A relative is teaching high school art and wants to do some lessons on native american art.
Well lets start with what is “Art”? To me, it has to have a point. It is something designed to provoke an emotional response in the audience.
So for me, NA “art” like decorating paper teepees and doing dream catchers or even weavings is more of a “craft” than an art. In school we would make indian headdresses out of paper and glue with paper feathers on them. That was a craft.
To me, NA “art” is best shown in dance and song. Dance is where the NA’s really expressed themselves. The beating of the drums, the calls, the costumes, the songs, and the dancing, all gave them meaning and fulfillment.
Now if your talking about contemporary NA artists, that is different. I can find many NA painters and sculptors out there. Maybe she should choose to study those?
A friend of mine is a professional potter who does glorious work. She has her degree in art studies.
Way back in college, her final project for her program was going to be some lovely pieces of practical pottery that really highlighted her skills. Her professor nixed it as a final project: that’s a craft, she was told. Art doesn’t have a practical purpose.
So she strung a bunch of oranges on thin ropes arranged in a design like an abacus and let them start to mold and rot and then turned that in, and got a great grade. I think her masterpiece’s informal name was “Fuck You, Art Department.”
I’m skeptical of the difference. But we are in agreement: trashy assignments like making paper headdresses isn’t art. I personally like to teach my students White People culture by having them make pope hats out of construction paper and tape, and crucifix necklaces out of popsicle sticks and yarn, and medals of honor out of tinfoil and magic markers, so they can appreciate White People culture.
I think that I grew up in Navajo country. Sand art, pottery decoration and Kachina dolls have always been what real art looks like to me. Oil paintings and watercolors may be “art” to some people, but to me they’re just pictures.
Just a few hours ago I heard this Demitri Martin say “I like that they came up with the word ‘crafts’. Because I think ‘art and shitty art’ sounds too mean”.
I think that since I am not Native American I have no business defining what is or isn’t NA art or what is or isn’t NA craft. No business at all. That would be the height of entitled temerity.
Your relative should ask Native Americans how their peoples define art, ask them what is a craft in their culture. Believe them, thank them and then honor what they tell you.
My best friend, who happens to be a Native American gourd artist, says the difference is quality and cost. She makes fine art gourds that sell for hundreds of dollars, but she teaches the craft of gourding that just about anyone can do without spending a lot of money.
I think it’s probably a BS distinction by people who wanted an excuse for why the most beautiful art by lower class/brown/female people was not worthy of their praise, attention, or money.
Oh, also, a white person should tread very lightly in “teaching” school children to make Native American style art or crafts (whatever).
The art vs craft (& vs science) distinction is bogus elitist bullshit. There’s orthogonal continua of utility and creativity and knowledge that go into any human work. Some of the greatest works of “art” had utilitarian purposes.
My Aunt (now deceased) was a well-known crafter who wrote for several periodicals. She said that a craft was something that could be replicated with little change again and again by many people. So when she designed, say, a Christmas Ornament for the West Point gift shop, the first one she made was art. The subsequent ones made from the patterns and instructions she produced, were crafts.
Likewise a one-of-a-kind pot is art. Producing the same pot hundreds of times is craft.