Obscure Objects of Desire 1 2 3 4 - PRINTER VERSION
>> something that the craftspeople whom they were interviewing would always try to hide from them. There was an effort to try to make these interviews sound as scientific and objective as possible, until at one point Paul Thompson related a problem he faced while working as a consultant on a BBC project. A number of people were interviewed for this particular television series and at one point they had to choose between an articulate and professional nurse, whom he seemed to have admired, and an Irish woman who prepared the dead so they could be laid out for wakes. The nurse, he said, just seemed flat on video, but the Irish woman, whom he said was neither articulate nor had any a important insights, ended her explanation of what she did with a devilish grin that she delivered directly into the camera and held for an unnaturally long time. They decided, he stated, to go with the latter more visually captivating interview.
One of the conferees then asked what criteria were used to make that decision. Thompson answered that sometimes art was the most important factor in putting together an interview like that—an admission that seemed to confound many in the audience and begged the question of whether oral history was about a unbiased scientific study for posterity or was it about the search for a commodity that could be used to build a career. Vincentelli was at odds with Thompson and Hughes on a number of points and seemed alone in understanding the responsibility for the trust the interviewees placed in those who request these oral histories.
There were only a small number of makers at this conference. Two of them were potters who gave talks that challenged some of modern crafts most deeply held beliefs and questioned the validity of the views of one of modern English crafts' most pivotal figures. Julian Stair, in his paper, disputed the common view held in the crafts world that the supremacy of the fine arts and the critical writing that supports this cultural position has kept the crafts from achieving the status it deserves. He argued that in the 1920s and '30s, modern crafts, even though it was in an embryonic stage, occupied a far more important position in English culture than the crafts have achieved since. His examination not only of the writings of Herbert Read and Bernard Rackham, but also of the art journals and popular press of that period, showed how widespread and intense the critical discussion was. With this historic precedent in mind, he questioned whether the second class status to which crafts feel it has been delegated, might be self-imposed.
Edmund de Waal, whose book on Bernard Leach will be published by the Tate Gallery in 1997, examined in his talk the myth of Bernard Leach and his role as a 'conduit' from Japan to England for the ideals of the Mingei movement. He showed how Leach's narrow group of friends in Japan blinded Leach to other aesthetic strains in Japanese culture. The result, he pointed out, is that we now have generation upon generation of Western potters who are engaged in aesthetic practices they believe to be either Japanese or Korean but which in reality represent the views of a rather small, marginal group of Japanese idealists from the 1920s whose philosophy was to a large extent based on the writings of Ruskin and Morris.
At the end of the conference, I felt both excited and bewildered. The latter because it seemed impossible to me to reconcile all the diverse positions about how we should look at and what we should expect
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> something that the craftspeople whom they were interviewing would always try to hide from them. There was an effort to try to make these interviews sound as scientific and objective as possible, until at one point Paul Thompson related a problem he faced while working as a consultant on a BBC project. A number of people were interviewed for this particular television series and at one point they had to choose between an articulate and professional nurse, whom he seemed to have admired, and an Irish woman who prepared the dead so they could be laid out for wakes. The nurse, he said, just seemed flat on video, but the Irish woman, whom he said was neither articulate nor had any a important insights, ended her explanation of what she did with a devilish grin that she delivered directly into the camera and held for an unnaturally long time. They decided, he stated, to go with the latter more visually captivating interview.
One of the conferees then asked what criteria were used to make that decision. Thompson answered that sometimes art was the most important factor in putting together an interview like that—an admission that seemed to confound many in the audience and begged the question of whether oral history was about a unbiased scientific study for posterity or was it about the search for a commodity that could be used to build a career. Vincentelli was at odds with Thompson and Hughes on a number of points and seemed alone in understanding the responsibility for the trust the interviewees placed in those who request these oral histories.
There were only a small number of makers at this conference. Two of them were potters who gave talks that challenged some of modern crafts most deeply held beliefs and questioned the validity of the views of one of modern English crafts' most pivotal figures. Julian Stair, in his paper, disputed the common view held in the crafts world that the supremacy of the fine arts and the critical writing that supports this cultural position has kept the crafts from achieving the status it deserves. He argued that in the 1920s and '30s, modern crafts, even though it was in an embryonic stage, occupied a far more important position in English culture than the crafts have achieved since. His examination not only of the writings of Herbert Read and Bernard Rackham, but also of the art journals and popular press of that period, showed how widespread and intense the critical discussion was. With this historic precedent in mind, he questioned whether the second class status to which crafts feel it has been delegated, might be self-imposed.
Edmund de Waal, whose book on Bernard Leach will be published by the Tate Gallery in 1997, examined in his talk the myth of Bernard Leach and his role as a 'conduit' from Japan to England for the ideals of the Mingei movement. He showed how Leach's narrow group of friends in Japan blinded Leach to other aesthetic strains in Japanese culture. The result, he pointed out, is that we now have generation upon generation of Western potters who are engaged in aesthetic practices they believe to be either Japanese or Korean but which in reality represent the views of a rather small, marginal group of Japanese idealists from the 1920s whose philosophy was to a large extent based on the writings of Ruskin and Morris.
At the end of the conference, I felt both excited and bewildered. The latter because it seemed impossible to me to reconcile all the diverse positions about how we should look at and what we should expect
>>
© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign