The Arts and Crafts in the Triangle of Individualism, Collectivism and Industrialism: The Rise and Fall of the “Traditional Arts” Ideal in Europe

Abstract

Nowadays, revitalization of the so-called “traditional arts” is in vogue in Turkey. The penchant for the artistic crafts of the past aims to generate a counter-aesthetics as part of the ideal of creating national identity, depending on the shapes of the past. This paper suggests that from the beginning of the revitalization of artistic crafts in Britain to the birth of modern industrial design in Germany, the short history of the “traditional arts” must be taken into account in considerations of reviving the aesthetics of the past. In the mid-Nineteenth Century, in Britain, the Arts and Crafts movement tried to revive the collective hand production of the Medieval guilds. Despite the political-ideological orientation of the Arts and Crafts movement, the continental Art Nouveau that emerged as pure aesthetics around the turn of the century was usually devoid of such content. As a consequence of the reconciliation of art as design aesthetics with the capitalist industrial production, the history of handicrafts came to a halt in Europe.