The name of our craft…
During the nineteenth century, the artistic, artisan guild tradition of making the objects of everyday use and those used at festivities was replaced in a matter of decades by the new trend aimed at industrial, mass production, which was faced with the challenge of realising the earlier, high quality of objects. Raising standardised industrial products to an artistic level was seen as a real paradox. Thus, a gap soon separated craftsmen (shepherd-woodcarvers, skinner-embroiderers, smiths, shoemakers, coopers, etc.) – who made and used their own tools, were not involved in the exchange of goods, catered to people’s needs at local fairs and working in workshops – from the new industry producing practical objects for wholesale trade. For a short period, the owners of small-scale plants – the first generation of those who built factories from workshops – built the thousands of years old artisan traditions into their products; however, the standardised large- scale industry slowly displaced the knowledge that was at the heart of ancient crafts that gave birth to unique hand-made, and workshops that were built on this eventually went out of business.
Somewhat more than one hundred and fifty years ago, the relation between objects and people became a key civilizational issue. Since then, with the exception of some ’periods of grace’, de cades interrupted by temporary change – the Arts and Crafts movement, Secession, the Wiener Werkstatte, the early Bauhaus manifestos and isolated polymaths promising salvation – creative masters making and using their own tools have been forced onto the defensive. The vectors of the curve describing this trend point in the direction of robotisation in an ever-widening scope of products. Resolving the conflict that exists between machine and man, technology and nature has to this day been a recurring, heroic and convulsive challenge faced by architecture and the applied arts. In the twentieth century, the relation between objects and their users is placed at the centre of interest in cultural anthropology and, within that, material anthropology. And it still is, which is why it seems logical in this context to look at the twenty-first century and the future. The answer provided by the National Salon 2017 to the question – Is it applied arts and/or design? – is that it is both. And such an approach is a matter of strategic importance for human civilisation.
The curve showing the above trend progressing over time grows exponentially in the twenty-first century. The thousands of years old intelligence built on our heads, arms, fingers and the joint creativity of our heads and hands is losing ground in education and production at a staggeringly fast pace. In other words, individual skills and talents are being squeezed out of our human creative capacity. In the newly emerged age of robotics, the anthropological position that defines man directly working with tools as well as his scope of action is being pushed into a virtual dimension. Algorithms are starting to replace artisan modelling and the roles of designers.
Since we can talk about the threshold of civilisation, there must be psychological guards at this threshold asking question such as: Do we want genetic manipulation? Do we want artificial intelligence? Do we want robotics instead of human creativity? Do we want to cross the boundaries of what constitutes our human core by introducing all these things? These trends are driven by mathematical calculations with complete disregard for our ecological boundaries and urging consumption, mindless growth and profit that will ultimately destroy our planet. Before we know it, faceless share packages will make decisions. They will set the trends for important developments and consumer interests, thus indirectly transforming our objects. At the same time, there is the ideal of ‘ethical economy’ advocating that man is not the ’object’ but the ’subject’ of the economy.
Let me return to the narrower context of applied art and design. To the polymaths of the early last century, now virtually forgotten, who promised salvation and envisioned ‘another modernism’. I regard Johannes Itten – an innovative teacher of the early Bauhaus who moved from Vienna to Weimar – as one of those who wanted to guard the threshold of civilisation, even though he was defeated in the end. He wrote a hymn celebrating the new environmental, total art school: “Welcome and greetings to those whose hearts are imbued with the light of love; those who are not led astray either by the Heavens or by false hopes vested in Earthly halls!” Itten, who was a painter and teacher, based his views on ancient knowledge, alternative lifestyles and creative work done in workshops. His utopistic ideal of a creative life was built on a vegetarian diet, yoga breathing, walks in nature and a rigorous work ethic. Herbert Bayer reformulated Itten’s hymn in the language of material and rationality into a slogan: “with head, heart and hand”. As was the custom of the time, Lyonel Feininger illustrated the Bauhaus manifesto with a woodcut depicting a cathedral rising up towards heaven, into the stars. In the manifesto, the medieval building guilds’, or Bauhuttes’ technological knowledge based on faith was placed at the centre as a model for modern craftsmanship: “Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.” (Bauhaus manifesto, 1919)
Johannes Itten, who was invited to Weimar as a leading figure at the time, joined the Bauhaus with several of his students from his own private school, but Walter Gropius and his circle soon sent him down. Itten’s educational methodology was guided by the approach hallmarked by names like Pestalozzi, Maria Montessori and John Dewey. The primary education they envisioned had craftsmanship, creativity and workshops as key elements. This approach is ever more important today, as it is an open opportunity that might bring ‘salvation’, granting the future of our civilisation. It is reason for concern, however, that nowadays even the remnants of education built on the creativity of the hand are slowly being phased out in the general primary education in the state schools of Western Europe, and thus in Hungary too. It is the last moment to preserve artisan tradition for the future to go towards an economy of which an applied artist is not the object but the subject.
Previous anthropologies all agreed that the source of material culture and artistic craftsmanship is the differentiation produced by the changes in the use of tools, societies and the modes of production. How can we continue if artificial intelligence overwrites everything? Will the thousandsof- years-old practice of creating with thumb, hand, head and heart versus robotics eventually bring about the end of human existence? Műcsarnok’s exhibition titled All Around Us, able to carry the name of our craft across the borders, is an attempt to give an answer to these questions showcasing a diversity of genres and inter-genre influences as well as individual paths and outstanding achievements. Presenting artisan applied art together with design, which was built on those traditions, this salon will perhaps be able to function as a kind of guard at the threshold of civilisation. Setting applied art against design would be a fatal mistake. I believe that besides many aesthetic and cultural policy issues, the above-described panorama, indicative of a pathological state virtually recognised only by a few make the Applied Art and Design – National Salon 2017 topical, at a scale and scope stretching beyond the boundaries of Hungary.
György Szegő
Artistic Director
Műcsarnok