The craft debate at the crossroads of global visual culture: re-centring craft in postmodern and postcolonial histories

Abstract

Over the last decade the craft debate has stimulated contemporary visual culture globally. Questions such as ‘what is craft?’, ‘how do we define craft against fine art and design?’, and ‘why is craft important to us?’ have been hotly debated topics. In Anglo-America, in a notable achievement among significant numbers of publications and exhibitions on crafts, Glenn Adamson led the creation of the field of academic craft studies through the launch of The Journal of Modern Craft (2008–) and The Craft Reader (2010). The differing camps of critics and makers have developed a broad range of criticism. In a tantalisingly interesting correlation, visual culture in Japan has also been excited by a craft debate led by Kaneko Kenji, Kitazawa Noriaki and Mori Hitoshi. This debate has excited the public as it involved the national concerns of re-centring crafts in Japanese art history. This paper compares and analyses the scope and nature of craft debate in Anglo-America with that of Japan, and investigates where they converge and diverge. Drawing upon the approaches taken by Murakami Takashi and Grayson Perry, I will further examine how this craft debate impacted on the world of fine art. Through these comparisons, the paper investigates how the craft debate engages with postmodern/postcolonial views on visual cultural history and how it is negotiating histories in Anglo-America and those in Japan.

Keywords:

• craft
• Japan
• Anglo-America
• global visual culture
• postmodern
• pre-modern
• postcolonial
• twenty-first-century history

Acknowledgements

This paper was developed from the conference papers: ‘Decentring the Master Narrative of Art and Creating Narratives of Craft and Craft History within Design History’, presented at the 2008 conference of the International Conference of Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS) in Osaka, and ‘The Question of Craft: Intersection of Postmodernity, Premodernity and Postcoloniality’, presented at ICDHS Brussels in 2010.

Notes on contributor

Yuko Kikuchi is Reader at TrAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art Identity and Nation) and CCW graduate school at University of the Arts London. Her key works include Mingei Theory and Japanese Modernisation: Cultural Nationalism and ‘Oriental Orientalism’ (RoutlegeCurzon, 2004), Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan (University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), and a special issue: ‘Transnational Modern Design Histories in East Asia’, Journal of Design History, 27-4 (2014). Recently awarded the Terra Foundation Senior Fellowship at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, she is currently working on a book about Russel Wright and the US intervention in Asian design during the Cold War, as well as a Critical Reader of East Asian Design.

Notes

1. I use the term ‘Anglo-America’ to point to the recent craft debate as captured by publications in English through mainly British and North American publishers, while ‘Euroamerica’ is a translation of the historical term ōbei and ‘West’ is a translation of the historical term seiyō. The latter two are often used interchangeably in Japanese writing, and both are culturally discursive concepts that date from the nineteenth century up to the present, rather than geo-cultural or linguistically specific concepts. They are indispensable concepts in the cultural debate in Japan, particularly with respect to discussions of Japanese culture.

2. For example, African cases by Amadou Hâmpaté Bâ (2010) in The Craft Reader, Kristina Dziedzic Wright (2008) and Ruti Talmor (2012) in The Journal of Modern Craft. Also published in the JMC were studies of craft in China by Geoffrey Gowlland (2009); in Slovakia by Nicolette Makovicky (2009); in Thailand by Irena Stengs (2012); in Nepal by Mallika Shakya (2011); and in India by Cristin McKnight Sethi (2013).

3. With a personal interest in and passion for Japanese crafts, Nakata travels around Japan to learn regional craftmaking. He now runs his own project, ReVALUE (http://nakata.net/rnp/cat/cat1/), to promote the local handicrafts and culture of Japan.

4. According to art historian Tsuji Shigebumi (2003), the term dentō, meaning ‘tradition’, acquired positive and nationalistic connotations in the late 1930s and frequently went hand in hand with the tide of ultra-nationalism during the war. This continued to the 1950s and onwards with the official systematisation of dentō kōgei (traditional craft) and dentō geijutsu (traditional arts).

5. For a description of how this system operates and how it has created paradoxes and controversies, see Bambling 2005.

6. For further information on the Ōdate Kōgei company and their products, see the website at http://www.magewappa.co.jp/.

7. Japan’s craft world normally shows little interest in engagement outside of Japan. Therefore, when Kaneko invited Edmund de Waal to MOMA Tokyo’s craft gallery for a craft debate, we witnessed a refreshingly new approach. This debate was published in Kaneko Kenji (2007b).

8. Shugei is a category of craftmaking activity that features in girls’ school curricula, and it is also used to indicate amateur crafts made by women. See Yamasaki (2012).

9. The term ‘overcoming modernity’ (kindai no chōkoku) first appeared in the title of a symposium organised in 1942 during the Second World War in Japan. At the symposium, 13 of Japan’s leading cultural authorities discussed the modernisation and westernisation of Japan since the late nineteenth century and questioned the issue of Japanese identity in a wide range of cultural fields: literature, history, theology, film, music, philosophy, and science. An English translation of the symposium proceedings can be found in Calichman (2008). For the development of nihonjinron (the discourse of Japanese uniqueness) during the 1970s and 1980s and the recent popular cultural nationalism led by manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori since the 1990s, see Dale (1986) and Sakamoto (2008).

10. This recent trend of designer–maker collaborations is demonstrated in trade shows including those of Tent London, Maison et Objet, Salone Internazionale del Mobile and Ambiente.

11. See Lizzy Davis, ‘Takashi Murakami Takes on Critics with Provocative Versailles Exhibition’, The Guardian, 10 September 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/10/takashi-murakami-versailles-exhibition; Darling 2001. Murakami himself has criticised foreign journalists for always asking him the same questions and for imposing their own view rather than reading his work in the Japanese art context; see Barral and Le Bon (2010: 24).

12. Nettō! Nihon Bijutsu Shi (Battle Royal! Japanese Art History), which is structured through dialogues between Murakami Takashi and Tsuji Nobuo, has become a bestseller for young Japanese interested in Japanese art history (Tsujmi and Murakami 2014).

13. Washoku (Japanese cuisine) was designated as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2014 as a result of successful lobbying on the part of the Japanese government.