The Crafts in a Post-Modern Market

Harry Hillman Chartrand ^© 
Journal of Design History, Vol. 2, Nos 2 & 3, 1989

Introduction

It is indeed timely that the United Nations has declared 1988 to 1997 the 'World Decade of Cultural Development'.¹  The decade is intended, as I understand it, to raise the consciousness of politicians, economic decision-makers and the general public to the fact that cultural development is an end-in-and-of-itself, not just a critical catalyst in fostering economic growth and development.  The implications of the decade for Western culture, including the crafts, are important for three reasons.

First, a series of developments now challenges long-held assumptions of Western industrial superiority and the primacy of secular or rationalist thought.  Such developments include the economic rise of the Asian Pacific Rim, the waxing world-wide influence of Islam, the transition from Marx to markets in previously command economies, and the growing recognition of the limited impact of scientific rationalism on Western public opinion.²  Second, there is growing recognition of a deracination of Western culture as ten generations have been born, urbanized, educated and employed to serve the machine since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This loss of roots has brought the West perilously close to forgetting its traditional arts and crafts while, at the same time, new immigrant traditions are fostering the emergence of a truly multi-cultural society, particularly in North America.³  Third, it is also in the West :that. the great value inversion troubling late twentieth century civilization is most acutely apparent.  As an economist, I know that economic development is a means towards ultimate human ends such as personal, cultural and spiritual fulfilment. But economic development has become an end-in-and-of-itself.  For example, increasingly it is necessary to gain public and private sector support for many cultural activities such as the arts, by demonstrating how they contribute towards economic growth-i.e. the means now justifies the end.  Put another way, we in the West know more and more how to do things and less and less about what is worth doing.  There are signs, however, that the environmental issue is forcing a reappraisal of this societal value inversion.

In fact, it is generally agreed that fundamental changes are transforming the economies of the West.  Some are readily apparent, such as High Tech and the displacement of manufacturing to low wage Third World countries.  But beneath the glittering surface of new technology and the apparent de-industrialization of the West, other elemental changes are contributing to the emergence of what I call the 'Post-Modern Economy'.  In this new economy, the traditional economic weaknesses of the arts and crafts are becoming strengths, strengths that should lead to a prosperous and productive twenty-first century for craftspersons and artists.

The Crafts

Today in the West, there remain two distinct types of crafts-the industrial crafts and the handicrafts.⁴  The industrial crafts, such as printing and die-making, are organized into craft unions because the markets for their skills are generally within large industrial corporations, both publicly- and privately-owned.  It was, of course, the industrial crafts which displaced handicraft by mass-production of most consumer goods during the Industrial Revolution.  Only in luxury goods did handicrafts survive the revolution.

The handicrafts, on the other hand, embrace individual craftspersons, their co-operatives and collectives engaged in the production of, and distribution networks for, hand-made articles, generally of a utilitarian nature and embodying varying degrees of artistry.  Handicraft skills are used to manipulate materials ranging from wood to plastic, from cotton to acrylic fibre, from clay to silver, from paper to steel, from stone to fur.  Such skills are generally learned by doing, i.e. they are experiential in origin.  Nonetheless, they represent true discipline in the sense that technique must be learned and mastered so as to become transparent in application.  The handicrafts are loosely organized into international, national and regional Crafts Councils or guilds which provide varying levels of services and representation to a band of rugged individualists.  Like the artist, the craftsperson does not fit comfortably into the contemporary technocracy.

Large, multi-national communications conglomerates dominate contemporary commercial culture around the world. Such bureaucratic firms face a major problem in managing artistic and other creative personnel.  The artist and the craftsperson, by nature, are risk-taking entrepreneurs-taking risks with time and talent:

In consequence . . . the artist functions as an independent entrepreneur . . . or . . . as a member of a very small firm which he can dominate or in which he can preserve the identity of his work. A few industries-the motion picture firms, television networks, the large advertising agencies must, by their nature, associate artists with rather complex organization. All have a well-reported record of dissonance and conflict between the artists and the rest of the organization . ... Frequently the problem is solved by. removing actors, actresses, scriptwriters, directors, composers, copywriters and creators of advertising commercials from the technostructure . . . and reconstituting them in small independent companies. The large firm then confines itself to providing the appropriate facilities for producing and-more importantly-marketing, exhibiting or airing the product. Similarly painters, sculptors, concert pianists and novelists function, in effect, as one-man firms or, as in the case of rock, dance and folk music groups, as small partnerships and turn to larger organizations to market themselves or their products.⁵

The record music business is another case, in point:

The deliberate creation of a group with a sound and performing style dictated by market research data (such as the Monkees, a television-based American derivative of the Beatles back in the 1960s) has never been more than partly successful. Rock music can be messy to manage.  Holding the artist's hand is often best done by a small company: performers generally want access to the top man. For this reason, the conglomerates tend to devolve record production to subsidiary 'labels' or to small independents for which they .supply marketing, distribution and, often finance.⁶

In high tech and other industries increasing recognition is being given to the need for small entrepreneurial business enterprises to cope with an economic environment characterized by rapid technological change and to manage, or preferably lead, highly educated, skilled and creative personnel.  The arts industry, including the crafts, was the first to adopt such an industrial structure.  It offers numerous opportunities for case studies in the design and operation of small entrepreneurial business enterprise, in adaptation to technological change, and in the use and abuse of creative personnel.

Design Technology

Through time, there has been a progressive expansion in the sources of national income.⁷  In this century, technological change has become recognized as the most important source of economic growth.  However, our understanding of technological change has also evolved and changed.  In this regard, it is important to recall that the word technology is derived from the Greek teckhne, meaning art, and logos, meaning reason-thus, 'reasoned art'.  In fact, it was only after the Second World War that the concept of technology as embodying the results of physical science research, usually conducted in universities, became prevalent.

Today, there are three epistemological sources of what is popularly called technological change.  Research in the physical sciences leads to state-of-the-art physical technology, the most obvious form of technological change.  Research in the social sciences and the humanities is part of the search for excellence in organizational technology, i.e. the ways and means available to organize and motivate capital, labour and physical technology.  Just as the physical sciences are the source of physical technology and the social and management sciences the source of organizational technology, the arts are the source of design technology.  Research in the arts, however, does not generally take place in the university.  Rather, it emerges from the professional non-profit fine arts, where art for art's sake is the dominant motivation.⁸

The contribution that design brings to the marketplace can be called 'elegance'.  This term is also used in mathematics, the physical sciences and economics. It expresses Occam's Razor, a guiding principle of the scientific method: the fewest assumptions for the maximum explanation.  Elegance can be defined as 'ingeniously simple and effective'.⁹  This catches the sense of economy as frugality.  Aesthetic design is fundamentally different from technical or functional design-such as a more efficient automobile engine.  Its impact on consumer behaviour involves what has been called 'the best looking thing that works'.¹⁰  If a consumer does not like the way a product looks, he or she may not even try it.  Similarly, a rich endowment of natural resources does not guarantee that a nation can effectively develop up-scale value-added products.  For example, Canada is the largest timber producing country in the world and yet imports Swedish IKEA furniture.  This is not because Swedish pine is better, but rather due to superior design.

Contribution of Art and Design to Competitiveness

The importance of art and design to international economic competitiveness was first recognized in the English-speaking world over 150 years ago in the United Kingdom with the establishment of the first school of design in 1836. Until 1814 the Statute of Artificers had regulated training and employment of artisans in the craft guild tradition.  In that year, responding to deregulation or laissez-faire economic policies, Parliament abolished the Statute.  In short order the guild system collapsed and the labour market became flooded with unskilled workers.  By 1835 the quality of British production, particularly in textiles, had declined to the point that the British Board of Trade appointed a Select Committee to investigate the problem and recommend remedies.  The Committee called for the direct application of art in manufacturing in order to maintain competitiveness with European rivals.  The result was the creation of schools of design.¹¹

Similarly, in 1870, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts became the first American state to make art education a requirement in the public schools, with the passage of the Drawing Act.  The Act originated through pressure from Boston manufacturers who argued that European students were trained in design and drawing and therefore American manufacturers suffered a competitive disadvantage.¹²  Within two decades, the same argument served to introduce art education in Canadian schools.¹³

During this period, the most eminent of contemporary economists, Alfred Lord Marshall, explicitly recognized the importance of art to economic life, even if he questioned the moral results of art education:

Education in art stands on a somewhat different footing from education in hard thinking: for while the latter nearly always strengthens the character, the former not infrequently fails to do this. Nevertheless the development of the artistic faculties of the people is in itself an aim of the very highest importance, and is becoming a chief factor of industrial efficiency . . . Increasingly wealth is enabling people to buy things of all kinds to suit the fancy, with but a secondary regard to their powers of wearing; so that in all kinds of clothing and furniture it is every day more true that it is the pattern which sells the things.¹⁴

Since the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the economic importance of design, and therefore the contribution of the arts and crafts to national income, has, in effect, been forgotten.  Partially this reflects the perceived dubious morality of the artist implicit in Marshall's words as well as a traditional unease concerning art identified by political philosophers since the time of Plato:

we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praise of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.¹⁵

It also reflects the pedagogic triumph of the Pestalozzian rationale for art education-to develop creativity and expression-which displaced the economic rationale in the 1930s.¹⁶  It also reflects, however, a more general short-sightedness on the part of economists and other social scientists concerning the nature and implications of the Industrial Revolution.  The Industrial Revolution not only transformed economic production, it also transformed consumption-creating phenomena such as advertising, the department store, fashion, and the mail-order catalogue, all of which are critical to the modern economy.¹⁷

The lack of study of these phenomena has resulted in little empirical evidence concerning the impact of art on economic competitiveness. But while the impact of improved design has not been quantified, its impact on competitiveness is again being recognized:

There is, then, another aspect to culture, namely good taste, good design and creative innovation, that should enable smaller industrial economies to compete effectively in the world economy . . . In this endeavour, higher quality implies an organic relationship between business and engineering, on the one hand, and design and craftsmanship, on the other . . . High quality products, technologies, plants, homes, cities and locales require the presence of creative artists of all kinds. To increase the long-run supply of artists . . . governments must support the artists and the arts. The long-term return from investment in artists and the arts is real and substantial. In the absence of strong public support of this sector, Canada will not reap these benefits. Governments at all levels should increase their contribution to their respective arts councils.¹⁸

Today the importance of design in international competitiveness can also be seen in the United States and Canada, where higher quality consumer products tend to come from abroad, particularly from Europe, even after a 40 per cent depreciation in the value of the dollar since 1985.  Why?  Given that capital plant and equipment in North America is as good as that in Europe, the answer is not superior European production technology.  In fact, it results from a feedback between skilled consumption and production, resulting in superior design.  As noted by Tibor Scitovsky in his path-breaking book, The Joyless Economy, the North American

buyer of European imports benefits from the high standards which careful European shoppers' finicky demand imposes on their producers; he does not have to be a careful shopper himself.. In other words, he can be what is known as a free rider, enjoying the benefits of other people's careful shopping without paying his share of the cost, in terms of time and effort,' that careful and aggressive shopping involves: That explains why producers find it unprofitable to cater to his demand by trying to out-compete high quality imports, despite the often exorbitant price they fetch. Consumers seem willing to pay a high price, in terms of money, for the reputation of European imports; that is we pay cash to obtain high quality without having to pay for it in terms of careful shopping.¹⁹

When the design advantage of European producers, and increasingly that of Japanese producers of consumer electronics, is combined with the advantage of offshore or Third World producers, then the North American producer is left with a narrowing mid-range market.  This combination of design and wage disadvantages may explain the apparent deindustrialization of North America.  Improved productivity, through robotics and other new technologies, may lower costs of production, but only improved design will secure for North American producers part of the growing up-scale consumer market.

The importance of enhanced design is becoming apparent to some major North American corporations including SCM, Teledyne, Black & Decker, and J. C. Penney.  This change reflects a 'bottom-line' awareness that if a consumer does not like the way a product looks, then he or she may never get close enough to find out how well it performs, and therefore there is no chance for a sale. Growing awareness of this basic principle is resulting in increased recognition of the importance of industrial design and the role it plays in helping companies meet sales and marketing goals.²⁰  More and more marketers are now enlisting the aid of design consultancies or setting up their own in-house design departments.  From where do design skills come?  They come from the practice of art.

Quaternary Sector

Changes in physical technology resulting from research in the physical sciences, improvements in organizational technology resulting from social and management science research, and improvements in design resulting from advances in the arts are now major sources of growth in national income.²¹  Advances in physical, organizational and design technology are legally protected by intellectual property rights legislation including: patents (emerging from the physical sciences); registered industrial design (emerging from research in the physical sciences and the arts); trademarks (emerging from the arts), and copyright (emerging from research in the physical and social sciences, humanities and the arts).  Managerial and industrial know-how also falls into this category of abstract goods and services.

At any point in time, there exists a stock of capital and labour which embodies current and past technical and educational attainment.  Advances in physical, organizational and design technologies are flows that become embodied in new products, industrial processes and equipment, organizational methods, styles and fashions.  In dollar terms, research, both scientific and artistic, involves a tiny amount of resources compared to the existing capital stock and labour force.  However, its role in economic growth is that of a catalyst stimulating changes and improvements in the quality and efficiency of capital and labour.²²  The information economy is, in fact, based on the buying, selling and licensing of abstract intellectual property rights which result from advances in physical, organizational and design technologies.

At present such abstract goods and services constitute what can be called the quaternary or fourth sector of the economy which is poorly reported in the national accounts:

Simply put, it is the expansion of knowledge, skills, imagination, ideas and insights of working people that creates the margins from which physical capital is accumulated, leading to productive investments to further accumulation of capital .²³

The importance of such abstract goods and services can be demonstrated in two ways.  First, in external trade a proxy for their importance is invisible exports.  In the United States, for example, it was invisible exports that minimized the impact of enormous price increases in petroleum imports during the 1970s and 1980s:

These 'invisible exports', preponderately the yield from human capacity, particularly organizational and managerial capabilities, nearly offset the increased expenditure for petroleum imports that put the foreign-exchange account $7 billion in the red .²⁴

In the domestic economy; the importance of abstract goods and services, and more specifically, the contribution of art to national income, can be demonstrated by the size and nature of the arts industries.

There are four distinct segments of contemporary art, namely the fine arts, the commercial arts, the amateur arts and the applied arts.  In each, the creative source is the individual artist.  The fine arts are a professional activity which serves art for art's sake just as knowledge for knowledge for knowledge's sake is the rationale for pure research in the sciences.²⁵  The commercial arts are a profit-making activity which places profit before excellence. The amateur arts are a recreational activity that serves to recreate the ability of a worker to do his or her job, or a leisure activity that serves to self-actualize a citizen's creative potential, and thereby permits him or her to more fully appreciate life.  The applied arts involve, as their name suggests, application of art in the day-to-day activities of all businesses and the public sector, such as interior and product design, illustrating art, and copy-writing and editing. 

Each art activity is intimately interrelated.  The amateur arts, in actualizing the talents and abilities of the individual citizen, provide an educated audience and initial training for the fine and the commercial arts.  The fine arts, in the pursuit of artistic excellence as an end in and of itself, provide research and development for the commercial and the applied arts.  The commercial arts, in the pursuit of profit, provide the means to market and distribute the best of the amateur and the fine arts to an audience large enough and in a form suited to earn a profit.  The applied arts borrow talent and technique from the other three forms of artistic endeavour and apply the experiential knowledge in all non-arts industries.  Collectively the fine, commercial and amateur arts make up the arts industries which include advertising, broadcasting, crafts, motion pictures, performing and visual arts, publishing, sound, and video recording.  Compared to all manufacturing industries, the Canadian arts industry in 1985 was the largest with respect to employment, the third largest with respect to salaries and wages of more than $3.8 billion and the ninth largest with revenues of $11.3 billion or 2.4 per cent of GNP.  It is important to note that between -1982 and -1985, the rank order of the arts industry's salaries and wages jumped from seventh to third, indicating the growing employment importance of the arts in the post-modern economy.²⁶

Perhaps the most significant economic contribution of art to the economy is employment.  Between 1971 and 1987 the Canadian labour force grew by 39 per cent.  The arts labour force-that is individuals using arts- and crafts-related skills in their day-today jobs-increased by 74 per cent. In fact, almost 6o per cent of all artists, employed full-time as artists, were employed outside the arts industries in 1981 than were employed within them.  The majority of artists in fact work in other industries, as designers, illustrators and decorators.  Their skills are used in all primary, secondary and tertiary industries.  Artistic skills and talent are like scientific skills, they pervade and permeate all sectors of the contemporary economy.  Taken together the arts industries and the applied arts employed more than 414,000 workers in 1981, or nearly 4 per cent of the total labour force, making artistic employment larger than the primary agricultural labour force and larger than total federal government employment in Canada.²⁷

Demographic Revolution and the Post-Modern Economy

There are three fundamental demographic changes that are contributing to growth in arts and crafts participation and the emergence of the arts and crafts as a significant factor of economic production.  These are: rising levels of education, increasing, participation of women and the ageing of the population.

Education

The average level of education has risen dramatically in the last generation. In 1961, approximately ii per cent of adult Canadians had some postsecondary education compared to almost one-third in 1985.  By the end of this century, it is projected to be almost 40 per cent.²⁸  Studies conducted around the world, and across Canada, indicate that the fine arts audience is characterized by high levels of education.²⁹  A proxy for the size of the fine arts audience is the number of adult Canadians who have at least some post-secondary education.  Accordingly, the fine arts audience no longer constitutes a small statistical elite.  Rather it represents a significant plurality of the adult population at present, and by the year 2000 it will represent almost half of all taxpayers, taxpayers who are the most socially active, politically aware, and economically powerful members of society.

Women

The second significant demographic trend during the last generation has been the entry of women into the economic and political life of the community.  Women in North America have traditionally been considered the carriers or guardians of culture.  In fact, next to level of education, sex is the best demographic indicator of arts participation in North America. Women tend to be more exposed to, and involved in arts and creative activity in childhood than men, thus forming an adult taste for the arts.³⁰  Accordingly, sports stadia appeal to a part of the population which, at least in relative terms, is of declining political and economic importance-that is, young males.  Opera houses, galleries, and other cultural facilities should form the basis of the political edifice complex if politicians wish to appeal to the increasingly important women's constituency.  The increasing role of women in the economy and politics will, in and of itself, lead to increasing political and economic recognition of arts and culture. 

Aging

It is widely known that the demographic structure of Western countries is being fundamentally altered by the ageing of the baby boom generation.  It is not generally recognized, however, that after education and sex, age is the best demographic indicator of participation in most arts-related activities.  The older one grows the more likely one is to participate in arts-related activities, at least up to retirement age.³¹  This trend will, of course, be reinforced as the highly educated baby-boom generation of the 1950s and 1960s becomes the geriatric boom after the year 2000.

These fundamental demographic changes are also having a dramatic impact on the nature of the economy which, in turn, has a relationship with the arts.  Demographic changes are altering the consumption habits of the population, and the marketing behaviour of producers in four ways.  First, there is the changing nature of advertising.  Second, there is the increasing role of the arts in consumer research.  Third, there is now near universal access to the fashions and styles of previous historical periods, a phenomenon which has been called the 'ReDecade'.³²  Fourth, there is the emergence of the narrowcast as opposed to the mass market.