#2 Glenn Adamson "Thinking Through Craft"

[...] skill is, at base, a way of achieving cultural authority [...]

Glenn Adamson1

I find it interesting that whenever a discussion about 'skill' occurs, concepts of 'honesty' and 'care' follow as if 'skill' alone were a sufficient condition for the others. The logical leap seems slightly absurd - if 'skill' is a sufficient condition for 'integrity', then a successful forger ought to be the most integral person of all. Yet we pine for 'skill' in a system that has grown to favour conceptual sophistication. Why?

David Pye's separation of 'workmanship' from 'skill' helped me formulate a different hypothesis about why we pine for 'skill': it's a rather bad case of misplaced nostalgia.

The contemporary artwork has not become less skilled, in fact, it has possibly become more skilled with the increased sophistication of ideas and systems of production. What has been lost is workmanship. And we like workmanship. We like well-made objects carrying traces of the human hand. We like labour-intensive objects. We are not really saddened and made anxious by a loss of skill, we are saddened and made anxious by a loss of workmanship.

I hypothesise we feel thusly because we are a new diaspora of makers. Chris Kraus believes 'nostalgia is a product of diaspora' (Kraus 113) where the act of remembering serves to activate our longing to return. Perhaps there could be a better metaphor, but thinking of ourselves as a diaspora of makers seems to work: conceptualism took off around 1950 and six decades has not quite been enough for 'skill' and 'workmanship' to become distinct from each other in our collective awareness - I mean, 'skill' and 'workmanship' have been synonymous and freely interchangeable for much longer than it has not been - leaving us in an awkward place, a bunch of makers without the cultural authority of workmanship yet also not quite sure how to claim authority for our shiny new conceptual skills. The displacement probably leaves many dissatisfied - we have exhanged the security of workmanship (the good old days when you know for sure life is sussed as long as you can throw a pot) for...what exactly? Uncertainties and ambiguities and exploration and that nebulous cloud expounding the virtues of flux gets great writeups in art magazines but it's an entirely different matter to live by it.

But, diasporas settle and gain new points of traction. I am optimistic that our new 'skills' will also allow us to find our own places in this overwhelmingly new system of production and, perhaps, claim cultural authority.

References

1 Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. Oxford: Berg, 2007. p. 69-101. Print.

2 Kraus, Chris. "Bad Nostalgia", Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. pp 111-114. Print.

#1 Chris Kraus "Cast Away"

[...] anything is permissible in the contemporary world of art so long as it is pedigreed, substantiated, referentialised.

Chris Kraus1

Kraus' personal essay Cast Away acts out the contentious process of framing. From the very moment Kraus begins to describe how she one day spotted some photographs of people in distant lands holding packages couriered from America in a local storefront, this act of description already begins to frame these photographs as art worthy of consideration by simply occuring in a book of essays pondering some rather important artists and art issues.

By writing about these photographs as if they were art when the photographs were content to exist outside that frame, Kraus showed how easy it was to rope in non-art (if I may call it that) and have the reframed things taken seriously (just because she is Kraus? hold that cynical thought). It is this ease which makes me uneasy and perhaps a little cynical.

Reframing something is a strategy we are all very familiar with, but why does it work better in some instances and not others? Would these photographs have been as successful if a lesser writer/artist/curator had undertaken the task? That is, if it were not Kraus but someone else whose authority in the art world was uncertain - say, Justin Beiber or fresh Elam graduates - who was looking and reframing, would this influence the power of the reframed thing to speak art-talk? I think so.

The logical conclusion of this hunch is that the success of a reframing strategy has something to do with the credibility of the re-framer. However, I came to realise that credibility can be less about the individual voice but about the structures which support that voice. For example, I have no idea who Dirk von Lowtzow2 is, but I know Parkett is a reputable art publication (by the way, have you noticed they always supply a short biography of the author just so you can go aha, that guy is credible in his own right to shape my opinions? Somewhere in here is an essay). So when Lowtzow rejects the words 'adorable' and 'cute' in favour of 'cuddly' when framing a discussion of Cosima von Bonin's work in Parkett, the frame 'cuddly' shuffles but ultimately stays.

What's the actual difference between the three? Kraus wonders why nostalgia is bad but sentiment is good; I wonder why cuddly is better than adorable or cute. 'Goodness' seems entirely arbitrary. This is probably why Parkett always invites at least three writers to discuss an artist at any one time - one frame is just not enough wiggle room to fit interesting art.

At the risk of over-simplifying things, it seems then that who gets to frame art makes a lot of difference. Think back to Lauren Winstone's insight that Francis Upritchard has others around her to champion her work when Upritchard evades theory.

Now think about Elam's requirement that all of us justify our practices with theory.

Now think about what may happen if you reject theory at Elam and don't have others speaking on your behalf.

Did you shudder? I did.

Ultimately, can intuitive practices exist successfully without champions to defend it with theoretical frames?

I would like to think yes, because it is sunny at the moment and sunshine makes me optimistic.

But I am not above putting up Champions Wanted posters if the weather turns sour.

References

1. 
   
   Kraus, Chris. "Cast Away", Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness. New York: Semiotext(e), 2004. pp 145-150.


2. 
   
   von Lowtzow, Dirk. "In Fluffy Storms." Parkett 2007: 32-36.