft is used to denote the mark of the hand, technique, and the making of work, and therefore represents a hyper-awareness of execution alongside form, medium, and concept." ~ Donna Davies , vice president, Urban Expositions Art Group, producer of SOFA Chicago

Exemplar: ACC founder Aileen Osborn Webb, who cultivated the studio craft movement / Cited by: Curators Paul J. Smith and Glenn Adamson

Exemplar: Ceramist Roberto Lugo, whose vessels represent "a constant dialogue between personal histories and material." / Cited by: Tanya Aguiñiga, artist

Exemplar: Peter Follansbee’s expertly joined pieces, which "link centuries of makers together" / Cited by: Denise Lebica, Fuller Craft Museum

CRAFT IS HERITAGE

Skills and heirlooms are preserved and handed down over generations, within families. in the bigger picture, the drive to create is part of who we are, in our very dna..

"Craft in the truest, most basic sense is about the human need to make and connect; to bring the root of tradition and the power of the human hand on material and form together; with exploration, and without limitation, to connect us all to the world we live in. I’m a textile artisan who specialized in reproduction 17th-century clothing and textiles, and I’ve also done conservation work on originals. Coming from that traditional background, I’m moved and intrigued to witness simultaneously both the evolution and common thread that remains at the heart of craft." ~ Denise Lebica , director, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts

"I believe the words 'craft' and 'craftsmanship' have important meaning in the 21st century. The instinct to make objects by hand is as old as civilization and is identified with every culture in the world. In the United States, it was challenged in the 19th century, survived and blossomed in the 20th, and persists today. [ACC founder] Aileen Osborn Webb’s work in cultivating the studio [craft] movement was very important. While many programs and activities occurred in different parts of the country, Mrs. Webb’s vision and patronage beginning in the 1930s were pivotal in nurturing a modest activity to become a significant area of the arts today." ~ Paul J. Smith , curator, author; director emeritus, American Craft Museum

"Craft for me is a connection to our body memory, an acknowledgment of labor and all of the inherent context of materials, and the active continuation of tradition while in conversation with it. The works of Roberto Lugo and Teresa Margolles are perfect examples of my personal interpretation of craft – a constant dialogue between personal histories and material, opening up contextual ways that functional objects can communicate current issues, and ways that the histories of marginalized communities can be integrated into American history." ~ Tanya Aguiñiga , artist and designer

"For me, craft defies binary traditions and subsequent categorizations of 'either/or.' It is an idea, practice, or approach that is inherently humanistic. We are makers – builders of skyscrapers, technological marvels, fast cars, and objects of communal significance. Craft is an extension of what it means to be human in this current time and place of history." ~ Elizabeth Kozlowski , editor, Surface Design Journal

"People everywhere are makers – no matter how good they are or [whether they’re] recognized. It is a human need. In 1995, a keynote talk I gave was published in American Craft as ' The Pleasure and Meaning of Making .' The essay has garnered nearly 2,000 hits from 64 countries on my academia.com site. These amazing numbers tell me that making is universally practiced, not just the province of a few 'masters.'" ~ Ellen Dissanayake , author, What Is Art For? and Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why

Exemplar: Family-made heirlooms / Cited by: Author and "craftivism" pioneer Betsy Greer, whose grandmother made the needlepoint pillow. Such objects remind her of "the work millions before her made with love and skill and care."

CRAFT IS ALL AROUND US

Outside the world of white walls, pedestals, and academia, craft is, of course, a huge industry. we love our hobbies – the knitting and sewing and woodworking, things our ancestors did out of necessity. it may not be the most rarefied view of craft, but for many, it’s where meaning and memory live..

"To me, craft is combining creativity and process, using what we can do with our hands to make something with which to connect to others, our environment, or ourselves. My maternal grandmother’s work won’t be in museums or galleries but exists in memories and in the many items she made to keep people warm, just like the work of millions before her, made from love and skill and care." ~ Betsy Greer , author, Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism

"For me, craft involves an awareness of a human having been responsible for an object’s creation, as if the maker’s presence never entirely leaves the object. This presence could come from an element such as visible stitching, or just in witnessing the thoughtfulness that was needed to bring the piece to life. The objects that most epitomize craft to me are quilts. There is so much time, stitching, and care involved in their creation. Particularly, I’m drawn to quilts that have been created from used textiles. Not only do these materials have so much inherent character, but they also stand as a challenge (both functionally and aesthetically) to what one might consider waste." ~ Kat Roberts , author, Crafting for Cat Ladies and other DIY handbooks

Exemplars: Potter Veralee Bassler and weaver Jim Bassler, who "helped me prepare for Craft in America ’s 'Borders' episode, which documents craft relationships between Mexico and the United States. We filmed the Basslers dancing in the streets of Los Angeles for the Guelaguetza [festival], at their folk-art-filled home in Palm Springs and in Oaxaca [origin of the festival]. Recently, Veralee suffered a stroke. Although she cannot yet return to her ceramic studio, Veralee sits with Jim as he weaves, producing beautiful drawings. They remain vibrant, generous and creative, epitomizing a life in the crafts." / Cited by: Carol Sauvion, documentarian and gallerist

Exemplar: The 2017 creation of “There Is No,” a temporary art museum celebrating 100 years of the artistry of the indigenous Sami people, at the Nordnorsk Kunst museum in Tromsö, Norway / Cited by: Namita Gupta Wiggers, educator; director, Critical Craft Forum

Exemplar: Joseph Luttwak of Blackbird Guitars, who helped to invent an eco-friendly wood substitute / Cited by: Regina Connell, founder, Handful of Salt

Douglas Kirkland photographing Marilyn Monroe

Exemplar: The Sistine Chapel / Cited by: Douglas Kirkland (pictured), photographing Marilyn Monroe in 1961

Exemplar: A very traditional object like this Japanese tea bowl, called the Fuku no Kami (Deity of Good Fortune) and made in the 18th century by the raku master Tokunyu. “For me, the epitome of craft is in the center, not the edge.” / Cited by: Bruce Metcalf, studio jeweler and writer

CRAFT IS COMPLICATED

Here’s where it gets prickly. the old art-versus-craft debate lives on, accompanied now by conversations about race, class, gender, and culture. people have questions: does craft have an identity problem is openness to interpretation a weakness or a strength is craft, without exception, a noble pursuit why are we even talking about this.

"Craft is making something skillfully; it’s just that simple. But from that basic definition, infinite complexities arise." ~ Glenn Adamson , curator and historian; author, Thinking Through Craft

"Craft is art." ~ Carol Sauvion , creator, executive producer and director, Craft in America films; owner, Freehand Gallery, Los Angeles

"Plenty of cultural structures ensure that craft is utilitarian and defined by the history of techniques and materials. 'Fine art' prefers a hierarchy, ensuring its superiority; by that definition, craft is the lesser of the two. To me, craft is art that results from indistinguishable melding of process, materials, and concept." ~ Judith Schaechter , artist working in stained glass

"Craft is defined by a series of attributes. None are necessary, but the more you find in an object, the more craft it is. There is a center of craft, and a periphery. Both are valid. Craft can be handmade but does not have to be. Craft can be made of traditional craft materials, such as clay or wood, but does not have to be. Craft can be made using traditional craft techniques, such as weaving or glassblowing, but does not have to be. Craft can use a traditional craft context, such as the vessel or the garment, but does not have to. Craft can address the history of craft itself but does not have to. Function is not a defining attribute of craft." ~ Bruce Metcalf , studio jeweler; co-author, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft

"Ah, such a dangerous word. It can go from the high (collectable, applied/decorative arts, design-driven craft, etc.) to the low (the sidewalk ceramist) and everything in between. If it means different things to everyone, does it mean anything? That’s a question I wrestle with. I think a really modern definition includes the work of people like Joseph Luttwak of Blackbird Guitars. He started by building beautiful guitars by hand using advanced carbon fiber composite, and ended up (in his search for a better, more sustainable material) creating a new eco-material called Ekoa that promises to replace wood in many applications, protecting against overexploitation. Why do I include this within the world of craft? Because it’s about incredible workmanship joining not only with a mastery of material and its properties, but also creating a material that represents an innovation based on deep craft." ~ Regina Connell , founder, Handful of Salt

"Over the last few years I’ve used the word 'craft' to designate traditionally handmade objects that have a decorative or utilitarian purpose – so more like "handicraft." This includes simple decorative embroidery, knitting, weaving, ceramics, wood carving, some forms of glasswork, and a variety of paper arts, but the list goes on. However, in the last 20 to 30 years, I feel there’s been an enormous, consistent effort on behalf of many artists to elevate these mediums into the realm of true contemporary art. I find it increasingly problematic (and some artists are quite sensitive, others not) to label something as craft; instead we might say an artwork has been created with a 'traditional craft technique.' Sometimes it feels like a ludicrous battle of semantics." ~ Christopher Jobson , founder and editor in chief, Colossal visual culture blog

"'Craft' is a tricky word, often misused. Craft implies physical involvement and participation by the creator. My feeling is that when the word 'craft' is used to describe a work of art, it is –wrongly – frequently considered lowbrow. What’s an example of craft? The Sistine Chapel comes to mind." ~ Douglas Kirkland , photographer

"I’m always a little bit uncomfortable talking about craft. In graduate school 20 years ago, I was working with corn husks (a crafty material by Yale School of Art standards), and craft was identified as a pejorative. At that point I started looking at models in Western art history that could help validate my material choices, which were drawn from my Seneca cultural identity. I don’t see art and craft as separate. With that said, craft is a visual expression manifesting in skillfully realized utilitarian goods, discrete objects, and performative works. It’s fun to think that I can sleep with craft, wake up, and look at it, as well as taste, touch, and listen to it, because craft has the potential to engage all senses. As a maker, I appreciate that craft has a long history rooted in collaboration and cross-generational knowledge sharing that connects back to our ancestors but also anticipates future generations. Craft is innovative. Craft is also generous – a noun and a verb. A few artists who epitomize what I like about craft: Shan Goshorn, Rebecca Belmore, Jeffry Mitchell, and Dan Webb." ~ Marie Watt , artist

"I find that 'craft' is a term that illuminates and obfuscates in equal measure. In speaking of process, I prefer David Pye’s 'workmanship of risk' versus 'workmanship of certainty.' But to me, craft is a field of making that holds material, method, and meaning tightly together, no matter the finished work." ~ Perry A. Price , executive director, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft

"Craft is messy and cannot be contained; there is power in rough edges that cannot be neatly categorized. Which craft is the craft to discuss here? Baskets or Art Basel – or everything in between? Craft connects the everyday and the singular. Craft shifts with place and time; craft in the US brings the whole world and centuries of making into the conversation. Craft is persistent; it does not and will not go away. People carry craft knowledge with them; craft is an embodied way of passing on culture." ~ Namita Gupta Wiggers , educator; director and co-founder, Critical Craft Forum

"Is an iron manacle hand-forged in 1830 for slave bondage worth calling craft? What word describes Kabiye blacksmiths Kao Kossi and Ide Essozimna upcycling scrap metal from cars into ritual gongs? Scar tissue in everyday material culture illuminates the ways 'mastery' is a dubious ambition in craft – and in culture." ~ Ezra Shales , art history professor, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston; author, The Shape of Craft

"America’s poet laureate Donald Hall said writers need two essential qualities: imagination to see something with fresh eyes and skill to communicate that wonder to the rest of us. That’s good, but he left something out: a moral compass. Craft is neutral; Leni Riefenstahl had craft but used it to make movies in support of Hitler. Craft married to moral purpose is a blessing to the world." ~ Roy Peter Clark , writing coach; author of more than 10 books on writing

"Craft has historically been modified by 'studio' – as in 'studio craft' – but these terms, over the last 30 years, have become uncoupled. And rightly so. Studio craft as a history has privileged white, middle-class, and largely male artists. It has favored certain programs and particular lineages, and sustained a genealogy of master craftsmen (emphasis on men). American studio craft has a deep and difficult history of cultural appropriation – sustaining its own forms with traditions that are borrowed, stolen, and appropriated from the poor, the indigenous, and from people of color whose own systems of production were destroyed or altered by colonization. Craft is a raft: Try to climb aboard, but it is slippery and flips over frequently. It is a good time to build the boat anew." ~ Jenni Sorkin , associate professor, history of art, UC Santa Barbara; author, Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community

Exemplar: The social-practice work of Aaron McIntosh, as in The Couch (2010) / Cited by: Kimberly Winkle, woodworker, director of the School of Art, Craft & Design, Tennessee Tech

Exemplar: Dinnerware by Cathy Bailey and Robin Petrovic of Heath Ceramics / Cited by: Natalie Chanin, “slow design” pioneer, fashion and home goods designer

Exemplar: Wood sculptor Merryll Saylan / Cited by: Jennifer-Navva Milliken, artistic director, Center for Art in Wood

CRAFT IS PROFOUND

Just when unresolved questions threaten to tie us in knots, an uplifting, even spiritual message comes through. above all, we’re touched by the love and concern for craft expressed by all of our respondents, many of whom regard it as essential, a means of salvation from the stress, distraction, and disconnection of modern life..

"Craft is the innate drive for humans to transform materials with the goal of bringing meaning, value, and/or joy to existing in this world. The architect Samuel Mockbee, of Rural Studio fame, exemplifies what it means to look at the needs of the world and to transform available resources and materials through thoughtful, human design-build processes. A Mockbee quote that guides me: 'Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul.'" ~ Michael J. Strand , ceramist; professor and head of visual arts, North Dakota State University, Fargo

"Craft is designing, making, and building something that provides value to your life or someone else’s. Value can mean many things: happiness, usefulness, function, self-worth. Craft is an intrinsic expression of life and creation." ~ Natalie Chanin , “slow design” pioneer; founder and creative director, Alabama Chanin fashion and home goods company, Florence, Alabama

"Craft is like the air we breathe: ubiquitous, ever-present, and an absolute necessity. Its ubiquity can sometimes render it invisible. Society relies on craft but sometimes does not see it or its broad impact. That is, we often only notice it in its absence, when the air gets thin. We long for its oxygen to fill our lungs when society is starving for a deep connection to our humanity." ~ Sonya Clark, artist and professor

"Craft is about more than just making. It is a knowledge, a wisdom, and a power that we can use to improve our lives through a better understanding of the properties of materials. Craft, crafting, and craftsmanship is about a state of being and a way of knowing. Sometimes we talk, in a spiritual sense, about being 'awake' or 'mindful,' and I think it is entirely appropriate to extend this state of awareness to craft. I guess I’m going to sound almost evangelical here, but I do believe there is a virtuous, even spiritual, aspect to embracing craft in your life. Robin Wood has been a real inspiration. His bowl-turning is second to none and matched by the generosity he shows to others. Robin was instrumental in setting up the Heritage Crafts Association, the advocacy body for historic crafts in Britain." ~ Alexander Langlands , archaeologist, historian, BBC presenter; author, Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts

"Craft demands care, risk-taking, duration, refinement, flexibility of process, and the conscious application of intelligence, and so stands as a crucial counterpoint to instant-answer, push-button living. Even if it is at times tacit, automatic, and technology-infused, craft holds out the promise of remaining apart from – and gaining perspective on – the machine, and therefore craft remains a deeply human endeavor. In comparing craft to a 'workmanship of risk' and the machine-made to a 'workmanship of certainty,' David Pye brilliantly articulated the deeply improvisational, organic nature of craft. He taught us what it means to strive." ~ Maggie Jackson , author, Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention and a forthcoming book on craft

"Working with materials allows us to connect to ourselves in ways that are hard to achieve otherwise. It allows us to tap into the long tradition and lineage of makers who paved the way for us. It builds and reinforces the importance of community and the need for compassion and support. To view craft as only material mastery does not do it justice. It is a way of thinking and expressing through a material, in which both the object and process have tremendous potential and significance." ~ Kimberly Winkle , woodworker; director, School of Art, Craft & Design, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville

"Craft hovers in the space between the maker’s embodiment of a process and material and the satisfaction that this engagement brings to the maker. An integration of the disciplined work of the hand with the development of new processes that underscore the link between skill and humanity’s eternal need to create, craft is as much about the future of making as it is about its history." ~ Jennifer-Navva Milliken , artistic director, Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia

"Craft is a voyage, a caravan, an expedition. It has the ability to transform maker and object by way of a creative continuum that transcends technology, material, and knowledge. Key example: Ann Hamilton’s work." ~ Michael Radyk , textile artist; director of education, American Craft Council, Minneapolis

"Craft embodies commitment and community. It offers a better quality of life and a deeper connection to one another. Craft embraces the work of diverse cultures in a way that is authentic and inclusive. I find it empowering to remember that, while the arts are a relatively modern invention, craft has been with us all along." ~ Stephanie Moore , executive director, Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, Asheville, North Carolina

What does "craft" mean to you? Send us a note at [email protected] , or share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #whatcraftmeans.

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The Arts & Crafts Movement

Summary of The Arts & Crafts Movement

The founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement were some of the first major critics of the Industrial Revolution. Disenchanted with the impersonal, mechanized direction of society in the 19 th century, they sought to return to a simpler, more fulfilling way of living. The movement is admired for its use of high quality materials and for its emphasis on utility in design. The Arts & Crafts emerged in the United Kingdom around 1860, at roughly the same time as the closely related Aesthetic Movement , but the spread of the Arts & Crafts across the Atlantic to the United States in the 1890s, enabled it to last longer - at least into the 1920s. Although the movement did not adopt its common name until 1887, in these two countries the Arts & Crafts existed in many variations, and inspired similar contemporaneous groups of artists and reformers in Europe and North America, including Art Nouveau , the Wiener Werkstatte, the Prairie School, and many others. The faith in the ability of art to reshape society exerted a powerful influence on its many successor movements in all branches of the arts.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

The Arts & Crafts movement existed under its specific name in the United Kingdom and the United States, and these two strands are often distinguished from each other by their respective attitudes towards industrialization: in Britain, Arts & Crafts artists and designers tended to be either negative or ambivalent towards the role of the machine in the creative process, while Americans tended to embrace the machine more readily.
The practitioners of the movement strongly believed that the connection forged between the artist and his work through handcraft was the key to producing both human fulfillment and beautiful items that would be useful on an everyday basis; as a result, Arts & Crafts artists are largely associated with the vast range of the decorative arts and architecture as opposed to the "high" arts of painting and sculpture.
The Arts & Crafts aesthetic varied greatly depending on the media and location involved, but it was influenced most prominently by both the imagery of nature and the forms of medieval art, particularly the Gothic style, which enjoyed a revival in Europe and North America during the mid-19 th century.

Overview of The Arts & Crafts Movement

One of William Morris's wallpaper designs.

"Have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful," William Morris said. No detail of interior design was overlooked by the pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Artworks and Artists of The Arts & Crafts Movement

Philip Webb and William Morris: Red House (1859-60)

Artist: Philip Webb and William Morris

Often called the first Arts & Crafts building, Red House was appropriately the residence of William Morris and his family, built within commuting distance of central London but at the time still in the countryside. It was the first house designed by Webb as an independent architect, and the only house that Morris built for himself. Its asymmetrical, L-shaped plan, pointed arches and picturesque set of masses with steep rooflines recall the Gothic style, while its tile roof and brick construction, largely devoid of ornament speak to the simplicity that Morris preached and its function as a mere residence, though the interiors were in places richly decorated with murals by Edward Burne-Jones. The house represented a sharp contrast to suburban or country Victorian residences, most of which were elaborately and pretentiously decorated. Its location allowed Morris to remain in touch with nature, away from London's dirty, polluted core. The design, which included unusually large servants' quarters, spoke to Morris and Webb's budding Socialist inclinations towards erasing class distinctions. Unfortunately, the long hours that Morris spent commuting proved too burdensome for his productivity, and after only five years in the house he sold it and moved his family into London above the shop for his firm.

Red Brick, Wood, and Glass - Bexleyheath, London

Tulip and Rose

Artist: Morris & Co.

The Tulip and Rose curtain exemplifies the kinds of textiles and wallpaper designs produced by Morris' firm beginning in the 1860s. The dense, precisely interlocking pattern of the wool fabric, using curved and exaggerated forms of plants, flora (and sometimes fauna) became a hallmark of Morris & Company's fabric and wallpaper products in the 1870s and '80s. Unlike Morris' earlier designs, which featured more naturalistic imagery, this textile demonstrates his move beyond emulation towards a sense of abstraction during his mature career. The flattened forms and the emphasis on line anticipate the stylization of nature later used by Art Nouveau, and calls attention to the nature of the wool's rough surface texture, thereby revealing the honesty in materials. Furthermore, the "hanging" quality of the imagery of plants and flowers speaks to the way vines cover an entire exterior wall surface - much like the curtain is supposed to cover the entire plane of a window, creating a consonance between the natural elements and man-made articles, in effect bridging or blurring the boundary between the natural world outside and the interior, even when the curtain is completely closed. As much as the forms here look forward towards Art Nouveau, their flattened quality also looks backwards towards the forms of plants and living elements as depicted in Gothic stained-glass windows, and the curved linearity of the plants could also be said to mimic the forms of Gothic tracery. In this sense, the textile is as much revelatory of Morris' background and love of the Gothic as it is a forward-looking formal experiment.

Wool curtain, triple-cloth weave - Cooper-Hewitt Museum, New York City

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Artist: William Morris

The tomes that William Morris produced during the last six years of his life were the epitome of the luxurious pieces manufactured by his firm. They were designed as art objects to be experienced as much as books to be perused, so much so that it is difficult to read them straight through like an ordinary text. The decoration is so lavish and elaborate, overwhelming the printed text to such a degree that one is compelled to stop at every pair of pages and examine it with care before attempting to continue with the narrative (put forth in generally small type). One is immediately struck by the sheer amount of labor involved in creating the plates for printing, the typesetting, the process of making the paper and the binding, along with the cover decoration. The Chaucer, which was the jewel of Morris' volumes made at the Kelmscott Press in an edition of only 425 copies, resembles the ancient medieval colophons with painted calligraphic script and thick binding. The binding is secured when the book is closed with latches, suggesting that the process of reading the work is akin to opening a kind of sacred tome or a treasure chest and that what is contained inside is extremely valuable. The choice of Chaucer, a medieval English author, for the text, is representative of both the connections of the Arts & Crafts with the Middle Ages and Morris' own deep appreciation of literature (he was offered the post of Poet Laureate of Britain the following year but turned it down). Ironically, despite Morris' desire that a book like this would produce joy and pleasure in an ordinary reader, it paradoxically was never accessible to any but the wealthiest of his clients, and arguably its overwrought design renders it difficult to comfortably handle or digest for simple legibility.

Engraved, woodcut prints, paper, and ink - The British Library - Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorkshire, UK

Artist: Grueby Faience Company

The subway tile here represents the way mass production became a hallmark of the Arts & Crafts movement in the United States and ultimately put an end to the large-scale use of handcraft by most design firms. Grueby, founded in 1894 in Revere, Massachusetts, was known primarily for its production of art pottery vases, often using the matte cucumber green glaze that can be seen here as well. But the company was also renowned for its architectural tiles, which it instead produced in molds. In 1904 the company, which had built a name for itself by earning several gold medals at international fairs, was awarded the contract for the pictorial tile revetments in the stations of the new Interborough Rapid Transit lines of the New York Subway. This was not enough, however: Grueby's mass-production competition forced it into bankruptcy in 1909, and after a decade of instability, the company closed for good in 1920. The tile is significant for the Arts & Crafts in many respects. The beaver, like most of the other stations' tiles produced by Grueby, recalls the naturalistic or rural imagery characteristic of the movement and provides a softer antidote to the otherwise industrial character of the stations (emphasized by the natural colors). Here, the beaver has a double meaning, as Astor Place was named for the Astor family, who had built their fortune in part through fur trapping of beavers in the Pacific Northwest; on the other hand, "Astor" itself is nearly synonymous with the Latin word for beaver, "castor." A simple frame with a geometric design and low garland relief surrounds the beaver, emphasizing the flatness of the surface.

Ceramic tile - Astor Place Subway Station, New York City

Gamble House

Artist: Greene & Greene

If the bungalow is the quintessential Arts & Crafts house, the Gamble House could be described as the perfect "overgrown" example. Designed by the architectural firm of the brothers Greene & Greene, Massachusetts transplants to southern California, for the eponymous executive of Procter & Gamble, the house demonstrates the way that the movement's notions of simplicity and homeliness were transformed into the preserves of the upper classes. It remains the best example of the Greenes' architectural work and is sometimes described as an exemplar of the Western Stick Style. The Gamble house exhibits consonance with nature in nearly every respect. Its low, horizontal profile is exemplified by the covered second-floor porch and wraparound terrace extending from the front entrance to the back garden. The painted olive hue of the shingle siding almost seems to blend with the verdant trees and is offset by the stained wood of the frames for the doors and windows. This brown hue extends to the interior and multiplies with inlays in various surfaces, thus creating a sense of continuity between outside and inside. Such harmony is finally reinforced by the stained glass of the front door, which features imagery of a Japanese black pine, acknowledging the house's location on the Pacific Rim. The interior, meanwhile, exudes a gentle warmth and sense of informal comfort despite not being brightly lit, a quality highly desired in an Arts & Crafts residence. Finally, the Greenes designed the house with a painstaking attention to structural honesty, extending the rafters underneath the roof to the ends of the eaves and exposing the joinery on staircases, beams, and posts on the interior.

Pasadena, California

Sarah Agnes Estelle Irvine, and Joseph Meyer: Vase (1922)

Artist: Sarah Agnes Estelle Irvine, and Joseph Meyer

Newcomb College Pottery is emblematic of a well-known regional strain of the Arts & Crafts movement, and the most famous of those located in the American South. It also bears the distinction of being one of the few Arts & Crafts centers that was directly attached to an institution of higher education, the women's college of Tulane University. This vase, painted by Sarah ("Sadie") Irvine, the best-known of the Newcomb Pottery designers, shows the most popular theme for the vessels they produced: the "Moonlight and Magnolias" imagery of broad-canopy live oak or magnolia trees, adorned with moss drooping from their branches, silhouetted against a night sky with a full moon. The most naturalistic and least stylized of the various Newcomb Pottery designs, this imagery clearly roots the piece in the region of the lower Mississippi River valley, where magnolias are abundant, as if to advertise directly its origin. But as much as the vase reveals about the region where it was made, it also discloses how the large artistic American Arts & Crafts enterprises created a brand for their products that simultaneously diminished the identities of their individual artists. Although Irvine was one of the most important painters of Newcomb vessels, working there from 1908 to 1929 before serving as a studio art instructor until 1952, the institution did not publicly promote her talents. And while her painted vessels are often marked and she was able to sell individual pieces, women were barred from the initial stages of the work's creation: school policy was that a "male potter would be needed to work the clay, throw the pots, fire the kiln and handle the glazing." It was Joseph Meyer's job to create the unfinished vessels and plates for the women to decorate; he in turn received the credit for Newcomb Pottery when it won awards at major international expositions.

Glazed Ceramic - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Artist: Charles F. A. Voysey

Voysey's sideboard illustrates well many of the tenets of Arts & Crafts furniture. The straightforward design appears so homely that one might almost mistake it for a piece of folk art. The sideboard rests on four posts that appear almost to be too thin to carry its mass; they are extremely plain, as not even the feet include fittings, and terminate in shallow circular platforms that may have been intended to hold candles, underscoring the anti-modern tenor of the environment this piece was meant to occupy. The wood, fittingly, is oak, a very common selection for Arts & Crafts furniture, which has been hewn in order to expose the grain, and stained to visually emphasize the material's texture. The organization of the sideboard's storage is honest and simplistic: a cabinet containing possibly a shelf, a counter, and a shelf above attached to the back. Virtually nothing about the piece is hidden or complicated. The only ornament attached to the sideboard consists of the prominent dark brass hinges on the cabinet doors, which terminate in heart-shaped cutouts. They appear in some sense to be the only part of the sideboard that holds the piece together, bolstering the sense of solidity and sturdiness, while their curves provide an antidote to the otherwise severe straight lines. The hinges appear almost as if they were stolen from a Gothic cathedral door and repurposed, giving the sideboard a deceptive air that it is older than it really is and underscoring the connection with the Middle Ages, from whose aesthetics the Arts & Crafts was derived.

Oak and brass - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Beginnings of The Arts & Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts movement grew out of several related strands of thought during the mid-19 th century. It was first and foremost a response to social changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain and whose ill effects were first evident there. Industrialization moved large numbers of working-class laborers into cities that were ill-prepared to deal with an influx of newcomers, crowding them into miserable ramshackle housing and subjecting them to dangerous, harsh jobs with long hours and low pay. Cities likewise became doused regularly with pollution from a bevy of new factories.

Critics such as the writer John Ruskin and architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin railed against these problems of industrialization. They contrasted its vices with the Gothic era before the Renaissance , which they viewed as an idyllic time period of piety and high moral standards as well as a healthful, green environment. For both Ruskin and Pugin, there was a strong association between the morality of a nation and the form of its architecture, and the Gothic for them symbolized the peak of human development.

The Genesis: William Morris

“Trellis” (1862) - The first, specialized wallpaper design by the firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

The spark for the Arts & Crafts movement was the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair, held in London. The chief criticism of the manufactured objects on display was the riot of unnecessary ornament with little concern for utility. A young and well-heeled devotee of Ruskin's commentary was William Morris, an apprentice to the Gothic-Revival architect George Edmund Street. Morris also moved in the same circles as the painter Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti , all of whom were fascinated by medieval art and nature. In 1861, Morris founded the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., along with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner, and Peter Paul Marshall, which specialized in wallpaper designs featuring natural imagery.

In 1859 Morris had commissioned Webb to design a house for his family in London, named appropriately "Red House" due to the deep color of its brick. Its steep roofs, L-shaped asymmetrical plan, and overhanging eaves recall the Gothic style, with the brick introducing a simple, pedestrian touch, which contribute to its general recognition as the first Arts & Crafts building. Residences, viewed by the Arts & Crafts practitioners as a bulwark against the harsh conditions of industrialization, a regenerative spiritual haven, and the locus of the traditional family unit, became the building type most associated with the movement (a rather interesting occurrence, as most people associate "Arts & Crafts" with hand-made objects).

Morris' firm grew throughout the 1860s and 1870s, especially as Morris garnered important interior design commissions, such as for St. James's Palace (1866) and the Green Dining Room at the South Kensington (now Victoria & Albert) Museum (1866-68). It also expanded in terms of the range of items that it manufactured, including furniture, such as the famous "Morris chair," textiles, and eventually stained glass. In 1875, Morris - whose relationship with Rossetti especially had deteriorated (in part due to Rossetti's affair with Morris' wife) - bought out his partners and reorganized the firm as Morris & Co.

Morris' firm emphasized the use of handcraft as opposed to machine production, creating works of very high quality that Morris ultimately hoped would inspire cottage industries among the working classes and bring pleasure to their labors, thus creating a kind of democratic art. Morris himself became involved in every step of production of the company's items, thus reviving the idea that the designer or artist should guide the entire creative process as opposed to the mechanical division of labor that was increasingly used in most factories. He also revived the use of organic natural dyes. The use of handcraft and natural sources, however, became extremely labor-intensive, and Morris was not entirely averse to the use of mechanical production. Nonetheless, the popularity of Morris' work in Britain, Continental Europe, and the United States grew considerably, especially after the opening of a new store at 449 Oxford Street in 1877 with trained, professional staff.

Morris, who had taught himself calligraphy in the 1860s, had always been interested in typography and manuscripts. In 1891 he established the Kelmscott Press to print editions of Geoffrey Chaucer, and Ruskin, among others, including 23 of his own works - such as the rambling utopian novel News From Nowhere - in exquisite carefully-designed tomes that rival the artistic merits of medieval manuscripts, though the Kelmscott Press folded the year after Morris' death in 1896.

The Arts & Crafts Movement: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Societies, communities, and exhibitions.

Morris' success and his emphasis on vernacular and rural imagery inspired many others to create collective associations where groups of artists and artisans collaborated on designs in a wide variety of media. In 1882 Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo founded The Century Guild, a group aimed at preserving handcraft and the authenticity of the artist, whose work included furniture, stained glass, metalwork, decorative painting, and architectural design. The guild gained recognition through several exhibitions throughout the 1880s before disbanding in 1892. Likewise, in 1884 Eglantyne Louisa Jebb founded the Home Arts and Industries Association, which funded schools and organized marketing opportunities for rural communities to sustain them through handcraft cottage industries; within five years it had grown to include 450 classes that employed 1,000 teachers instructing some 5,000 students.

In 1887, the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, which gave the movement its name, was formed in London, with Walter Crane as its first president. It held its first exhibition there in November 1888 in the New Gallery. The aims were to "[ignore] the distinction between Fine and Decorative art" and to allow the "worker to earn the title of artist." Dominated by the decorative arts, and bolstered by a strong selection of works by Morris & Co., the first two exhibitions were financial successes. Upon switching to a three-year cycle starting in 1893, the Society's exhibitions served to keep the Arts & Crafts movement in the public eye and proved to be critical successes into the new century - though by the 1920s persistent organizational problems and the organization's antipathy towards machine production ultimately doomed its original mission.

Architecture and the Diversity in Media

In part because the Arts & Crafts constituted a comprehensive philosophy of living as opposed to a distinct aesthetic style, its scope extended to virtually every aspect of the decorative arts, design, and architecture. There were very few Arts & Crafts designers, particularly among architects, whose work did not bridge several different media. Philip Webb, Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, William Lethaby, Charles Robert Ashbee, and Richard Norman Shaw exemplify this holistic trend - furthermore, it is rare to find a progressive architect in Great Britain in the latter half of the 19 th century whose career was not touched by the Arts & Crafts.

In architecture the Arts & Crafts movement did not develop into one particular building style, but could be seen in a multitude of strains. The quintessentially Arts-and-Crafts building, however, might be the classic American bungalow - the stout, boxy, single-family dwelling of one or two stories with a prominent porch, distinguished by a hipped roof with wide overhanging eaves supported by thick beams. In both Britain and the United States, the simplicity, unvarnished, and rough-hewn aesthetic of the Arts & Crafts could be seen mixed in with a variety of stylistic preferences - Queen Anne, Eastlake, Tudor Revival, Stick Style, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Gothic Revival being the most prominent. In Britain, the Garden City Movement and company towns such as Port Sunlight often made use of such "hybrid" Arts & Crafts-based styles in their designs for housing.

Relationship with Art Nouveau

One style that in particular shared many theoretical and visual qualities with the Arts & Crafts was Art Nouveau , which emerged in part from the Arts & Crafts in Europe during the late 1880s. Both the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau placed an emphasis on nature and claimed the Gothic style as an inspiration; both spanned the complete breadth of the various branches of the arts, with an emphasis on the decorative arts and architecture and their power to physically reshape the entire human environment; and visually, both styles made use of a rural, homely aesthetic using rough-hewn stone and wood.

It is difficult to fully categorize many designers as belonging to the Arts & Crafts movement or working in the Art Nouveau style. Henry van de Velde , Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Will Bradley, and a host of other artists and architects are just a few of those artists variously described as straddling this boundary, which remains rather unclear. Many Art Nouveau artists even freely acknowledged their debt to the writings and philosophy of William Morris. Where the Arts & Crafts emphasized simplicity and saw the machine as deeply problematic, however, Art Nouveau often embraced complexity and new technology, sometimes to the point of disguising the truth of materials for visual effect. Art Nouveau also drew on a much wider stylistic base than the Arts & Crafts, finding inspiration from the Baroque , Romanesque , and the Rococo and even Islamic and East Asian sources along with the Gothic. Its very name of "New Art" spoke to the international attempts to invent a style for the 20 th century instead of rejecting the conditions of modern life. As such, Art Nouveau was also less associated than the Arts & Crafts with the power to completely change attitudes and social mores, but rather was often used to embellish and enchant the viewer into a dreamy world of pleasure, sometimes tinged with exoticism.

Spread to the United States

British Arts & Crafts were known in the United States from the 1860s, and their ideas were disseminated freely through newspapers, magazines, and journals throughout the 1880s and 1890s. A key date was 1897, the year the first American Arts & Crafts Exhibition began in April in Boston's Copley Hall, featuring more than 1000 objects by 160 craftsmen, half of whom were women. Its success gave birth to the Society of Arts & Crafts at the end of June, dedicating itself to "develop and encourage higher standards in the handcrafts," with an emphasis on "the necessity of sobriety and restraint" in design, along with "due regard for the relation between the form of an object and its use." Charles Eliot Norton, professor of art history at Harvard University, served as the SAC's first president. Equally as important, that same year at Hull House in Chicago under the auspices of Jane Addams the simply-named Arts & Crafts Society was organized, as an outgrowth of the Progressive Movement, functioning as a tool for teaching new immigrants useful skills to support themselves.

Craftsman Farms in Parsippany, New Jersey - the building first served as an Arts-and-Crafts school for boys. Photo by Daniel Case

Even before then, the collectivist spirit of the Arts & Crafts had struck a vein with ambitious American reformers. In 1895, Elbert Hubbard, a bookish, loquacious former soap salesman who had visited England and drunk deeply from the ideas of William Morris, founded the reform community of craftsmen in East Aurora, New York, called Roycroft. Over the next twenty years, Hubbard's compound of metalworkers, furniture shops, leatherworkers, and (of course) printers and bookbinders would become one of the most ardent representatives of the movement in America until his death on the Lusitania in May 1915. Similar notable utopian communities centered around the Arts & Crafts sprang up in places such as Rose Valley, Pennsylvania and the Byrdcliffe Colony in Woodstock, New York. In 1907 the furniture manufacturer Gustav Stickley founded a manual-labor school for boys called Craftsman Farms in Parsippany, New Jersey, as an experimental, immersive Arts & Crafts environment, but it soon turned out to be a financial failure and Stickley ended up moving his family into the buildings instead.

Corporate Culture

Unlike their counterparts in Britain, many of the American practitioners and advocates of the Arts & Crafts Movement were motivated by a distinctly capitalist drive, viewing the simple aesthetic of the Arts & Crafts as a way to ennoble the new consumerist mass society created by industrialization of the late-19 th century with a kind of moral influence that would create a sense of social harmony. Hubbard and Stickley, whose furniture designs were sold both by mail order and through his showroom in New York City, did much to promote this idea - Hubbard through his magazine The Fra and Stickley through his, titled The Craftsman , which eventually gave the Arts & Crafts the popular alternative moniker "Craftsman Style." Such publications were ostensibly founded with the intention of promoting a simple lifestyle, the honest use of materials in handcraft, and an independent spirit in design and construction for the common man, but their clear purpose was to market the products of their respective publishers. Concomitant with such attitudes, the major figures of the American Arts & Crafts Movement fully embraced the machine as an advantage for mass production and therefore fatter profits, not a hindrance to quality.

Postcard with image of Rookwood Factory for Studio Pottery, Cincinnati, Ohio

The commercialization of the Arts & Crafts in the United States might best be seen in the large corporate bodies that manufactured and marketed their crafts in mass quantities, though this aspect has not diminished their value on the collectors' market even today. Studio pottery operations such as Rookwood, Greuby Faience, Marblehead, Teco, and Overbeck are some of the best-known names in this respect, whose pieces are often known solely by their company monikers, thus diminishing - at least until recently - the identity and credit given to the designers and individual makers and decorators. Such was also initially the case at the for-profit Newcomb Pottery, part of the art school in the eponymous women's college at Tulane University in New Orleans. Other smaller pottery operations, such as Eagle in Arkansas (producers of Niloak) and Bybee in Kentucky, represent the sometimes highly regional character of Arts & Crafts design. Nonetheless, some individuals' skills with their own practices, such as the metalworker Dirk van Erp and ceramicist Ernest Batchfelder, both in California, demonstrate the diverse nature of the Arts & Crafts in the United States.

As a reactionary artistic movement that grew specifically out of social commentary and advocated reform, the Arts & Crafts Movement was destined to be tied to politics. Morris himself was the most significant Arts & Crafts figure as a staunch socialist and anti-imperialist, founding the Socialist League in 1884 and advocating worldwide workers' revolution, giving public lectures around the UK and editing the League's newspaper, the Commonweal . Morris spent more time in the 1880s as a political activist than he did as a designer, though his reputation as a poet preceded him during his lifetime, which at least in part explains why his obituaries from 1896 barely mentioned his political views. Many of Morris' fellow artists, such as William Lethaby and Walter Crane, were also prominent socialists.

While they admired and promoted Morris' desire to restore joy to both artistic and manual labor, American Arts & Crafts adherents largely ignored or rejected Morris' political views. Hubbard and Stickley, for example, made no secret of their capitalist ambitions, and marketed their work expressly to a growing middle-class audience as a complement to, not a reaction against, the economic system wrought by industrialization. Hubbard's professed praise of Morris, Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, and others, which by the 1910s had evolved into an ardent defense of free enterprise and American ingenuity, earned him much criticism for "selling out." The Movement in the United States was also equivocal on gender issues: while it counted many women among its practitioners and advocates, including a few prominent ones such as Jane Addams and the architect Julia Morgan, few women Arts & Crafts artists received significant recognition during their lifetimes, and some were even limited to the type of labor that they were allowed to perform in the creative process. At the Newcomb Pottery in New Orleans, specifically dedicated to female artistic education, only the male potter (usually Joseph Meyer) was permitted to throw the vessels that the women students painted.

Later Developments - After The Arts & Crafts Movement

Alternative names.

Particularly in the United States, the Arts & Crafts Movement is known by several other names, the most prominent being the Craftsman Style, popularized by Gustav Stickley (and, by extension the furniture produced by his brothers' rival furniture firms), as advertised in his magazine The Craftsman , published between 1901 and 1916. "American Craftsman" is often colloquially used for bungalows and related Arts-and-Crafts-inspired houses. The term "Mission Style" or "Mission furniture" also remains frequently used, originally meant to describe a chair made by A.J. Forbes in 1894 for San Francisco's Swedenborgian Church, but popularized in 1898 by Joseph McHugh, a New York furniture manufacturer, in reference to the simple furnishings of Spanish missions in California. Often considerable overlap exists between a Spanish Colonial aesthetic and the Arts & Crafts, particularly in the American West. On the other hand, it should be noted that the colloquial use of the term "Arts & Crafts" in reference to personal hobby-centered activities and retailing bears no relationship to the formal Arts & Crafts Movement.

Decline and Dissemination

Several factors contributed to the Arts & Crafts movement's demise in the 20 th century. Fundamental to its decline was the inherent problem of handcraft - which is labor-intensive - to be easily produced in great quantities and cheaply enough to reach a mass audience. Morris was never able to solve this paradox, since his goal was to create a democratic art for the masses, and as time went on, he grumbled frequently that his firm catered to wealthy clients almost exclusively. The problems were not unique to his company, as many other Arts & Crafts practitioners on both sides of the Atlantic were forced to adopt machine production, often with a decrease in quality in order to stay afloat, and several simply went out of business. Many cooperative art colonies, particularly in the USA, discovered that such a collective enterprise built on handcraft was no longer sustainable on a long-term basis. Finally, like many other movements, the Arts & Crafts fell victim to changing tastes: at the dawn of the new century, a newfound respect for a traditional Neoclassicism emerged - the Edwardian Baroque Revival in Britain and the City Beautiful Movement in the USA - both of which largely spelled the end of the Arts & Crafts Movement as a mainstream phenomenon after World War I.

Pockets of the Arts & Crafts Movement managed to survive among individuals and collective artistic enterprises well into the middle of the 20 th century. The Eagle Pottery that produced Bybee potteries in the American South enjoyed their best years during the 1930s, and the Newcomb College and Teco potteries continued production into the early 1940s. The Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society still exists in modified form as the Society of Designer Craftsmen and holds periodic exhibitions. As with many movements of design and architecture - and even more so than most - the Arts & Crafts aesthetic continues to influence cheap, highly commercialized lines of products - particularly using faux and synthetic materials - frequently marketed today in department stores and by other retailers.

The notion of craft and the visibility of the artist's hand as a central tenet of creative production, as the Arts & Crafts Movement encouraged, proved inspirational for many different artists, designers, and collective movements in Europe and North America, often at the same time as the Arts & Crafts itself flourished. In Scotland, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School are sometimes grouped in with other Arts & Crafts designers. Many proponents of Art Nouveau cited William Morris as a major influence on their work, and the movement was especially admired in Austria and Germany, where design schools based in handcraft, artists' colonies like that at Darmstadt, and planned garden cities echoed the tenets of the Arts & Crafts and claimed it as their direct ancestor. Such was the case with the Bauhaus as founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, which perhaps went further and exhibited distinctly socialist tendencies that forced the school to relocate multiple times before its closure in 1933.

Useful Resources on The Arts & Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts Movement Our Pick By Rosalind P. Blakesley
The Arts & Crafts Movement (World of Art) By Elizabeth Cumming and Wendy Kaplan
The Arts & Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest Our Pick By Lawrence Kreisman and Glenn Mason
William Morris Full-Color Patterns and Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive) By William Morris
The Arts & Crafts Movement in America - the Metropolitan Museum of Art Our Pick
The Arts & Crafts Movement - the Victoria & Albert Museum Our Pick
Arts & Crafts Movement - AP Art History
Morris & Co. - A Revolution in Design - The Original Morris & Co. Our Pick
Arts & Crafts: Design in a Nutshell

Related Artists

William Morris Biography, Art & Analysis

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by Peter Clericuzio

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Art nouveau.

Factory of Olivier de Sorra

Vase with peacock feathers

Auguste Delaherche

"Ombellifères" (cow parsley) Cabinet

Emile Gallé

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer

Edvard Munch

Monumental vase

Georges Hoentschel

Edward Colonna

Alexandre Bigot

Cabinet-vitrine

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy

Dress panel

Hector Guimard

Georges Fouquet

Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat

Coffeepot (part of a service)

Sèvres Manufactory

René-Jules Lalique

Henry van de Velde

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Maude Adams (1872–1953) as Joan of Arc

Alphonse Mucha

Tea service

Josef Hoffmann

Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000)

Gustav Klimt

Cybele Gontar Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2006

From the 1880s until the First World War, western Europe and the United States witnessed the development of Art Nouveau (“New Art”). Taking inspiration from the unruly aspects of the natural world , Art Nouveau influenced art and architecture especially in the applied arts, graphic work, and illustration. Sinuous lines and “whiplash” curves were derived, in part, from botanical studies and illustrations of deep-sea organisms such as those by German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919) in Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature, 1899). Other publications, including Floriated Ornament (1849) by Gothic Revivalist Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852) and The Grammar of Ornament (1856) by British architect and theorist Owen Jones (1809–1874), advocated nature as the primary source of inspiration for a generation of artists seeking to break away from past styles. The unfolding of Art Nouveau’s flowing line may be understood as a metaphor for the freedom and release sought by its practitioners and admirers from the weight of artistic tradition and critical expectations.

Additionally, the new style was an outgrowth of two nineteenth-century English developments for which design reform (a reaction to prevailing art education, industrialized mass production, and the debasement of historic styles) was a leitmotif—the Arts and Crafts movement and the Aesthetic movement. The former emphasized a return to handcraftsmanship and traditional techniques. The latter promoted a similar credo of “art for art’s sake” that provided the foundation for non-narrative paintings, for instance, Whistler ‘s Nocturnes . It further drew upon elements of Japanese art (“ japonisme “), which flooded Western markets , mainly in the form of prints, after trading rights were established with Japan in the 1860s. Indeed, the gamut of late nineteenth-century artistic trends prior to World War I, including those in painting and the early designs of the Wiener Werkstätte, may be defined loosely under the rubric of Art Nouveau.

The term art nouveau first appeared in the 1880s in the Belgian journal L’Art Moderne to describe the work of Les Vingt, twenty painters and sculptors seeking reform through art. Les Vingt, like much of the artistic community throughout Europe and America, responded to leading nineteenth-century theoreticians such as French Gothic Revival architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) and British art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), who advocated the unity of all the arts, arguing against segregation between the fine arts of painting and sculpture and the so-called lesser decorative arts. Deeply influenced by the socially aware teachings of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement , Art Nouveau designers endeavored to achieve the synthesis of art and craft, and further, the creation of the spiritually uplifting Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) encompassing a variety of media. The successful unification of the fine and applied arts was achieved in many such complete designed environments as Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde’s Hôtel Tassel and Hôtel Van Eetvelde (Brussels, 1893–95), Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald’s design of the Hill House (Helensburgh, near Glasgow, 1902–4), and Josef Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt’s Palais Stoclet dining room (Brussels, 1905–11) ( 2000.350 ; 1994.120 ; 2000.278.1–.9 ).

Painting styles such as Post-Impressionism and Symbolism (the “Nabis” ) shared close ties with Art Nouveau, and each was practiced by designers who adapted them for the applied arts, architecture, interior designs, furnishings, and patterns. They contributed to an overall expressiveness and the formation of a cohesive style ( 64.148 ).

In December 1895, German-born Paris art dealer Siegfried Bing opened a gallery called L’Art Nouveau for the contemporary décor he exhibited and sold there ( 1999.398.3 ). Though Bing’s gallery is credited with the popularization of the movement and its name, Art Nouveau style reached an international audience through the vibrant graphic arts printed in such periodicals as The Savoy, La Plume, Die Jugend, Dekorative Kunst, The Yellow Book , and The Studio . The Studio featured the bold, Symbolist-inspired linear drawings of Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898). Beardsley’s flamboyant black and white block print J’ai baisé ta bouche lokanaan for Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1894), with its brilliant incorporation of Japanese two-dimensional composition, may be regarded as a highlight of the Aesthetic movement and an early manifestation of Art Nouveau taste in England. Other influential graphic artists included Alphonse Mucha, Jules Chéret, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , whose vibrant poster art often expressed the variety of roles of women in Belle Époque society—from femme nouvelle (a “new woman” who rejected the conventional ideals of femininity, domesticity, and subservience) to demimonde ( 20.33 ; 32.88.12 ). Female figures were often incorporated as fairies or sirens in the jewelry of René Lalique, Georges Fouquet, and Philippe Wolfers ( 1991.164 ; 2003.560 ; 2003.236 ).

Art Nouveau style was particularly associated with France, where it was called variously Style Jules Verne, Le Style Métro (after Hector Guimard’s iron and glass subway entrances), Art belle époque , and Art fin de siècle ( 49.85.11 ). In Paris, it captured the imagination of the public at large at the 1900 Exposition Universelle, the last and grandest of a series of fairs organized every eleven years from 1798. Various structures showcased the innovative style, including the Porte Monumentale entrance, an elaborate polychromatic dome with electronic lights designed by René Binet (1866–1911); the Pavillon Bleu, a restaurant alongside the Pont d’Iena at the foot of the Eiffel Tower featuring the work of Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858–1910) ( 1981.512.4 ); Art Nouveau Bing, a series of six domestic interiors that included Symbolist art ( 26.228.5 ); and the pavilion of the Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs, an organization dedicated to the revival and modernization of the decorative arts as an economic stimulus and expression of national identity that offered an important display of decorative objects ( 1991.182.2 ; 26.228.7 ; 1988.287.1a,b ). Sharing elements of the French Rococo (and its nineteenth-century revivals ), including stylized motifs derived from nature, fantasy, and Japanese art, the furnishings exhibited were produced in the new taste and yet perpetuated an acclaimed tradition of French craftsmanship. The use of luxury veneers and finely cast gilt mounts in the furniture of leading cabinetmakers Georges de Feure (1868–1943), Louis Majorelle (1859–1926), Edward Colonna (1862–1948), and Eugène Gaillard (1862–1933) indicated the Neo-Rococo influence of François Linke (1855–1946) ( 26.228.5 ).

The Exposition Universelle was followed by two shows at which many luminaries of European Art Nouveau exhibited. They included the Glasgow International Exhibition in 1901 that featured the fantastical Russian pavilions of Fyodor Shekhtel’ (1859–1926) and the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna at Turin in 1902 that showcased the work of furniture designer Carlo Bugatti of Milan ( 69.69 ).

As in France, the “new art” was called by different names in the various style centers where it developed throughout Europe. In Belgium, it was called Style nouille or Style coup de fouet . In Germany, it was Jugendstil or “young style,” after the popular journal Die Jugend ( 1991.182.2 ). Part of the broader Modernista movement in Barcelona, its chief exponent was the architect and redesigner of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) cathedral (Barcelona, begun 1882), Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). In Italy, it was named Arte nuova, Stile floreale , or Lo stile Liberty after the London firm of Liberty & Co., which supplied Oriental ceramics and textiles to aesthetically aware Londoners in the 1870s and produced English Art Nouveau objects such as the Celtic Revival “Cymric” and “Tudric” ranges of silver by Archibald Knox (1864–1933). Other style centers included Austria and Hungary, where Art Nouveau was called the Sezessionstil . In Russia, Saint Petersburg and Moscow were the two centers of production for Stil’ modern . “Tiffany Style” in the United States was named for the legendary Favrile glass designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany .

Although international in scope, Art Nouveau was a short-lived movement whose brief incandescence was a precursor of modernism, which emphasized function over form and the elimination of superfluous ornament. Although a reaction to historic revivalism, it brought Victorian excesses to a dramatic fin-de-siècle crescendo. Its influence has been far reaching and is evident in Art Deco furniture designs, whose sleek surfaces are enriched by exotic wood veneers and ornamental inlays. Dramatic Art Nouveau—inspired graphics became popular in the turbulent social and political milieu of the 1960s, among a new generation challenging conventional taste and ideas.

Gontar, Cybele. “Art Nouveau.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm (October 2006)

Additional Essays by Cybele Gontar

Gontar, Cybele. “ Empire Style, 1800–1815 .” (October 2004)
Gontar, Cybele. “ Neoclassicism .” (October 2003)
Gontar, Cybele. “ Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827–1875) .” (October 2004)
Gontar, Cybele. “ The Neoclassical Temple .” (October 2003)

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Oil on Canvas
Sculpture in the Round
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Bellery-Desfontaines, Henri-Jules-Ferdinand
Bigot, Alexandre
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Dalpayrat, Pierre-Adriene
Delaherche, Auguste
Fouquet, Georges
Gallé, Émile
Grittel, Emile
Guimard, Hector
Hoentschel, Georges
Hoffman, Josef
Jallot, Léon-Albert
Jones, Owen
Klimt, Gustav
Knox, Archibald
Kupka, Frantisek
Lalique, René-Jules
Läuger, Max
Lévy-Dhurmer, Lucien
Lundström, Nils Emil
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie
Massier, Clément
Morris, William
Mucha, Alphonse
Munch, Edvard
Scherf, Walter
Schiele, Egon
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Tiffany & Company
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Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de
Van De Velde, Henry
Whistler, James McNeill
Wiener Werkstätte
Wolfers, Philippe
Wright, Frank Lloyd

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Is there a difference between art and craft - laura morelli.

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Was da Vinci an artistic genius? Sure, but he was also born in the right place at the right time -- pre-Renaissance, Western artists got little individual credit for their work. And in many non-Western cultures, traditional forms have always been prized over innovation. So, where do we get our notions of art vs. craft? Laura Morelli traces the history of how we assign value to the visual arts.

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Home Essay Samples

Essay Samples on Art

While it may seem easy to compose essays about art, it’s not really so because you have to offer background information in your introduction part and explain why some exhibition or a school of thought is important. This should go to your first paragraph because your purpose is to inspire your readers and provide enough background information. When you already have a prompt that must be followed, determine what kind of essay must be written. It can be a descriptive essay, which is great for a description of the works of art or photography. Some other cases may require working with an explanatory tone where you have to explain why an artist has chosen certain palettes or what has been an inspiration. See various free art essay examples below for inspiration. It also helps to learn how to structure your writing and implement quotes or footnotes that are used to highlight the images. Remember to focus on the ways how to cite images and multimedia elements, depending on the chosen style. Your writing should address every image that you have by checking twice with the grading rubric to ensure that you use the sources that may have already been specified.

What Does Creativity Mean to You

Creativity, an intricate tapestry of imagination and innovation, holds a unique significance for each individual. It is a concept that transcends the boundaries of convention, sparking curiosity and igniting the flames of inspiration. In this essay, we embark on a journey to unearth the meaning...

Censorship of Art and Artists: The Complex Discourse

The intersection of creativity and expression often finds itself entangled in a contentious debate: the censorship of art and artists. This complex issue has sparked discussions across societies and cultures, raising questions about freedom of speech, cultural preservation, and the power dynamics between creators and...

Why I Want to Study Architecture: the Power of Design

The world around us is a tapestry of structures, spaces, and designs that shape our lives and experiences. From towering skyscrapers to quaint houses, every architectural marvel carries a story and a vision. The allure of architecture, with its blend of artistic expression, technical precision,...

Architecture

The Impact of Technology on Art: A Modern Renaissance

Introduction The influence of technology on art is an evolving narrative that reflects the symbiotic relationship between human creativity and innovative tools. From the early use of simple tools to create cave paintings to the digital art technologies of today, the integration of technology in...

Art History
Impact of Technology
Renaissance

Exploring Feminist Literary Criticism: Unveiling Mona Lisa Smile

Introduction Self-assessment and criticism help us improve our skills and the ways in which we communicate our ideas and perspectives with others. In this feminist literary criticism essay, I will be critiquing and analysis of the movie Mona Lisa Smile. Firstly, I will explain why...

Literary Criticism

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Frida Kahlo: Exploring Her Biography Through the Film 'Frida'

In the 2002 film “Frida” directed by Julie Taymor, illustrates the life of Frida Kahlo based on the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera. Who is Frida Kahlo? Her biography in this essay is explored with the help of the film...

Film Analysis
Frida Kahlo

Debate Surrounding Graphic Novel and Relation to Literature

Introduction In the past years, the noise about graphic novels has been constantly increasing. A graphic novel is basically a novel in comic-strip format, a book made up of comics’ content. However, they are not the same as comics. Unlike comic books, graphic novels are...

Graphic Novel
Visual Arts

Depicting Trauma: Symbolism in Graphic Novels

Introduction I must confess that I never read a graphic novel prior to this course. I think I’ve developed and expressed my opinion of graphic novels frequently over the course of the semester, and I think I would be remiss if I did not close...

Understanding Graphic Novels: Context and Analysis for Reading

Introduction Graphic novels are stories illustrated in comic form but have the length of a novel. “The term graphic novel was invented in 1970 however, the time of its origin is not concluded yet” (“Levitz”). Graphic novels have been debated for decades since some readers...

Jhene Aiko: Exploring the Artistry and Emotions in her Music

The artist I have chosen to write about is Jhene Aiko who is categorized in the R&B and Hip-Hop genre. Jhene Aiko is a popular singer who writes her music under the influence of cannibis, under the influence of therapeutic instruments and while having a...

Famous Person
Music Industry

The Joy of Painting: Exploring the Life and Legacy of Bob Ross

Who is Bob Ross, or rather, who was he? During the 80s and 90s, he was an artist who specialized in painting, hosting an instructional painting show on PBS called The Joy of Painting. Though Bob Ross has long since passed on, one will find...

The Uniqueness of Australian Artwork: Exploring Artists' Perceptions

Australian artists provide a unique way of displaying the Australian landscape. John Olsen is one of these artists, who uses symbolism to create a sense of movement. This is conveyed through his spontaneous linear line work as seen in Onkaparinga Hill, blue wren and fox...

Artistic World of Peter Doig: an Insight Into His Life and Work

Peter Doig is a contemporary Scottish artist I found that peaked my interest from his art work to his personal life. I’d like to start off by giving a brief background of the artist seeing that a lot of his work is landscapes from where...

Contemporary Art

Being an Artist: My Passion, Place of Freedom and Courage

I remember constantly wondering if there was a way that I could make my life meaningful or if it even had meaning. I was just a thirteen year old starting to figure out her own self. My life revolved around wanting to please the people...

About Myself

Sculpture From Dura Europas: the Head of a Bearded God

One of the artworks in the Yale art gallery is the Head of a Bearded God. This sculpture of bearded man that looks old and wise. This piece has curly hair, bushy eyebrows, and very wide/big eyes. The piece is is classified as a sculpture,...

Kashimiri Papier Mache Art: a Unique Dying Art Form

Kashmir has been wrought in conflict and upheaval for decades now, but its wonderful valleys give us a unique gift of native craftsmanship – Papier Mache art. Kashmir’s rich cultural past is often overlooked due to its troublesome political past. Its handicrafts and shawls (from...

The Art of the Meddah: Exploring Turkish Forms of Storytelling

Culture is the conglomeration of the beliefs and art forms of societiesm across places, along a long-time frame. And quite evidently, the Republic of Turkey has an extremely long history and a resultantly rich diversity in its culture. Throughout its history, the Turkish land was...

The Way Technologies Transform Already Existing Art Forms

Compelling games are not the consequences of accidents, any more than are riveting novels, movies, or music. Creators for all these medias draw on well-established set of strategies and techniques to create a particular emotional experience. Musicians, for example, may create tension through reiteration and...

How Shemistry Influenced the History and Presentation of Art

Chemistry is everywhere in our life. Of course, chemistry is also closely related to art. There are many forms of art, such as oil painting, gouache, watercolor and so on. These painting forms are inseparable from products such as pigments and watercolors, which are based...

Critical Understanding of the Sculptural Art of Alexander Calder

Calder was an American sculptor from Pennsylvania. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder was a sculptor and his mother a painter. Him and his family were constantly on the move around the country throughout Calder’s childhood due to his dads work. And through this Calder was...

Discussion on the Relationship Between Intelligence and Creativity

The relationship between intelligence and creativity has been subjected to research for many years. Unfortunately, there is yet no consensus on how these constructs are related. The connection between intelligence and creativity is that they are functions of the brain that handle data to determine...

Intelligence

Do Schools Kill Creativity: the Issues of Music Education

In the TEDx video entitled, 'Do schools kill creativity?' Sir Ken Robinson discusses what he believes to be the main problem with our education system, providing a series of funny anecdotes and facts appropriate for his argument. After watching this video about 'Do schools kill...

Creative and Critical Thinking: Combining the Achievements of Thought

Creative, one word that can be interpreted in many ways whether in thoughts which is include ways of thinking and actions and also in verbal form. Critical, on the other side refers to the ability to analyse information objectively and make a reasoned judgment. It...

Critical Thinking

Culture, Art and Creativity: the Way They Are Related

Art is a reflection of your thinking, your ideas, and your surroundings, the artist adopts his or her surroundings and then by using their imagination, outside thinking and their perspective they present a new face of it in front of the world. Art and creativity...

Cultural Anthropology

Accessing the World of Theatre: Musicals and Music Theatre

Goodwin (2019) states music theatre is a type of stage performance using music from various forms such as ballets, operas, cabarets, and contemporary music. Musical theatre uses different techniques (e.g. music, dance, songs, acting as well as spoken dialogue) to tell a story to the...

Drawing for Architecture: A Key to Understanding Complex Designs

Architecture the word from Latin is called “architectura” originally from the Greek “arkhitekton”. Architectural drawing has never been taken for granted. All things we design and sketch are from our thinking to our hands. Therefore, drawings are the main development to architectural projects. When designing,...

Architecture: Bridging Vision into Reality

Architecture can be defined in various ways, but if I were to define it, I would simply use these following words, ‘Architecture is an abstract language that bridges a vision into reality.’ I think everyone would agree that architecture is best paired with great effort...

Interior Design

The Development of Nationalism & Regionalism in Australian Architecture

Introduction From the 1880s, “nationalism” and “regionalism” had been started to be two of the keywords on the Australian development of architecture. These two words point toward the nation’s sake of rejecting foreign architectural approaches and seeking of the local architectural characteristics in Australia. During...

Modern Architecture

Architecture: A Means to Improve People's Quality of Life

Introduction “Architecture is about finding imaginative, creative solutions to improving people’s quality of life.” - Alejandro Aravena Architecture was born approach back in the prehistoric age, once the first man determined to come back up with shelters made up of twigs and bones. architecture isn't...

Quality of Life

Architecture and its Role in Nation Building: A Critical Review

Brief introduction on architecture and how its spaces are perceived The universal definition of architecture as a synthesis of ‘art’ and ‘science’ is inadequate in the present democratic, globalized, and information world of the 21st century. Many modern good-looking buildings with sound structures have been...

Romanticism Paintings Analysis: The Raft of Medusa and Liberty Leading the People

I will be focusing on romanticism that is based on emotions and sublimity. I will be displaying the features of romantic art by analysing two paintings from the 19th century. These are The Raft of Medusa by Theodore Gericault (1819; Louvre Museum, Paris), oil on...

Romanticism

The Ideas Behind The Persistence of Memory and Pillars of Society

George Grosz, Pillars of Society (1926) George Grosz was born in Berlin on July 26, 1893, he studied at Dresden Art Academy and began his career as a cartoonist. He later joined a Dada movement in 1917. And he was a famous figure in Neue...

Salvador Dali

The Persistence of Memory, Starry Night and Analysis of Other Paintings

Dreams are something that everyone is or was able to have at one point in their life. Dreams are defined as, 'a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.' Many artists create their artworks from their dreams or other...

Vincent Van Gogh

The System Of Education: If I Could Change The World

If I could change the world, I would completely change the system of education. It hasn't changed for hundreds of years, and the current system was designed in the Industrial Age. This means, that children in school have to obey every order and do only...

Importance of Education

Expressive Art: Is Graffiti Art Or Vandalism

Throughout time graffiti has received both overwhelming support and intense backlash. Some view it as a form of expressive art while others consider it a complete destruction of property. However, despite the amount of differentiation, charisma and personality graffiti can bring into cities, it is...

Why Is Art Important For Human

Art is not a necessary part of survival. So why does it matter? Oftentimes art is overlooked and viewed as an unimportant skill or ability to have. However, art has many qualities that one can benefit from. It is a stress reliever that allows people...

The Doll`s House" By H. Ibsen: Nora Helmer Character Analysis

Nora Helmer is a good wife and mother. She does all she can for her family, especially her husband. Considering all the things she does, and the lengths she went to to make sure her husband could regain his health, it was not enough in...

A Doll's House

Why Is Graffiti Are Not Vandalism

Why is graffiti art not vandalism? According to the Mural Arts Philadelphia website, the village’s first legitimate effort to eradicate graffiti started with the form of the Anti-Graffiti Network in the 1980s. Some people assay that its vandalism, and some assay that its artifice. Park...

My Take On Comedy: From Tartuffe To Sylvia And Cards Against Humanity

Defining comedy is extremely difficult. When something happens that makes you laugh, whether that is in a play or in real life, it’s difficult to pin down why you laughed, to begin with. I find myself defining comedy as a series of events that went...

Attitudes Towards Consumerism in Contemporary Art

In this essay I will be using information gathered from my own personal research, studio research and relevant topics discussed throughout the lectures. Whilst also, considering social, economic, and cultural factors. I will be discussing and analyzing attitudes towards consumerism in Contemporary Art. Built from...

Consumerism

One of the Most Common Forms of Theatre

Throughout this essay the focus of various practitioners will be explored thoroughly from the paths of life they took and how they became so successful, to the impact that their work had on other practitioners and in general the industry itself. The industry of theatre...

The Practice of Art Forgery and Monet's Aesthetic Flaws

A forgery is a work that is not genuine to its proclaimed origins, however, is presented as a genuine article, and is so acting with the intention to deceive. The practice of art forgery is as well established and mature as the practice of creating...

Claude Monet

Visual Verbal Essay on Wilfred Owen and Franz Marc

This essay explores two artists, Franz Marc, Brett Whitely and two of their artworks depicting animal scenes. Franz Marc’s ‘Tiger’, ‘Blue Horse 1’ and Brett Whitley’s Giraffe and Hyena. These four artworks will be compared and contrasted using the structural and the subjective frame. In...

Wilfred Owen

The Role of Creative Industries in the United Kingdom

In this essay I will go over and talk about the creative industries and the role they play in the United Kingdom, I will look at the history and the development of the Creative Industries and their sectors. I will then look at the wider...

Great Britain

African Art: West African Sculpting

West African sculpting greatly influenced us today because lots o people still do it like when Pablo Picasso recreated the style of west African art he created it like they would some real some supernatural and exaggerated on some body parts after Pablo Picasso shared...

African Art

Caravaggio's Sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham Due to Divine Intervention

First of all, there are several juxtapositions present throughout the painting. For example, there is a dichotomous relationship between the cold sensuality in the foreground and the pastoral beauty in the background. Secondly, Caravaggio manages to convey the sensational struggle present between the unconditional loyalty...

Greetings From the 1970s Contemporary Photography

The term contemporary refers to things happening in the same period of or in the style of the present or recent times so when referring to contemporary photography that is only basic modern 21st-century pictures or videos.. Over the past years, something called 'the medium'...

Photography

Claude Monet and Modern Art Today

“Claude Monet” was a famous French painter who used to catch his everyday life's best minutes on canvas. “Claude Monet” was born on 14 November 1840 and His father was a businessman and his mother was a singer. He is one of the most praised...

The World’s Wife Borrowed From Other Texts

It is often that literature, whether being a poem or a book, often provides a voice for those who lack one. The work by Carol Ann Duffy is an accumulation of poems titled 'The World's Wife', first published in 1999 and the present works through...

Drama (Play Genre)

Typography: From Billboards to Street Signs

Typography is everywhere we look, in the books we read on the websites we visit even in everyday life, from billboards to street signs, product packaging and even on your mobile phone. It is the art and technique of designing and arranging type. Today the...

Advertising

Rebellious Aspect to Monet’s Personality

Claude Monet is an artist who continues to be adored and held in high esteem even to this day. There may be many who perhaps are not familiar with the name, yet still at least recognise one piece of his work. His paintings are a...

Edgar Degas and His Way of Critics

Mary Cassatt was born in 1844. She was born in what is now known as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and died on June 14, 1926 at her French home right outside of Paris. Mary was raised in Philadelphia where she spent her childhood with a social privilege...

Edgar Degas
Impressionism

The Principles of Art: Movement, Unity, Harmony, Variety

If you were to ask someone “what is art essay”, the majority of people in the world would think of art and immediately their mind would shoot to a painting. The truth is, art is so much more than just a painting. There are thousands...

Art Movement

Fairy Tale Black Swan Is a Story of a Ballerina

“Black Swan” is not the fairy tale of “swan lake” but a story of a ballerina, Nina. The story begins with the change of the company, the old lead dancer Beth is about to leave. The stage needs a new lead dancer who can act...

The Book Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Calico

One may call war a side effect of human civilization. Nevertheless, it is in a war that people show their best virtues: courage, loyalty, strength, perseverance, and honesty. Nothing is surprising in the fact that texts on this subject have existed since the writing appeared....

Comparing Two Great Pieces by Pablo Picasso and by Francisco Goya

Today I will be comparing and contrasting two great pieces called “GUERNICA” by Pablo Picasso and “THE THIRD OF MAY” by Francisco Goya.The “GUERNICA” by Pablo Picasso was hard to understand at first but the longer you look at it you understand it is a...

Pablo Picasso

Black Swan is About Destructive Nature of Ballet

Nina Portman is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica who exerts a suffocating control over her life. When artistic director...

The Development of Islamic Art

Islamic art is created not only for the Muslim faith, but it consists of artworks such as textiles, architecture, paintings and drawings that were produced in the regions that were once ruled by Muslim empires. Artists from various disciplines take part in collaborative projects and...

History of Islam
Islamic Art

Role of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

Cultural pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their own unique cultural identities. Migration is a key process that makes significant contribution to the growth of urbanism. Often immigrants belonging to particular region, language, religion ,tribe etc tend to...

Art and Religion
Religious Pluralism

John Berger: Understanding His Artwork

John Berger is a remarkable man who enlighten us with his knowledge using one of his brilliant essays “Ways of Seeing.” Berger has concurred the ability to fully understand any artwork and to recognize what is visible before him. He clarifies that there is a...

John Berger

America’s Contemporary Multimedia Artist Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is one of America’s most popular contemporary multimedia artists, who believes that art can change lives, give vastness and expand your parameters. Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the...

American Culture

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling by Michelangelo

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Italian: Volta Della Cappella Sistina), painted by Michelangelo somewhere in the range of 1508 and 1512, is a foundation work of High Renaissance craftsmanship. The Creation of Adam' is one of the nine ceiling boards in the Sistine Chapel portraying scenes...

Michelangelo

History of Medieval And Byzantine Art Movements

A painting wealthy in color typical for St.George on a rearing white horse, shown against a rocky landscape, slaying the winged monster as it appears before him. An angel crowns St.George with a martyr’s crown, symbolizing the triumph of good over evil. The tower on...

Byzantine Empire

The Power Of Photography: Capturing Emotions With Camera

Photographs help people preserve memories with its technology, but what is actually happening is much more interesting when thought about in more depth. A moment in time is captured forever, so long as the photograph is kept in good shape. It is the closest people...

Jackson Pollock as an Influential America Artist

The painter Jackson Pollock was an influential America painter and a key person to the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Cody , Wyoming in 1912 and he was the youngest of 5 brothers. He grew up in Arizona and Chico, California he moved...

Jackson Pollock

The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio by Belle Ami

The Girl Who Loved Caravaggio by Belle Ami is a romantic suspense thriller and the second book in the Out of Time series. High on the success of finding a centuries-old Leonardo da Vinci painting, Angela Renatus, and her fiance Alex Caine are on a...

The Portrayal of the Culture of Death and Afterlife in Art

Throughout history, different cultures dealt with the concept of death and afterlife according to their beliefs, and developed different perspectives about what happens after the body dies. These ideas were often reflected in their art, literature, and their lifestyle as well. Most cultures produce art...

Art Nouveau and Modernist Movements in Art

Art Nouveau is originated in England. William Morris collaborated with other artists so Art Nouveau was created. It has a wide range of different decorative arts, like architectural, painting, graphic art, and jewelry. It was most popular during the 1890s. Its popularity came to a...

Art Nouveau
William Morris

The Famous Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio

The famous Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio produced original paintings, criticizing those who imitated other artists creative styles. He even accused the great Giovanni Baglione and Guido Reni for imitating his uniquely developed techniques. Caravaggio was the building block for modern art and followed by many....

Art of Theatre and French Figure Joan of Arc

Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is an irish playwright, critic, and political activist. His influence on Western theatre started from the 1880s till after his death. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1925 becoming the leading dramatist of his generation. Shaw's first play to bring...

Joan of Arc

The Beauty and Skill of Ansel Adams’ Photography

Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902. As a child, Adams had many freedoms and lots of energy. He was an unattractive child, with big dark circles under his eyes, a crooked nose, and large ears. He was often teased...

Ansel Adams

Holi Festival and Vibrant Celebration of Colors

Holi is a very vibrant celebration of colors. We have to wait for a whole year. So we can enjoy the festival of color. Although, Holi is fun and joyous. It's also immensely damaging to your skin. The colors are not extracted from flowers but...

Holi Festival

The Struggle of the Graphic Designers and Social Media

Graphic designers relied heavily on word-of-mouth for their works to become popular and to be seen by the public, it was close to impossible to grow an organic dedicated fanbase to follow your work, nowadays with the rise of the internet and social media, you...

Graphic Design

Some Interesting Facts About Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was one of the most, if not the most celebrated artist of the 20th century. His art is iconic, his personality, eccentric, his fashion sense, interesting, his style, unique, his showmanship, unforgettable. All these combined to make him an interesting human and a...

Salvador Dali's Biography: Main Topics

Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. His father was an atheist lawyer who was very strict in Dali’s upbringing. Dali’s mother, on the other hand, was loving and encouraged him to be artistic. He has an older brother named...

Caravaggio’s Artwork Judith Beheading Holofernes

For this essay, you needed to decide on a painting, Sculpture and other selected types of art work by which ever artist that created them before the 1900’s.Select a topic out of the selection given to do research about the topic and art work to...

William Morris: Arts and Crafts Movement

William Morris was a famous artists who mainly focused on his wallpaper and fabric designs. While he was mainly known for his art, even today, he had many other notable careers and accomplishments, One of them being that he founded the Arts and crafts movement....

Breaking The Parametr In Red Wheelbarrow: Analysis

The most conspicuous element of modernist poetry is the invention and experimentation of new forms of representation. It featured movements such as imagism and symbolism and moved consciously away from naturalism and realism. Ezra Pound was one of the first to delve into this new...

The Importance Of Paying Attention To Detail In Architecture

The architectural detailing process of a project is a long process that includes a lot of steps and patterns to consider. The designing issue is not consecutive for making a theoretical plan for the entire structure, the detailing, and construction of a building. It is...

Depiction Of Revolution In Les Miserables And Musical Theatre

This essay will deliberate the framework of genre, and investigate Musical Theatre, a genre within performing arts. What is Genre? Genre has been around for centuries, it commenced with the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato, they created a classification system that would separate literature into...

Les Miserables

The Concepts Of Love And Hate With Loyalty In "Romeo And Juliet"

Loyalty is a virtue that most people strive for as seen in the play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, which is about two feuding families, the Montagues and the Capulets. Romeo, a Montague and Juliet, a Capulet fall in love. Throughout...

Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare

Romeo And Juliet: The Decision Between Choice And Fate

“God gave us free will, and we may choose to exercise it in ways that end up hurting other people”-Francis Collins. Romeo and Juliet is a tragic play written by Shakespeare, that follows the lives of two star-crossed lovers. The setting of Romeo and Juliet...

Societal Views On Graffiti: Street Art Or Vandalism

When you think of graffiti what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Vandalism or street art? Most would say vandalism, but what makes the distinction between the two? The intention of the piece. There’s a difference between defiling the back of a building and...

Portrayal Of Love And Hate In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Shakespeare’s exploration of themes through tragic conventions make the play, Romeo and Juliet, of enduring relevance to modern audiences. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1595) captures audiences through the thrill of lovers from feuding families racing together to their tragic demises. This play explores themes understood...

Graffiti And Street Art As An Act Of Vandalism

It is difficult to apply a single definition to what is considered Art. Whether it can or should be defined has been constantly debated. “The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy....

Passionate Pursuit: Being Passionate About Art

Different pieces of artwork inspire people all around the world. Artists use a wide variety of techniques to make their work unique. While creating new pieces of art, it is common to look at other artists' work for inspiration. While evaluating their artwork you can...

Andy Warhol's Album Artwork: Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

As the saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover, or in this case an album, but sometimes it cannot be helped. Custom packaging is an extremely important with any kind of product but despite this album cover art has not always been used...

Andy Warhol

The Role Of Other Characters In Death Of Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is such a tragic love story. It is sad that their lives ended, but that doesn’t mean their love for eachother did; their love may still live on with them in the after life. There are many characters who had a role...

The Presentation Of Love In Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a play written by Shakespeare in the 1500’s. It tells us the tragedy of two young lovers named Romeo and Juliet who fall in love at first sight but can never be together due to their two families conflict which ends...

The Importance Of Different Types Of Love In Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a play written by William Shakespeare during the 16th century that mainly follows the themes of love and tragedy. The intense passion the two lovers from both households have for one another causes the deaths of their friends, family and themselves....

The Use Of Hyperbole And Symbolism In "The Doll's House"

A Doll's House delves into the lives of a young couple living in Victorian era Norway. The play follows Nora through her journey, from her previously unexamined life of domestic, wifely comfort, to questioning the very foundation of everything she used to believe in. Having...

Realism In A Doll's House Play

Realism as a literary movement emerged in the late nineteenth century and extended to the twentieth century, the most important factors that led to the emergence of the period of realism is the horrors that happened to people after the World War, which made the...

20th Century Art: Representational Abstract Art

One of the most influential and significant periods in the history of the arts is the 20th century. It was a period that consisted of many rapid and radical artistic changes that gave birth to endless ideas, possibilities, experiences, and visions. Not only were ideas,...

Abstract Art

The Opposite Concepts Of Realism Versus Idealism

Introduction When comparing realism and idealism, the concepts must be understood historically, theoretically and practically. In this essay, a number of steps will be taken to present a thorough overview of the two schools of thought. Firstly, the epistemological and metaphysical questions of philosophy will...

The Abstract Art And Pop Art Artists And Movements

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The benefits of Art, Craft and Design education in schools: A Rapid Evidence Review

2022, NSEAD

Despite Art and Design being a foundation subject in the English national curriculum, available data suggests that most primary schools do not devote a great deal of time to arts education in general, and Art and Design in particular. Enrolments in secondary Art and Design are in steady decline. We decided to undertake a focused examination of research into the benefits of Art, Craft and Design to ascertain whether there was evidence that might be usefully brought to discussions about a subject area that appears to be ‘out of favour’. As the report is designed to support the work of the APPG into Art, Craft and Design Education it takes a strong UK perspective, often focusing specifically on England. https://www.nsead.org/publications/research-reports-and-reviews/research-reports-and-presentations/art-craft-and-design-rapid-evidence-review/

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The aim of this research was to discover what teachers could do to promote the benefits of studying Art and Design (A&D) at GCSE, as the EBacc's (English Baccalaureate) recent introduction has narrowed down GCSE options. Research was carried out with the hypothesis that students would neglect A&Dat GCSE due to a limited understanding of the career prospects or transferable skills that A&D education promotes. Research included the stigmatisation of A&D education, the attitudes of students towards the subject and how the EBacc might potentially impact the number of students opting for creative GCSEs. A poster that communicated these benefits was produced in response to data. The poster, which could be displayed in A&D classrooms, was trialled with a focus group and a class of Year 9 students. The Year 9 students were asked to write what they felt were the benefits of studying A&D both before and after viewing the poster. The poster was found to have an 83.33% success rate.

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Edited by Glen Coutts and Teresa Eça During 2015, the InSEA Publications Working Group, established InSEA Publications to complement the range of publishing opportunities for our members and others wanting to publish with us. The idea of a publication that celebrates our core mission of ‘education through art’, we thought, was a timely one as Read’s seminal book, Education through Art was published in 1943 and the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) was established in 1954. Given that passage of time and the seismic socio-political, ecological and economic changes that have taken place in the latter half of the 20th century we thought the time was right to invite our members and the wider art education community to reflect on the evolving nature of art education around the world. It seemed to us that there was an opportunity to take stock; to share research and praxis. Our view is that InSEA is a member led organisation, so we hoped that members would welcome a call that sought to critically examine what ‘learning though art’ might mean in practice. We believe this book continues and develops the tradition of InSEA supporting existing and new members in their efforts to celebrate research and good practice in art education (Preface, p.9). Edited by Glen Coutts and Teresa Eça

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The Artist Journal (TAJ), Faculty of Environmental Studies, University of Uyo, Uyo-Nigeria. Volume 4, No. 2, ISSN:2142-2775, Pp. 46-58, 2020

The aim of this article is to reexamine the values of art in child development, society and education. Hitherto, works in these areas centered around child development or art in society or the value of art in education separately; in this article they are examined side by side. Art practices are not only fun and entertaining, but also educational. There is an innate freedom that comes with the ability to manipulate different materials consequently allowing space for exploration, experimentation and practice of newly acquired skills like grasping pencils, crayons, chalk and paintbrushes which help in developing the child’s fine motor muscles. This development will help them with writing, buttoning a coat and other tasks that require controlled movements. Children can learn, create and understand concepts like size, shape, making comparisons, counting and spatial reasoning. As children describe and share their artworks, as well as their process, they develop language skills. These advancement or developments in the child’s growth are seen in this article as significant elements that make up the values of art to the development of society; after all the child is a unitary element of the society. Therefore, it can be said that art influences society by changing opinions, instilling values and translating experiences beginning with child development and across space and time. Painting, sculpture, music, literature and other arts forms are often considered to be the repository of a society’s collective memory. Art and culture have a wider, more measurable impact on our economy, health and wellbeing, society and education. Art education inspires and motivates students to enjoy learning. Art exposure provides a creative outlet for children, they provide mental, emotional, and educational benefits. Immersing children in art can help boost the parts of their brain associated with academic achievement such as reading and math and emotional development.

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Mark Danowsky YOU ARE A POET (Even When You Aren’t Writing)

In Poetics , Aristotle essentially defines a poet as someone who has “an eye for resemblances.” This is a nice reminder to look up, both literally and metaphorically, look around, look within, simply look. We are all trapped in our physical bodies while also inhabiting external spaces. What are your spaces? What is in these spaces?

People say, “Life happens while you’re busy making other plans.” Sometimes, in order to return to your writing, you need to live a little. This is not because you lack content. Flannery O’Connor famously says, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” Writers each have their own metaphor for “waiting for the well to refill” so that their ability to approach the page becomes feasible.

When you’re not actively writing, or you feel like you’re not writing as much as you should, maybe you’re doing exactly what you need to be doing. Maybe what you need is a period of reflection. There are times for simply living life and times when you need to write to make sense of the world.

I used to believe all writers need a day job. What I really meant but did not yet understand was that writers need stimulation to encourage them to put pen to paper. It’s not necessarily what you do, it’s that you’re subconsciously soaking in data. In Robert Bly’s Leaping Poetry , he writes, a good poem has an “arc of associations which corresponds to the inner life of the objects.” Basically, poetry is all about associative thinking. This is part of the reason I encourage cherry-picking material you enjoy from the various types of data foisted on us 24/7. Pay attention to the different environments you move through; watch how people in, around, and outside your bubble go about daily living; notice repetition and variation; reflect on the particular way your mind and your body move through days that are short and days that seem to go on forever.

A misstep is believing that living wild brings wildness to the page. Going to bars too often and driving Uber/Lyft may be the source of a few of my most entertaining stories, however, these are not the source of my better writing. The times in my life when I’ve been most productive are the times in my life when I’ve had structure and routine.

Writers have notoriously odd habits and routines surrounding their writing. Goethe had his thing with rotten apples ; Auden kept a strict schedule (common) which included a daily dose of amphetamines (less common, not recommended); Dr. Seuss turned to hats (not surprising); Haruki Murakami maintains a strict schedule (common) that includes a considerable amount of exercise (also fairly common). Most writers have little practices that are a bit like superstitions.

I’ve heard variations on reasons why writers leave their daily work purposefully unfinished. I find this concept interesting; although, it is not part of my own writing practices. There are writers who say they stop in the middle of a sentence; who begin the new day’s writing by rewriting or re-typing the previous day’s work; who stop writing in the middle of a section because they know where they’re going (so it feels easier to get started the next day); who make a point of stopping while they still feel the urge the continue writing. It is almost exclusively writers who do not write poetry who I have heard speak in this way.

Ask a poet about The Muse and, whether or not they believe in this concept as beyond themselves, they will usually tell you that they write until the words stop coming. Most poets bleed themselves out. A notable exception, Mary Ann Saymn has said that her most notable strength as a poet is her ability to walk away from the page. You can feel it in her poetics. There is a very real distance between lines. The poet has deliberately chosen to let lines sit, to let the poem rest incomplete, to wait for the next best words to arrive.

Stephen Dobyns wrote a poetry craft book called Best Words, Best Order and then went on to write another craft guide called Next Word, Better Word . I find this both interesting and funny. The best words are only the best words for now. This is why poets and writers are often wrongly accused of writing “the same” thing over and over again. It’s not that Stephen King is writing the same book again, it’s that he’s still trying to write to best version based on his original intention.

Matthew Zapruder says, in Why Poetry , that “The poem is an experience of continual speculation and wondering.” To me, Zapruder is saying the poem is incomplete. Incomplete because it requires a reader to bring all of the reader’s experience and thoughts and beliefs to the table while in the act of reading the poem. Each time we encounter the poem, we bring a new version of ourselves. And so both the poem and the reader continues to evolve.

A great poem, a lasting poem, is both good now and good later. In his essay, The Figure a Poem Makes , Robert Frost encourages us to aim for a poem that we can reread over and over without it losing its power. In Frost’s words, “Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance.” Frost focuses attention on the importance of surprise in a poem. Famously, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” By contrast, Linda Gregg says, “Don’t make the reader do too much guesswork.” You always to have to work to find the sweet spot. The greatest Confessional poets were skilled at walking a tightrope of sentimentality. Too sentimental? You fall off an emotional cliff. It’s hard to do it right but so is anything worth doing.

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Different Types of Craft Paper and Their Uses

The Spruce / Ashley Nicole DeLeon

Don't know what type of craft paper to use for a project? Check out this handy list and never be mystified by a crafting project again.

PriceGrabber

Cardstock is a medium-weight paper. It is heavier than printer paper and thinner than cardboard. Greeting cards, scrapbooking, handmade boxes, and more are most often made from this type of craft paper.

Cardstock is sold in a variety of textures and colors. It can also be lignin and acid-free which is the perfect medium for scrapbooking. Cardstock is the most popular type of craft paper.

Construction Paper

Construction paper is a favorite for children's crafts because it is inexpensive and is available in many hues. It has a rough texture and is difficult to fold. Construction paper is not for projects that are meant to last a long time because the colors fade quickly. Elementary school teachers often use construction paper for class craft projects .

Corrugated Cardboard

This type of cardboard usually has two thin outer layers of paper, with a fluted sheet of paper in the middle. Cardboard boxes are made from corrugated cardboard because it is an incredibly robust and durable type of paper. Because corrugated cardboard is stiff, it can be difficult to cut. Use a sharp craft knife and ruler for the best cutting results.

Cardboard boxes can be made into toy houses, cars, spaceships, and even furniture. You are only limited by your imagination. The fluted middle can be used in scrapbooking and card making.

Crepe Paper

Crepe paper is a type of thinly coated tissue paper. It is gathered to produce a crinkled surface that stretches easily. It comes in many shades and is sold in rolls or sheets. Crepe paper is often used for paper flower making with stunning results. Crepe paper streamers are used as party decorations. Many kid's crafts are also made out of this type of craft paper.

Make sure to use a higher grade of crepe paper, such as Italian crepe paper when making paper flowers. Paper flowers made from Italian crepe paper are quite striking; they can be surprisingly realistic.

Kraft Paper

Kraft paper is a coarse brown paper that is used for wrapping packages. Paper bags are also made from this material. It can be bleached to various lighter shades varying from brown to white. Kraft paper is available in sheets or paper rolls.

Kraft paper is used for cardmaking, scrapbooking, and even flower crafts.

Mulberry Paper

Mulberry paper is a handmade paper that originated in China. It is made from the fibers of the mulberry plant and produces an exceptionally lightweight but durable paper. This type of craft paper has a coarse texture and an organic look, and is often used for scrapbooking and collage work.

Newsprint is the paper used for printing newspapers . It is a cheap paper that is thick enough to be printed on both sides. Newsprint is often used for paper mache projects. It tears easily and holds paper mache paste well.

Origami Paper

Origami paper crafts can be made out of any paper that folds well. Craft stores sell prepackaged paper that is explicitly used for origami. They usually have Washi paper designs on one side and white background on the other. The paper is square and folds well, but often may be quite thin and not suitable for crafts other than origami.

Scrapbook Paper

Scrapbook paper is available for sale at craft stores. This type of craft paper comes in thousands of patterns and designs. The choices can be overwhelming. Some papers are thicker than others, and some are printed on both sides. Standard scrapbook paper sizes are 12-inch x 12-inch or 8.5-inch x 11-inch. Although scrapbook paper is sold primarily for scrapbooking, it is suitable for use with other types of paper crafts.

Tissue Paper

Tissue paper is a fragile paper that comes in a variety of colors. White tissue paper is used to wrap items in stores. Colored tissue paper is used for gift bags, paper flowers, collage work, and even painting. Tissue paper also makes beautiful giant-sized pom-poms that are used for party decorations.

Vellum paper is translucent and quite thin. It is used for card making, scrapbooking, and tracing. This type of craft paper is often used as a layer in wedding invitations or fancy greeting cards.

Decoupage Paper

Decoupage is the art of gluing cut out pictures onto an object. Furniture, jewelry, glass plates, paper boxes, and light switches are just some of the objects that can be decorated with decoupage.

Craft stores sell beautifully printed papers that are explicitly used for decoupage, but any thin paper, such as glossy magazine cut-outs or tissue paper will work.

Washi Paper

Washi paper was invented by the Japanese. It is stunning and can stand alone as artwork. This type of craft paper is unique in design and can be used for a variety of projects.

Washi can be used for card making, scrapbooking, wallpaper, bookbinding, screens, origami, and many other crafts.

25 Essential Notes on Craft from Matthew Salesses

Rethinking popular assumptions of fiction writing.

1. Craft is a set of expectations.

2. Expectations are not universal; they are standardized. It is like what we say about wine or espresso: we acquire “taste.” With each story we read, we draw on and contribute to our knowledge of what a story is or should be. This is true of cultural standards as fundamental as whether to read from left to right or right to left, just as it is true of more complicated context such as how to appreciate a sentence like “She was absolutely sure she hated him,” which relies on our expectation that stating a person’s certainty casts doubt on that certainty as well as our expectation that fictional hatred often turns into attraction or love.

Our appreciation then relies on but also reinforces our expectations.

What expectations, however, are we really talking about here?

In her book Immigrant Acts , theorist Lisa Lowe argues that the novel regulates cultural ideas of identity, nationhood, gender, sexuality, race, and history. Lowe suggests that Western psychological realism, especially the bildungsroman /coming-of-age novel, has tended toward stories about an individual reincorporated into society—an outsider finds his place in the world, though not without loss. Other writers and scholars share Lowe’s reading. Examples abound: In Jane Eyre , Jane marries Rochester. In Pride and Prejudice , Elizabeth Bennet marries Mr. Darcy. In The Age of Innocence , Newland Archer, after some hesitation, marries May Welland. (There is a lot of marriage.) In The Great Gatsby , Nick Carraway returns to the Midwest and Daisy Buchanan returns to her husband.

Some of these protagonists end up happy and some unhappy, but all end up incorporated into society. A common craft axiom states that by the end of a story, a protagonist must either change or fail to change. These novels fulfill this expectation. In the end, it’s not only the characters who find themselves trapped by societal norms. It’s the novels.

3. But expectations are not a bad thing . In a viral craft talk on YouTube, author Kurt Vonnegut graphs several archetypal (Western) story structures, such as “Man in a Hole” (a protagonist gets in trouble and then gets out of it) and Cinderella (which Vonnegut jokes automatically earns an author a million dollars). The archetypes are recognizable to us the way that beats in a romantic comedy are recognizable to us—a meet-cute, mutual dislike, the realization of true feelings, consummation, a big fight, some growing up, and a reunion (often at the airport). The fulfillment of expectations is pleasurable. Part of the fun of Vonnegut’s talk is that he shows us how well we already know certain story types and how our familiarity with them doesn’t decrease, maybe only increases, our fondness for them. Any parent knows that a child’s favorite stories are the stories she has already heard. Children like to know what is coming. It reduces their anxiety, validates their predictions, and leaves them able to learn from other details. Research suggests that children learn more from a story they already know. What they do not learn is precisely: other stories.

Craft is also about omission. What rules and archetypes standardize are models that are easily generalizable to accepted cultural preferences. What doesn’t fit the model is othered. What is our responsibility to the other? In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Joseph Campbell famously theorized a “monomyth” story shape common to all cultures. In reality, his theory is widely dismissed as reductionist—far more selective than universal and unjustly valuing similarity over difference. It has been especially criticized for the way its focus on the “hero’s journey” dismisses stories like the heroine’s journey or other stories in which people do not set off to conquer and return with booty (knowledge and/or spirituality and/or riches and/or love objects). It is important to recognize Campbell’s investment in masculinity as universal.

Craft is the history of which kind of stories have typically held power—and for whom—so it also is the history of which stories have typically been omitted. That we have certain expectations for what a story is or should include means we also have certain expectations for what a story isn’t or shouldn’t include. Any story relies on negative space, and a tradition relies on the negative space of history. The ability for a reader to fill in white space relies on that reader having seen what could be there. Some readers are asked to stay always, only, in the negative. To wield craft responsibly is to take responsibility for absence.

4. In “A Journey Into Speech,” Michelle Cliff writes about how she had to break from accepted craft in order to tell her story . Cliff grew up under colonial rule in Jamaica and was taught the “King’s English” in school. To write well was to write in one specific mode. She went to graduate school and even published her dissertation, but when she started to write directly about her experience, she found that it could not be represented by the kind of language and forms she had learned.

In order to include her own experience, Cliff says she had to reject a British “cold-blooded dependence on logical construction.” She mixed vernacular with the King’s English, mixed Caribbean stories and ways of storytelling with British. She wrote in fragments, to embody her fragmentation. She reclaimed the absences that formed the way she spoke and thought, that created the “split-consciousness” she lived with.

To own her writing—I am paraphrasing—was to own herself. This is craft.

5. Craft is both much more and much less than we’re taught it is.

6. In his book on post–World War II MFA programs, Eric Bennett documents how the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the first place to formalize the education of creative writing, fundraised on claims that it would spread American values of freedom, of creative writing and art in general as “the last refuge of the individual.” The Workshop popularized an idea of craft as non-ideological, but its claims should make clear that individualism is itself an ideology. (It shouldn’t surprise us that apolitical writing has long been a political stance.) If we can admit by now that history is about who has had the power to write history, we should be able to admit the same of craft. Craft is about who has the power to write stories, what stories are historicized and who historicizes them, who gets to write literature and who folklore, whose writing is important and to whom, in what context. This is the process of standardization. If craft is teachable, it is because standardization is teachable. These standards must be challenged and disempowered. Too often craft is taught only as what has already been taught before.

7. In the West, fiction is inseparable from the project of the individual. Craft as we know it from Aristotle to E. M. Forster to John Gardner rests on the premise that a work of creative writing represents an individual creator, who, as Ezra Pound famously put it, “makes it new.” Not on the premise that Thomas King describes in The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative : that any engagement with speaking is an engagement with listening, that to tell a story is always to retell it, and that no story has behind it an individual. Each “chapter” of King’s book, in fact, begins and ends almost the same way and includes a quote from another Native writer.

Audre Lorde puts it this way: “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt, of examining what our ideas really mean .” (My italics.)

It is clear in an oral tradition that individual creation is impossible—the authors of the Thousand and One Nights , the “Beowulf poet,” Homer, were all engaging with the expectations their stories had accrued over many tellings.

Individualism does not free one from cultural expectations; it is a cultural expectation. Fiction does not “make it new;” it makes it felt . Craft does not separate the author from the real world.

When I was in graduate school, a famous white writer defended Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (whose craft was famously criticized by author Chinua Achebe for the racist use of Africans as objects and setting rather than as characters) by claiming that the book should be read for craft, not race. Around the same time, another famous white writer gave a public talk in a sombrero about the freedom to appropriate. Thomas King, on the contrary, respects the shared responsibility of storytelling and warns us that to tell a story one way can “cure,” while to tell it another can injure.

Craft is never neutral. Craft is the cure or injury that can be done in our shared world when it isn’t acknowledged that there are different ways that world is felt.

8. Since craft is always about expectations, two questions to ask are: Whose expectations? and Who is free to break them?

Audre Lorde again: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

Lorde presents a difficult problem for people who understand that freedom is never general but always freedom for someone : how to free oneself from oppression while using the language of one’s oppressors? This is a problem Lorde perhaps never fully “solved.” Maybe it has no solution, but it can’t be dismissed. When we are first handed craft, we are handed the master’s tools. We are told we must learn the rules before we can dismantle them. We build the master’s house, and then we look to build houses of our own, but we are given no new tools. We must find them or we must work around the tools we have.

To wield craft is always to wield a tool that already exists. Author Trinh Minh-ha writes that even the expectation of “clarity” is an expectation of what is “correct” and/or “official” language. Clear to whom? Take round and flat characters. In Toward the Decolonization of African Literature , authors Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Ihechukwu Madubuike complain that African literature is unfairly criticized by Western critics as lacking round characters. E. M. Forster’s original definition of roundness is “capable of surprising in a convincing way.” Chinweizu et al. point out that this definition is clear evidence that roundness comes not from the author’s words but from the audience’s reading. One reader from one background might be convincingly surprised while another reader from another background might be unsurprised and/or unconvinced by the same character.

Whom are we writing for?

9. Expectations belong to an audience. To use craft is to engage with an audience’s bias. Like freedom, craft is always craft for someone . Whose expectations does a writer prioritize? Craft says something about who deserves their story told. Who has agency and who does not. What is worthy of action and what description. Whose bodies are on display. Who changes and who stays the same. Who controls time. Whose world it is. Who holds meaning and who gives it.

Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison suggests in Playing in the Dark that the craft of American fiction is to use Black people and images and culture as symbols, as tools. In other words, the craft of American fiction is the tool that names who the master is. To signify light as good, as we are taught to do from our first children’s stories, is to signify darkness as bad—and in this country lightness and darkness will always be tied to a racialized history of which people are people and which people are tools. To engage in craft is always to engage in a hierarchy of symbolization (and to not recognize a hierarchy is to hide it). Who can use that hierarchy, those tools? Not I, says Morrison. And so she sets off to find other craft.

10. In his book The Art of the Novel , Czech author Milan Kundera rejects psychological realism as the tradition of the European novel. He offers an alternate history that begins with Don Quixote and goes through Franz Kafka. He offers this history in order to make a claim about craft, because he knows that craft must come from somewhere. Contrary to psychological realism’s focus on individual agency, Kundera’s alternate craft says that the main cause of action in a novel is the world’s “naked” force.

Kundera wants to decenter internal causation (character-driven plot) and (re)center external causation (such as an earthquake or fascism or God). He insists that psychological realism is no “realer” than the bureaucratic world Kafka presents in which individuals have little or no agency and everything is a function of the system. (This is also a claim about how to read history.) Only our expectations of what realism is/should be make us classify one type of fiction (which by definition is not “real”) as realer than another. Any novel, for Kundera, is about a possible way of “being in the world,” and Kafka’s bureaucracy came true in the Czech Republic in a way that individual agency did not.

Another advocate of Kafka’s brand of “realism” is the author Julio Cortázar. Cortázar is usually considered a fabulist or magical realist. Yet in a series of lectures collected in Literature Class , he categorizes his own and other “fantastic” stories as simply more inclusive realities. He uses his story “The Island at Noon” as an example, in which a character dives into the ocean to save a drowning man, only to find that the man is himself. The story ends with a fisherman walking onto the beach we have just seen, alone “as always.” The swimmer and the drowner were never there. Cortázar says this story represents a real experience of time in which, like a daydream, it becomes impossible to tell what is real and what is not. Time, fate, magic—these are forces beyond human agency that to Cortázar allow literature to “make reality more real.”

In Toward the Decolonization of African Literature , Chinweizu et al. encourage African writers to remember African traditions of storytelling. They identify four conventions from a tradition of incoporating the fantastic into everyday life: (1) spirit beings have a non-human trait that gives them away, such as floating; (2) if a human visits the spiritland, it involves a dangerous border-crossing; (3) spirits have agency and can possess humans; and (4) spirits are not subject to human concepts of time and space.

Craft tells us how to see the world.

11. The Iowa Writers’ Workshop established craft’s current focus on style and form, writes Eric Bennett, a focus which also conveniently served four related agendas: (1) it overthrew the domination of totalitarian manipulation (if Soviet) or commercial manipulation (if American) by being irreducibly individualistic; (2) it facilitated the creation of an ideologically informed canon [of dead white men] on ostensibly apolitical grounds; (3) it provided a modernist means to make literature feel transcendent for the ages [rather than tied to time and place]; and (4) it gave reading and writing a new semblance of difficulty, a pitch of rigor appropriate for the college or graduate school classroom.

In other words, it made literature easy to fundraise for, and easy to teach.

12. We have come to teach plot as a string of causation in which the protagonist’s desires move the action forward. The craft of fiction has come to adopt the terms of Freytag’s triangle, which were meant to apply to drama, and of Aristotle’s poetics, which were meant to apply to Greek tragedy. Exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, denouement. But to think of plot and story shape in this way is cultural and represents the dominance of a specific cultural tradition.

In contrast, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese stories have developed from a four-act, rather than a three- or five-act structure: in Japanese it is called kishotenketsu (ki: introduction; sho: development; ten: twist; ketsu: reconciliation). Western fiction can often be boiled down to A wants B and C gets in the way of it. I draw this shape for my students

Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salesses

This kind of story shape is inherently conflict-based, perhaps also inherently male (as author Jane Alison puts it: “Something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no?”). In East Asian fiction, the twist (ten) is not confrontation but surprise, something that reconfigures what its audience thinks the story is “about.” For example, a man puts up a flyer of a missing dog, he hands out flyers to everyone on the street, a woman appears and asks whether her dog has been found, they look for the dog together. The change in this kind of story is in the audience’s understanding or attention rather than what happens. Like African storytellers, Asian storytellers are often criticized for what basically amounts to addressing a different audience’s different expectations—Asian fiction gets labeled “undramatic” or “plotless” by Western critics.

The Greek tragedians were likewise criticized by Aristotle. In his Poetics , Aristotle does not just put forward an early version of Western craft (one closely tied to his philosophical project of the individual) but also puts down many of his contemporaries, tragedians for whom action is driven by the interference of the gods (in the form of coincidence) rather than from a character’s internal struggle. It is from Aristotle that Westerners get the cultural distaste for deus ex machina , which was more like the fashion of his time. Aristotle’s dissent went forward as the norm.

13. Craft, like the self, is made by culture and reflects culture, and can develop to resist and reshape culture if it is sufficiently examined and enough work is done to unmake expectations and replace them with new ones. (As Aristotle did by writing the first craft book.)

We are constantly telling stories—about who we are, about every person we see, hear, hear about—and when we don’t know something, we fill in the gaps with parts of stories we’ve told or heard before. Stories are always only representations. To tell a story about a person based on her clothes, or the color of her skin, or the way she talks, or her body—is to subject her to a set of cultural expectations. In the same way, to tell a story based on a character-driven plot or a moment of epiphany or a three-act structure leading to a character’s change is to subject story to cultural expectations. To wield craft morally is not to pretend that those expectations can be met innocently or artfully without ideology, but to engage with the problems ideology presents and creates.

In my research for this book, I found various authors (mostly foreign) asking how it is that we have forgotten that character is made up, that it isn’t real or universal. Kundera points out that we have bought unreflexively into conventions that say (a) that a writer should give the maximum information about a character’s looks and speech, (b) that backstory contains motivation, and (c) that writers somehow do not have control over their characters. Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, in The Naive and Sentimental Novelist , complains that creative writing programs make it seem as if characters are autonomous beings who have their own voices, when in fact character is a “historical construct . . . we choose to believe in.” To Pamuk, a character isn’t even formed by an individual personality but by the particular situation and context the author needs her for. When it’s all made up, he suggests, character is more nurture than nature. If fiction encourages a certain way that a character should be understood or read, then of course this way must influence and be influenced by the way we understand and read each other.

14. To really engage with craft is to engage with how we know each other. Craft is inseparable from identity. Craft does not exist outside of society, outside of culture, outside of power. In the world we live in, and write in, craft must reckon with the implications of our expectations for what stories should be—with, as Lorde says, what our ideas really mean.

15. Consider the example of the Chinese literary tradition, which we will get to later in the book. Western critics have generally called traditional Chinese fiction formless. Yet Chinese critic Zheng Zhenduo, who studies the Chinese novel’s historical trajectory, says one characteristic of Chinese fiction is that it is “water-tight,” by which he means that it is structurally sound. They are describing the same fiction but different expectations.

While Western narrative comes from romantic and epic tradition, Chinese narrative comes from a tradition of gossip and street talk. Chinese fiction has always challenged historical record and accepted versions of “reality.” Western storytelling developed from a tradition of oral performances meant to recount heroic deeds for an audience of the ruling class. Like Thomas King, author Ming Dong Gu, in his book Chinese Theories of Fiction , describes writing as something more like “transmission” than like “creation.” More collective and less individual.

16. Chinese American author Gish Jen claims in Tiger Writing that her fiction combines Western and Eastern craft. She makes a case for an Asian American storytelling that mixes the “independent” and “interdependent” self: the individual speaker vs. the collective speaker, internal agency vs. external agency.

The difficulty for Jen in her fiction was not in finding it a Western audience but in representing her Chinese values. As Jen writes, “existing schema are powerful.” Growing up with American and European fiction, she struggled to represent her culture and self. The kind of agency a Western protagonist has was compelling to her—she describes it almost as a seduction—being so different from her family life. Tiger Writing actually begins with Jen analyzing her father’s memoir, which is mostly family history and only gets around to himself in the final third. The suggestion is that family history, the ancestral home, their immigration to America, is exactly what defines her father, rather than any individual characteristic. Jen compares the memoir to a Chinese teapot, which unlike an American teapot is worth much more used than new, prized for how many teas have already been made in it, so that the flavor of a new tea mixes with the flavors before it.

17. “Know your audience” is craft. Language has meaning because it has meaning for someone . Meaning and audience do not exist without one another. A word spoken to no one, not even the self, has no meaning because it has no one to hear it. It has no purpose.

Chinweizu, Jemie, and Madubuike employ the metaphor of an artist’s sketch. Responding to Western critics who claim African fiction has too little description and weak characterization, they compare the relationship between craft and expectation to the relationship between a sketch and its evocation of a picture. “It perhaps needs to be stressed that the adequacy of a sketch depends upon its purpose, its context, and also upon what its beholders accept as normal or proper.” In other words, “the writer’s primary audience” may find the sketch enough to evoke the picture even if the European audience cannot. It shouldn’t be the writer’s concern to satisfy an audience who is not hers.

African fiction is written for Africans—what is easier to understand than that? Not that other people can’t read it, but, as Chinweizu et al. tell us, it might take “time and effort and a sloughing off of their racist superiority complexes and imperialist arrogance” to appreciate it.

When the Thousand and One Nights is translated into English, translators often cut stories. The Nights is a story about storytelling, full of framed narratives, stories within stories within stories. Like Chinese fiction, it is often accused of the opposite sins of African fiction—of having too many digressions and extraneous parts. Part of the necessity of abridgment is that the Nights is extremely long, and part is that different versions of the Nights include different groups of stories—it might be impossible to include every story or to know what a complete version of the Nights would even look like, as every telling is a retelling—but stories that get cut out as extraneous are never actually pointless. Author Ulrich Marzolph argues convincingly that repetition of similar stories and themes and motifs is not a failure of craft but “a highly effective narrative technique for linking new and unknown tales to a web of tradition the audience shares.” Children learn the most from stories they already know.

Similar abridgments occur in translations of traditional Chinese fiction. Again, these are often cases of translators misrepresenting the audience. In Chinese fiction, repetitions and digressions like those in the Nights are called “Casual Touches” and are a sign of mastery. According to author Jianan Qian, it takes a very good writer to be able to add “seemingly unrelated details . . . here and there effortlessly to stretch and strengthen a story’s meanings.” What is considered “good writing” is a matter of who is reading it.

18. There are many crafts, and one way the teaching of craft fails is to teach craft as if it is one.

19. Author Jennifer Riddle Harding writes about what she calls “masked narrative” in African American fiction, in which Black authors wrote to two audiences at the same time : a white audience they needed in order to have a career and a Black audience who would be able to understand a second, “hidden” meaning through context clues that rely on cultural knowledge. As an example, Harding analyzes a story by Charles W. Chesnutt about a white-presenting woman who wants to know who her mother is, and a Black caretaker who allows the woman to think her mother was white—though a Black audience would realize that the caretaker is the actual mother.

Different expectations guide different readings. “The black story had to look like a white story,” writes the author Raymond Hedin, while also speaking to a Black audience via the same words.

In other words, the plot of external causation that Kundera would like to return to never disappeared; it was simply underground. In America, coincidence and fate have long been the domain of storytellers of color, for whom the “naked” force of the world is an everyday experience. In the tradition of African American fiction, for example, coincidence plots and reunion plots are normal. People of color often need coincidence in order to reunite with their kin.

20. Adoptee stories also frequently feature coincidence and reunion. Maybe that is why I am drawn to external causation, to alternative traditions, to non-Western story shapes. Like Jen, I grew up with fiction that wasn’t written for me. My desire to write was probably a desire to give myself the agency I didn’t have in life. To give my desires the power of plot.

Cortázar calls plot, that string of causation, an inherent danger to the realistic story. “Reality is multiple and infinite,” he writes, and to organize it by cause and effect is to reduce it to a “slice.” Plot is always a departure from reality, a symbol of reality. But the power of stories is that we can mistake the symbolic for the real.

21. In Maps of the Imagination , author Peter Turchi writes about invisible conventions such as organizing prose in paragraphs, capitalizing the first letter of a sentence, assuming that the fictional narrator is not the author. These conventions become visible when they are broken. To identify them (these are tools: whose tools are these?) is the first step toward making craft conscious. Craft that pretends it does not exist is the craft of conformity or, worse, complicity.

22. Here is a convention up for debate, one in the process of becoming visible : in an essay on the pathetic fallacy, author Charles Baxter argues that setting in literary realist fiction should less often reflect the protagonist’s inner state. Baxter has seen too much rain when the hero is sad, too many sad barns when the hero has lost a child (as in the famous John Gardner prompt). In reality, rain is not contingent on emotion and objects do not change their appearances to fit people’s moods. (The Gardner prompt, to describe a barn from the perspective of a grieving father, is more about what a person in a certain mood would notice —but the point holds.) Baxter thinks realism should do more to resist story conventions and accurately represent reality.

Yet on screen, the pathetic fallacy seems widely accepted (especially if there is no voiceover to provide a character’s thoughts), and student fiction seems more and more influenced by film expectations than prose expectations.

For a few months, I read almost exclusively fiction by a trio of Japanese writers, Haruki Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, and Banana Yoshimoto. Each seems to offer a world that is very shaped by the interiority of the protagonist. In Murakami’s work, it’s a fair critique to complain that female characters seem to be who they are because the male protagonists want them to be so. In Yoshimoto’s work, characters often seem created solely for their effect on the protagonist: a psychic gives the protagonist a crucial warning, or a dying character shows the protagonist how to live. In Ogawa’s work, settings and even mathematical equations represent emotion. There are foils and mirrors and examples of how to act and how not to act and sexual fantasies and supernatural guides and exactly the right wrong partner. In truth, these worlds that seem half the protagonist’s imagination give great pleasure. There is a kind of structural pleasure that comes from seeing the pathetic fallacy played out on a grand scale. It’s not the pleasure of reality, but of what we sometimes feel reality to be, a way of being in the world.

23. Why, when the protagonist faces the world, does she need to win, lose, or draw? This is a Western idea of conflict. What if she understands herself as a part of that world, that world as a part of herself? What if she simply continues to live?

24. In Tiger Writing , Gish Jen cites a study in which whites and Asians are asked to identify how many separate events there are in a specific passage of text. Whites identify more events, because they see each individual action, such as “come back upstairs” and “take a shower,” which appear in the same sentence, as separate events—while Asians do not. Jen writes that the American novel tends to separate time into events and to see those events as progression, as development—a phenomenon she calls “episodic specificity.” At first, she believed herself to be culturally disadvantaged, as a writer, but then she found Kundera and his idea of the novel as existential rather than a vehicle for plot.

In “Characteristics of Negro Expression,” author Zora Neale Hurston identifies characteristics of African American storytelling, such as adornment, double descriptions, angularity and asymmetry, and dialect. All are things often edited out of workshop stories in the name of craft. Hurston identifies them in order to legitimize them. Craft is in the habit of making and maintaining taboos.

25. The considerations here are not only aesthetic. To consider what forces have shaped what we think of as psychological realism is to consider what forces have shaped what we think of as reality, and to consider what forces have shaped what we think of as pleasurable, as entertaining, as enlightening, in life.

Realism insists on one representation of what is real. Not only through what is narrated on the page, but through the shape that narration takes.

Craft is support for a certain worldview.

If it is true that drafts become more and more conscious, more and more based on decisions and less and less on “intuition,” then revision is where we can take heart. Revision is the craft through which a writer is able to say and shape who they are and what kind of world they live in. Revision must also be the revision of craft. To be a writer is to wield and to be wielded by culture. There is no story separate from that. To better understand one’s culture and audience is to better understand how to write.

__________________________________

Matthew Salesses

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Crafts and Fine Arts. Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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Introduction

Works cited.

Nowadays the majority of people are totally unable to explain the difference between the so called crafts and fine arts. Therefore, in order to be able to do this one may provide with examples of works and their comparative analysis that might be assigned to the categories of the interest. Moreover, to explain the vaguely difference between them, one may give the example of the art work that may be assigned to the both categories: either to the crafts or to the fine art.

It is really hard to define what kind of art should be described as a craft and a fine art; as such definitions can not satisfy everyone and might even injure some artist’s feelings. It is even possible to spend hours on the debate over this issue and not to achieve any particular results. But, what might be noted here is that there exist some elements and rules associated with certain classical idea about the fine arts, like painting or sculpture, that are actually determining them.

There were made a couple attempts to distinguish and define those two terms. One may refer to the academic and the utilitarian way of the explanation. Those students, who graduate from the universities with a fine arts degree are not likely to study the crafts discipline, therefore they do not consider the crafts work as a fine, high level art. There is also a scholar point of view which expresses the Elliot W. Eisner’s and Michael D. Day’s idea that “art is not made to sale, you do not create art for money. Art is at a higher level, it makes a statement, and it has feeling and emotion; crafts are more functional and less academic in theories.”

Any useful or decorative hand made object might be considered as a craft work, for example a mug, teapot or vase, embellished by the artist with his or her own hands. It should be pointed out that the “craft work is skilled work: any kind of craft must involve the application of a technique … [it] implies the application of human intelligence…” (Eisner, Day, 2004).

And here, one is drawn to the point, when the difference between the crafts and the fine arts can be explained. The craftsman’s work, like the mug, teapot or vase must be capable of holding tea, any liquid or flowers. But the fine arts’ work does not usually have any utilitarian function. It might be also a tea cup, but, for example of the Chinese dynasty Min period, thus it would be guarded and of course, no one would be aloud to drink tea from it.

As for the crafts objects, they “tend to exhibit their prettiness around a purpose external to the object itself. To this extent, the crafts aren’t arts… (Sayre, 2003). If refer to the famous English philosopher Emanuel Kant in the definition of the fine arts, then it appears that “they appeal purely at the level of the imagination and aren’t good for any practical utility, except the cultivation of the human spirit” (Kant, cited from Eisner, Day, 2004).

If one would like to represent the example of the art object that would feat the definition of both: the crafts and the fine arts, then the hand made glass flowers would perform this role quite well. They can be considered the fine arts work as they create the aesthetic and admiration feeling. Nevertheless, they might be regarded as the crafts work as they are frequently used in everyday life for the decoration of common people’s houses.

Eisner, Elliot W., and Michael D. Day, eds. Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.

Sayre, Henry M. A World of Art. Revised 4th ed. New York, NY: Prentice – Hall, 2003.

Milton Glaser’s Poster Review
Visual Art and Photography
The Claims of Reason: Stanley Cavell’s Experiment
Michael Eisner's Strategic Management at Disney
Chinese ware: Vase with Peony Scroll
Illustrators Artists and Designers
Contribution of Modernity to Photography and Film Movements
3D Animation: Main Inspirations and Personal Experience
Value of Art in the Life of the Average Person
Art in the Point of View: Four Paintings Comparison
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

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Paragraph on Art and Craft

Art and craft provide a platform for the artists for expressing their ideas and talents. We generally write or speak to others if we want to convey any message or talk about something. Have you ever thought that art and craft is another best way of conveying our message without speaking or writing? Many times we might have noticed that there are some of the paintings or crafts that try to convey to us some of the important messages. Therefore, it can be stated that we can also convey our feelings by utilizing the power of art and craft. Art and craft have been prevalent in different cultures and skills are being modified along with the changing time and technology. It is an important subject in the school and college curriculum of students. Moreover, it also helps in all-around development of the students.

Short and Long Paragraphs on Art and Craft

Art and craft is a very important topic for school and college students. They often get this topic in exams to write a paragraph, essay, or assignment but find difficulty in writing the same. In the same reference, I have provided some short and long paragraphs on this topic. I hope that this might provide the students with an idea of writing paragraphs, essays, assignments and projects on this topic.

Paragraph 1- 100 Words (The Real Meaning of Art and Craft)

Art is an interpretation of different kinds of emotions, thoughts, and expressions via human creativity. It does not require any type of explanation but can be easily perceived by our senses. Art can be in the form of painting, sculpture, music, dance, etc. Craft is the name given to the skill of making things by hand. In other words, we can state that craft is a special skill that helps in the transformation of artistic emotions and expressions into reality. The craft is presented according to the observation of the art by the artists or in the way they want to interpret the same.

Paragraph 2- 120 Words (The Beauty of Art and Craft)

Art is the innovative way of observing different things and activities happening in the world by the artists in their own way. The skill of giving shape to emotions, thoughts, and natural activities is termed a craft. There have been many talented people in this field in the past. The present generation is also full of different talents. Several beautiful ancient paintings and the finest sculptures in the nation are gifts of art and craft to the people. They not only portray the beauty of art and craft but also signify the culture of that period. Art and craft are very interesting and are totally different from studies. It is totally based on the expression of emotions and thoughts; therefore it enhances the thinking capability of the students. Moreover, it also boosts the interest and concentration potential of the children.

Paragraph 3- 150 Words (Art and Craft: An Essential Skill)

Art and craft refer to the skill of making things by hand. The accomplishment of this skill includes different activities. Many of us love doing art and craft as our hobbies. It is very important for all the students along with their studies. This induces the power of creativity in the students. In this way, they can learn as well as express different things not by explaining but by presenting them in the form of art and craft. There are many things that children or people feel difficulty in explaining verbally and thus they can utilize art and craft to explain the fact or convey the message. The idea or message that is depicted by different forms of art and craft is more impressive than verbal and writing methods. The art and craft thus help the children in understanding the concepts in a better way and remembering the same. Art and craft must be encouraged in the school and college curriculum for the all-around development of the children.

Paragraph 4- 200 Words (Art and Culture Existing From Prehistoric Times)

Art is the result of creativity done by human beings after a keen observation of different things in their own way. This creativity involves the craft of the artesian for doing the same. The objective of doing such creativity is to express beauty, emotion, ideas, etc. I think that you all would have done art and craft works in the school. There is a separate period allotted to children for art and craft. They love learning and making various objects by using different kinds of materials. Not only children but adults also enjoy doing art and craft.

The Existence from Ancient Times

The concept of art and craft is not a new one but exists from ancient times. It is present on the earth from the evolution of human beings on earth. It is because of the presence of art and craft in ancient times that gives us a glimpse of the age-old culture at present. There are several forms of ancient art and craft that have been found in different parts of the world. This states that the people in ancient times were also fond of doing art and craft. The cave paintings, rock paintings, petroglyphs, sculptures, etc are examples of ancient art and craft.

Paragraph 5- 250 Words (Importance of Art and Craft for Students)

Art and craft bring the image of designing different things, colouring, making a painting, or doing different artistic activities in our minds. Isn’t it true? Art and craft is a subject that is related to a vast number of activities. It includes painting, colouring, drawing, making something by waste, embroidery, etc. The small children or kids take a greater interest in enjoying different art and craft activities. They do it simply for enjoyment but are able to learn about different things by doing so. Art and Craft must be included in the curriculum of every school so that students must have proper development.

Why Is Art and Craft Important for Students?

Art and craft have an important role in the all-around development of the students. It must be a part of the course curriculum in school along with studies. There are several benefits of art and craft in the development of students. These are mentioned below:

The art and craft skills involve the movement of hands and fingers in accomplishing different types of activities. Such activities will help in developing the fine motor skills of the children.
The art and craft activities from a small age help the children in developing good eye and hand coordination. This will be beneficial for the child in later years in learning about word formation and other things.
The children can learn much about our different cultures through art and crafts. They observe the work of others and then try to make things after thinking about it. Thus, art and craft make them sensible for thinking before working on their ideas. Moreover, they will come to understand and know about the art and craft prevalent in different cultures.
There are many art and craft activities that require group work. Therefore, while doing group work children develop ways of interacting with each other. This further helps in the social development of the individual.
The activities of art and craft require thinking and observation. This fosters creativity and thinking power in the children. This also prepares the child to be able to accept challenges in life. The activities of art and craft inculcate the knowledge of colors and shapes in the children. Therefore, it makes learning easier and full of fun.

I have tried to provide all the details of the topic in the form of short and long paragraphs. I hope that you all would have loved and enjoyed reading the same.

10 Lines On All India Handicrafts Week

FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions on Art and Craft

Ans. The person practicing art and craft is termed an artisan.

Ans. The seven elements of art are color, form, line, shape, space, texture, and value.

Ans. William Morris is regarded as the father of arts and crafts.

Ans. Bihar state in India is famous for Madhu Bani paintings.

Paragraph on moral values, paragraph on republic day of india 2023, paragraph on national festivals of india, paragraph on national flag of india, paragraph on importance of republic day of india, paragraph on education, paragraph on my best friend, paragraph on zoo, paragraph on diwali.

Essay Papers Writing Online

Exploring the art of essay writing – a collection of insights and reflections.

Essay writing is a craft that allows individuals to express their thoughts, ideas, and arguments in a structured and compelling manner. It is a form of art that requires creativity, critical thinking, and eloquence. Through the art of essay writing, writers have the power to influence and persuade their readers, sparking new perspectives and inspiring change.

When delving into the realm of essay writing, one explores the nuances of language, the intricacies of rhetoric, and the depth of analysis. Essays come in various forms, from persuasive to analytical, from narrative to argumentative. Each type of essay challenges the writer to convey their message effectively, captivating the audience and leaving a lasting impression.

Through this journey of exploration and discovery, writers discover new insights, hone their writing skills, and find inspiration in the world around them. The art of essay writing transcends mere academic requirements; it becomes a form of self-expression, a tool for communication, and a platform for sharing knowledge and ideas with others.

Unlocking the Secrets

Essay writing is often seen as a daunting task, but with the right approach and strategies, it can become a rewarding and enlightening experience. Here are some key secrets to unlocking your potential as an essay writer:

1. Understand the Prompt: Before you start writing, make sure you fully grasp the essay prompt. Take the time to analyze the requirements and expectations, so you can tailor your response accordingly.

2. Plan and Organize: A well-structured essay is a key to success. Create an outline to organize your thoughts and ideas before diving into the writing process. This will help you stay focused and ensure a logical flow of information.

3. Research Thoroughly: Good essays are backed by solid research. Take the time to gather relevant sources, quotes, and data to support your arguments and claims. Remember to cite your sources properly.

4. Develop a Strong Thesis: Your thesis statement should be clear, concise, and specific. It is the central idea of your essay, and all your arguments should revolve around it. Make sure your thesis is arguable and sets the tone for the rest of your paper.

5. Revise and Proofread: Don’t underestimate the power of revising and proofreading. Take the time to review your essay, fix any errors, and polish your writing. A well-edited essay will leave a lasting impression on your readers.

By following these secrets and incorporating them into your writing process, you can unlock the full potential of your essay writing skills and create compelling and impactful essays.

The Journey into Creativity

Embarking on the journey into creativity is an exhilarating experience that opens up a world of possibilities and inspiration. As you delve into the realm of essay writing, you have the opportunity to explore your unique perspective, voice, and style.

Creativity in writing is not just about coming up with innovative ideas or flashy phrases. It’s about approaching your topic from new angles, weaving together compelling narratives, and engaging your readers in thought-provoking ways.

Throughout this journey, you may encounter challenges and roadblocks, but these obstacles can be catalysts for creativity. Embrace the process of brainstorming, drafting, revising, and refining your essays. Allow yourself to experiment with different techniques, structures, and approaches.

Remember, creativity is a journey, not a destination. Stay curious, open-minded, and willing to push the boundaries of your writing. Let your imagination roam free and see where it takes you. The journey into creativity is an ongoing and rewarding adventure that will shape you as a writer and thinker.

Discovering the Power

In the realm of essay writing, one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is the ability to convey your thoughts and ideas with clarity and precision. By mastering the art of crafting well-structured and compelling essays, you open the door to a world of influence and impact.

Through the process of writing, you have the opportunity to delve deep into your subject matter, exploring its nuances and complexities. This journey of discovery not only enriches your own understanding but also allows you to share your insights with others, shaping their perspectives and sparking thought-provoking conversations.

As you hone your essay-writing skills, you tap into the power of words to inspire, persuade, and educate. Each sentence becomes a brushstroke on the canvas of your ideas, painting a vivid picture that captivates your readers and leaves a lasting impression.

By discovering the power of essay writing, you unlock a world of creativity and expression that knows no bounds. Embrace the journey, and let your words soar.

Unleashing Your Imagination

One way to unleash your imagination is to brainstorm and jot down all your ideas, no matter how wild or unconventional they may seem at first. By embracing the unexpected, you can discover unique angles and fresh insights that will make your essay stand out.

Inspiration Tip:

Take a walk in nature, listen to music, or read a book that sparks your curiosity. These activities can stimulate your imagination and help you see things from a new perspective.

Remember, the art of essay writing is not about following rules – it’s about letting your imagination run wild and expressing your ideas in a way that is uniquely yours. So, don’t be afraid to take risks, experiment with different writing styles, and explore the boundaries of your creativity. Unleash your imagination and watch your writing come to life!

Embracing the Craft

Essay writing is not just a task or an academic exercise; it is an art form that allows us to express our thoughts, ideas, and emotions in a structured and coherent manner. To truly excel in the art of essay writing, one must embrace the craft with passion, dedication, and creativity.

Embracing the craft of essay writing means approaching each piece with an open mind and a willingness to experiment with different styles, tones, and techniques. It involves honing your skills through practice, feedback, and continuous learning. Embracing the craft also requires a deep appreciation for language, storytelling, and the power of words to create impact and inspire change.

By embracing the craft of essay writing, you can transform your ideas into compelling narratives, persuasive arguments, and thought-provoking reflections. Whether you are writing for academic purposes, personal expression, or professional communication, embracing the craft will help you communicate effectively, connect with your audience, and leave a lasting impression.

Key Points:
1. Approach each essay with passion and dedication.
2. Experiment with different styles and techniques.
3. Hone your skills through practice and feedback.
4. Appreciate the power of language and storytelling.
5. Transform your ideas into compelling narratives.

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Importance of Art

Significance of Craft

Art and Craft in Education

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What is Art?

What is Craft?

The Connection Between Art and Craft

The Importance of Art and Craft

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Art and Craft in Culture

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CRAFT IS UNIVERSAL

CRAFT IS A DISCIPLINE

CRAFT IS ACTION

CRAFT IS HERITAGE

CRAFT IS ALL AROUND US

CRAFT IS COMPLICATED

CRAFT IS PROFOUND

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The Arts & Crafts Movement

Summary of The Arts & Crafts Movement

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

Overview of The Arts & Crafts Movement

Artworks and Artists of The Arts & Crafts Movement

Tulip and Rose

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Gamble House

Beginnings of The Arts & Crafts Movement

The Genesis: William Morris

The Arts & Crafts Movement: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Architecture and the Diversity in Media

Relationship with Art Nouveau

Spread to the United States

Corporate Culture

Later Developments - After The Arts & Crafts Movement

Decline and Dissemination

Useful Resources on The Arts & Crafts Movement

Related Artists

Related Movements & Topics

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Vase with peacock feathers

"Ombellifères" (cow parsley) Cabinet

Moulin Rouge: La Goulue

Monumental vase

Cabinet-vitrine

Dress panel

Coffeepot (part of a service)

Maude Adams (1872–1953) as Joan of Arc

Tea service

Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000)

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