6
7
Foreword Since its founding, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston has been questioning where the field of “fine arts” should begin and end. In the museum’s first exhibition, This Is Contemporary Art of 1948, paintings were installed alongside cuttingedge design and depictions of modern architecture. In effect, fans of the “modern” in art were encouraged to embrace the larger lifestyle of hip modernity in their interior decorating, dress, and homes as well as in their collections of paintings and sculptures. This was a very sexy, progressive proposition for the late 1940s. It has been suggested that the edgy art that defined that period had as its primary task the need to prove its own viability as art, but once the monochrome and the readymade were accepted as art, anything could be art in theory. So in order to maintain some authority and have at least something declared not art, two areas were demonized: the skilled labor of illustration and the feminized sphere of crafts. Mixing craft with fine art was troubling turf for all the toughminded moderns, perhaps especially the women practitioners who needed to distance themselves from traditional “woman’s work.” The term applied art was opposed to fine art, the purity of which embodied the loftiest goals for culture, while utilitarian objects were considered intrinsically inferior. Starting in the 1970s, however, with the Pattern and Decoration movement and developments of the 1990s such as “third-wave” feminist art and the tidal wave of queer practitioners, craft proved a simple-to-use tool of seditionary power. Still this battle was pretty much won by the early 2000s, when even the most hard-boiled radical painters wept before the sheer beauty of the quilts from Gee’s Bend and other similarly cherished works by craft practitioners. In Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft, Curator Valerie Cassel Oliver has found a new lens through which to consider the point where the divisions between craft and fine art collapse—that of the action required to make each piece. If we see a woven basket, we imagine its weaving. If we see a thrown pot, we imagine its throwing. Two of the big stories in art over the last decade or so have been the reintroduction of live art in the gallery/museum sphere and the dominance of so-called relational art practices, which create a context in which audiences come together to engage in a shared activity or experience. Thanks once again to CAMH’s curatorial muscle, Hand+Made reimagines the familiar discourse on “craft” to meaningfully engage some of the key issues and fundamental definitions of current art practice. I would like to thank the artists for letting us work with them in all their riskiest undertakings. All art with a live element entails the possibility that works may fail in public or, at the very least, be uncontrollable and turn out differently than intended. But CAMH, as a noncollecting space dedicated to the art of the moment, has as its institutional mission such risk taking, and I would like to thank the artists for leading the way into the realm of experimentation and allowing us to fulfill that crucial task. We are overjoyed to be able to welcome as collaborators in the live art presentations during Hand+Made the Houston Museum of African American Culture; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Project Row Houses; and Hope Stone Dance Company. Houston benefits when our arts organizations work together, so I look forward to many more programs with them in the future. I also wish to thank the members of the public who will overcome the normal fear of strangers and participate in many of the works. I am sure that you will have a blast. Paula Newton, our director of education and public programs, will be shepherding these live
events from dream to reality, and while I know there will be times when she might regret the sheer quantity of live events during the show, her dedication to artistic experimentation and the experience of our audience is so tremendous that she warrants a special shout-out here. On behalf of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, I would like to express my profound gratitude to the Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston, which has continued its generous support of our publications program so that the ingenious context for craft-based art that Valerie has dreamed up can be documented for posterity and so that her complex themes can be explored in depth. That is a rare privilege for a museum of CAMH’s scale. The contributors to the catalogue, by adding their unique voices, have broadened that vision, so I extend special thanks to Glenn Adamson, Sarah G. Cassidy, and Namita Gupta Wiggers for their exemplary commentary. I am also particularly appreciative of the support that we have received from our donors to the museum’s Major Exhibition Fund. This group of arts patrons makes our function for the region possible and helps not just CAMH but also the entire vivid arts ecology of greater Houston. Their ongoing yearly support affirms their belief in our curatorial dream team’s ability to generate new projects that shape the contemporary art discussion in Houston, the region, the country, and the world. Union Pacific Foundation has also proved to be a loyal sponsor of CAMH exhibitions, and we salute them for their vision for the role of advanced culture in the daily life of the city. I would also like to thank Sara and Bill Morgan for their support of this exhibition and its programs. They are experts and great believers in the crucial place of craft forms in a high-art context, and I am thrilled that they are part of this exhibition. And I would like to send a final word of thanks to all the men and women who come to work here at the museum every day. Without them these exciting works would never be performed, staged, and installed before the public, never danced, knitted, crafted, thrown, fired, shattered, or unraveled, and without their dedication to art and artists the world would be a poorer place. We cannot thank you enough. Bill Arning Director