Synopsis
What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost.
Constance Ashmore Fairchild - Library Journal
This scholarly work lays out reasons for the historical dichotomy in Western philosophy between fine art and craft. Risatti (art history, emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.; Postmodern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art) argues that aesthetic standards for craft separate from those of the traditional fine arts are necessary for craft to receive the status it deserves in the art community. He points out that non-Western traditional societies don't make such distinctions and that their artwork is a functioning part of daily life. Since fine craftworks in the marketplace now approach the prices paid for fine art, this is a problem that may be solving itself. Suitable for academic art libraries.