Arts & Crafts from the VA

 

Hopefully not because of the exhibit's British origins, we were informed the Arts and Craft Movement started in England. Within a generation, its ideas had spread all over the globe, especially wherever Britannia had influence. This fact could easily be inferred from the dominance of British exhibits, with a smattering of work from Europe, the United States, Russia and Japan, but none from China. I believe works from India and Australia were also absent, which I thought odd.

I could understand the influence of England upon Japan, as this Movement occurred during the Meiji Restoration. At that time, Japan looked to Britannia for its model of world presence, particularly in the organization of its Navy and the forthcoming Japanese Empire. The Arts and Crafts Movement appealed to patriotic Japanese artists, bolstering their belief that Japanese art should display uniquely Japanese themes in characteristically Japanese ways. That persistent provincial reaction may have been what has saved the Japanese from excessive Western influence until recently.

What I don't understand is how China, India and Australia are somehow missing from the roster of those influenced. It may be easy, if snobbish, to dismiss the Australians of a century ago, who were very few in numbers and mostly outback cowboys. (No culture there!)  That was not the case with the Indians and Chinese, who have always been represented in overwhelming numbers during the last century. Both Asian cultures have had their own proficient arts and crafts for thousands of years - long before "Rule, Britannia" was ever brayed over bowed heads. More mysterious was the failure of the Wedgwood exhibits to mention that British firm's "appropriation" of Chinese porcelain making techniques.

Of course, to an old Leftie such as myself, it was an important fact that the Chinese and Indians were being attacked and repressed by the Brits during the time of this Movement. The Indians and Chinese resisted buying British goods, which provoked the British to take extraordinary measures to force their goods upon those unwilling consumers. For example, the British prohibition of textile manufacture in India enforced a monopoly market for British goods. Similar measures in China led to the Boxer and other rebellions, which were put down by British troops who then forced Chinese concessions.

It interested me that one of the major points of the exhibition was the Movement's textiles. The Arts and Crafts Movement started with a rejection of "industrialism" - whatever was going on in Leeds and the other places where Brits manufactured all sorts of goods as well as cloth for export. Arts & Crafts cloths were highly decorated with hand-knitted patterns and other needlework techniques. They were not the plain cottons and wools made in factories for sale to the masses. Particularly in the few women's dresses on display, hand sewn adornments were added in profusion. The same attention to detail and  ornamentation was evident in the display of many hand-made pieces of jewelry intended for women's wear. In fact, a large portion of the exhibit was devoted to articles intended for women's uses in the home, perhaps reflecting the commonplace pre-Liberation view that "a women's place was in the home." Of all those articles, only the textiles were all or partly the work of women. Perhaps because textiles not only touch the body, but are worn, they are the most intimate of the works on display. The Arts and Crafts Movement restated the dress so as to dispense with the corset, a step in freeing women from restrictions. I wondered whether women working on those textiles influenced that innovation?

One of the few exhibits not about "women's things" was the book display. The Arts and Crafts Movement brought back illuminated and illustrated texts. These books were handsomely bound, obviously intended to impress those scanning bookshelves. The displayed works were intended for children. But, those books could not have been put into regular use; they were too ornate and probably prohibitively expensive. The font faces used by Arts and Crafts printers tended to be Gothic, often ornamented. Even a Russian children's book was rendered in the same style, which made some of the Cyrillic characters difficult to discern. On the whole, what was evident in printed works was the pictorial qualities of the page, not the "meaning" of the text.

The Arts and Crafts Movement, as stated everywhere in the exhibit, was in rejection of the Industrial Revolution. They were devoted to producing goods for use in the home, which had to be in the country. The Arts and Crafts Movement was about "returning to nature," not living in the city. On the other hand, the architecture of the home and the designed works placed in it were clearly not affordable by the masses. All of the examples in this exhibit are homes, furniture, household goods and implements, decorations, clothes, etc that would have been owned by the very wealthy , the upper classes, or the nouveau riche. They are the goods which exemplify the life of an English Country Gentlemen, which was the idyll of the Victorian Englishman. The extremely cultured and decorated country home was graced by ornamented women, headed by the English Mistress and her well behaved offspring. This is the same world rendered in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

The same notions governed life in New England when I was a child. Men went away to the city, where they did dirty and sinful things. Those things, collectively "work," were never discussed with food or tea, women or children. If work was ever discussed in the civilized home, it was in the adult males-only study/office/library where cigars were smoked. The city, work and industrial revolution were one place; the home was another, ethereal place. Today, in our 21^st century, the same schizophrenic dichotomy drives wealthy families into gated communities and survivalist compounds. That separated, country home, and all the characters in it, was created in the imaginations of men. The textiles created or adorned by women were the only artifacts protecting their makers from fading from existence into the dreamed Stepford wives.

There was a further double hypocrisy in the Arts and Crafts Movement. While its founders denounced the Industrial Revolution, hand made products were (and still are) incredibly expensive. The only people who could afford those one-of-a-kind pieces were the magnates who profited from industry, or the aristocrats and landed gentry who lived on taxes levied by the Plutocratic government on working people. So, the Arts and Crafts Movement was not at all oriented toward the ordinary working person, despite propaganda intended to portray participants as artisans who were 'of the people.' The Movement was more accurate when it represented its goals as the recreation of the Medieval Guilds. The desired situation was the idealized, regulated Guild, whose members were apprentices and certified professionals, working in small groups to produce designed products. That sort of arrangement exists today in some lawyer's and architect's offices, and in some scientific research groups, but has been largely abandoned everywhere else. Those who seek to make hand-made "creative" products always need Patrons, as did the Guilds.

The leading artisans of the Arts and Crafts movement were determined to earn upper class incomes. They wanted to live in the manner of their ideals: in the country, connected to nature, surrounded by their adoring wives and children. Unfortunately, this idyll required huge sums of cash to enable and support it. That cash could not be wrenched from making one chair or table at a time. Thus, they formed co-operatives (guilds) and mass produced their works. While they made original designs and a few copies, for the most part they sent out the finished work for industrial production. Plainly, they mass-produced their products. They made their goods using the self-same methods of the Industrial  Revolution they denounced. I suppose this inconsistency can be maintained as long as the schizophrenia of sinful work/money and angelic home/family/sex is operative.

The work of the Arts and Crafts Movement is wonderfully decorated. This Movement has a special, historic connection to Northern California, especially the San Francisco Bay Area. The Movement flourished during the American Gilded Age, and never died in San Francisco. There are thousands of Victorian houses sporting "gingerbread." That characteristic, ornate decoration disappeared in new homes after World War I, but has been faithfully and expensively maintained in older homes occupied by the wealthy. The garish colors, swirls and motions of San Francisco Hip Art and Acid Rock owe their existence to the Movement. The Haight-Ashbury hippies regenerated and reinvigorated the Movement in the 1960s, which soon moved into tourist traps on the Embarcadero. As before, the initial surge of artistic energy had to find a mass market to support the artists, so now we have mass produced hippie schlock. Those who own documented, original hippie works are holding a fortune. The rest, without provenance, is junk.

I highly recommend spending a day at the DeYoung perusing this Exhibit. I found the art interesting not only for its many connections to our local culture, but also for its philosophical content and contradictions. A lot of this work was not just comfortable or pretty, but beautiful and inspiring.