57

HOW ENVY KILLED THE CRAFTS Clark

The historian, art dealer and critic Garth Clark heart of the craft movement. The longstanding has spent his career championing the cause of ce- ambition of craftspeople to be accepted as artists ramics as an art form. Born and raised in South was worse than Quixotic, he argues: it led to self- Africa, Clark opened his gallery to- loathing and ethical rudderlessness. Clark doesn't gether with partner Mark Del Vecchio in 1981. deny that the craft movement has had its heroes, There had been other significant dealers of ceram- or that it has produced objects and ideas of tre- ics (Helen Drutt of , for example) mendous power. (Notably and somewhat contro- but the Garth Clark Gallery introduced a new versially, he also is at pains to preserve a discrete sophistication and ambition to the presentation category of genuine artists who just happen to of the medium, much as the Peter Joseph Gal- work in ceramics, and are not to be confused lery would do for furniture a decade later. Clark with crafters.) But he argues that the days of those has also produced a large and important body of achievements are over. Even if the institutions that scholarly writing, charting the history of modern the craft movement produced—museums, maga- ceramics and helping to construct a canon of key zines, medium-based organizations—manage to artists. Working through the nonprofit Ceramic find new roles, the movement itself is over. Only Art Foundation, he has organized conferences time will tell whether this obituary will prove to on the history of the medium. He has consulted be premature; the recent explosion of DIY activ- widely with museums and collectors and wrote ity, for example, is clearly a crafts movement of short, sharp critical assessments of individual art- sorts, and might be considered a variation on stu- ists. Not all of Clark's enterprises have met with dio craft rather than a complete departure. But success—a foray into jewelry, for example, was it is certainly worth paying attention when some- short-lived—and he has certainly had his detrac- one in Clark's position is willing to say 'goodbye tors over the years. But it is impossible to imagine to all that'. contemporary ceramics without him. This back- Garth Clark, 'How Envy Killed the Crafts', 2008. ground adds considerable interest to the following text, which Clark first composed as a lecture to be For most of the modern craft movement's delivered at the Museum of Contemporary Craft one hundred and fifty year life it has wrestled in Portland, Oregon, directly following his retire- with a debilitating condition, an unhappy, ment from gallery work. It is writing borne of contentious relationship with the fine arts. In long experience and deep frustration. Clark iden- 1939 Fortune magazine ran a survey of ceram- tifies a fundamental contradiction in terms at the ics in America and titled it "The art with an 446 I CRAFT IN THEORY

inferiority complex". That was true then as respected magazine, Craft Horizons, ran the now, not just of ceramics but of craft across Museum of Contemporary Craft in New the board as it dealt with the status of being York and a thriving craft shop, America "less than" art. Craft has moved constantly House, organized national and regional con- between resentment and envy with the rela- ferences, touring exhibitions, arranged fairs tionship growing increasingly acrimonious as and generally promoted the field. art moved away from craft-based values in the This appeared to be the perfect success story. mid-century and closer to post-1950 concep- But below the surface a damaging disorder tualism and the dematerialization of the art was festering. While craft was doing well, fine object. art was doing better. It was much more glam- The roots of craft's art envy are long and orous, had better museums and institutions complex and begin at birth when it was and, of course, a better rewards