Another mistaken idea that people have about Art, which perhaps is
corrected somewhat through allied work in Crafts, is the idea that art is
self-expression. You hear that all the time, don't you? - that this so and
so is a great artist because he is able to express himself. In my view
art doesn't involve self-expression in the way that people usually take it.
I think it involves identification with something outside yourself.

Take Van Gogh, for instance. Since he was psychotic, people assume
that Van Gogh's paintings were the expression of a tortured psyche. That
his gift was to bring out all the pain and suffering that he had in himself
on canvas. But that really isn't the case. If you read Van Gogh's letters,
you realize that he wasn't interested in his own psyche at all. He was
interested in the landscape. He wrote about colours, he wrote about
trees, he wrote about light, he wrote about the people that he was painting
portraits of, he was intensely interested in the subject he was working
with, and that's why he was a great painter - he had the ability to fix his
ego outside himself. We're all carrying around a big freight of ego

these days. That's a feature of our culture. Super-squirted almond of
ego, The ego, as we feel it, is a great barrier between ourselves and
spontaneous action. We fear to act spontaneously.

This is true in the arts. You find that art, which should be the most
spontaneous of all activities is, in fact, terrifically bound up with
inhibitions. People have such great difficulty in letting their feelings flow
freely through the arts. In the so-called "Fine Arts" one can see how
this is. How can anybody express himself spontaneously when he has to
create the meaning of the art as well as the form? We expect every
artist to be totally original. He has to evolve a whole new iconography.

It has to be original - so the artists are so busy trying to establish this
framework in which they can work, that the flow of spontaneity into it is

blocked off.

In the Craft world there is the possibility that people can work where they
don't have to establish the meaning, not quite so much anyway. Since the
meaning is set up for them, and there's a little framework within which
they can work, then, hopefully, a certain spontaneity could come into the
work. You can make a cream jug, and if it has a good handle and a nice

spout, at least it will pour cream. Then, if it has a little personality
9.