Art History Courses

ARTH 957: Art and Craft: Classifications Across Cultures

Instructor: Rovine | W 2:30PM – 5:10PM | HAC 118

This seminar explores a key dichotomy used to define visual cultures and, significantly, cultures as a whole: Art and Craft.  These terms have carried varied associations across time. They are rooted in Western forms of cultural and art historical analysis, though they have been widely adapted in cultures around the world, where they are absorbed into the analysis of new sets of objects and practices.  They have often been used to create or enforce hierarchies, and the boundaries between the categories have been policed to protect the boundaries of Art.  Yet, these boundaries have often been blurred; artistic genres and artists move “up” from craft to art, or reverse this trajectory, according to the priorities of the critics and the art markets in which they circulate.  These shifts may occur for entire cultures, as canonical art history encompasses many non-Western forms that were previously excluded, as craft or, a related term, as artifact.

What can we learn from the way these categories have operated?   What do they tell us about the way in which art history has operated over time?  What does inclusion in one category or the other encourage us to see, and what does it obscure?  And what of the role of museums?  What do artists and artisans themselves tell us about the usefulness or irrelevance of these categories?

This class is taught by an Africanist who specializes in the study of textiles and clothing, genres that often slip between these broad categories.  But the class will not be limited to objects and texts on African art.  We will start with readings that explore theorizations of the distinction between these categories.  Then, we will use case studies that highlight the operation of art and craft as categories. These may include textiles in Western, South Asian, and African contexts, African popular arts, the Bauhaus, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Mingei movement in Japan, and contemporary studio artists from Africa and elsewhere who engage with techniques and media associated with craft.

Graduates

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