Up here in Canada you've invented the term "Fine Crafts", which shows
a misunderstanding somewhere. Why do you have to say "Fine Crafts"?
That implies that there are also coarse crafts. Sometimes I attempt
this game where you write definitions of things. I wrote a definition of
Fine Art. "Fine Art is art which is too coarse to be sold as
Commercial Art". Think that over.

There is no sensible division between Fine Art and Applied Art, or
Craft and Art - it's all one. Even the most cursory study of the History
of Art shows that before our particular culture took the idea of art and
made it into something super-individualistic, Art pervaded whole
societies. It wasn't a specialty and the appreciation of Art wasn't a
specialty. It was something that grew naturally out of people's lives
and functioned in everyday circumstances.

That sort of brings us to Marshall McLuhan's idea of Art being

invisible until it's dead. In many cultures and in primitive cultures they
didn't have the idea of art. Art was just something well done and it was
all taken for granted. After that dies out people take these pieces and
put them in the museum - it then becomes visible. I don't want to get
into interpreting McLuhan - that's a great indoor sport, isn't it?

When I went to Japan my ideas were very much clarified in this matter.
I don't even think the Japanese have a word for fine art. They had to
invent a word for Fine Art about 1870 when the European style of
painting became known, and the idea of painting as a gallery type of
activity. They didn't have a word for art, so they invented the word
"bijutsu'', which is their word now for Fine Art. If anyone knows
Japanese, please correct me, but I believe that's the case. The words
that were used for what we call art, and they had numerous words,
mostly dealt with something beautifully done - anything beautifully
done. I like this concept. I like the idea that art is any expression of
human sensitivity or sensibility that is spontaneously carried out.

Where do the Crafts fit into this, and where does pottery fit into this?
I view pottery and the other crafts as a kind of underground. It's not
a very respectable activity in a way. Craftsmen are looked down on

by the artists, and we all know that many craftsmen aspire to escape
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