Medium

Shakespeare would have done well in any generation, because he would have refused to die in a corner; he would have taken the false gods and made them over, he would have taken the current formulae and forced them into something lesser men would have thought them incapable of. Alive today he would undoubtedly have written and directed motion pictures, plays and God knows what. Instead of saying, ‘This medium is not good,’ he would have used it and made it good. If some people had called some of his work cheap (which some of it is), he wouldn’t have cared a rap, because he would know that without some vulgarity there is no complete man. He would have hated refinement, as such, because it is always a withdrawal, a shrinking, and he was much too tough to shrink from anything.

Raymond Chandler from The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction 1909 - 1959.

Being stashed away at home for the foreseeable future I find myself reading through books I haven't cracked open in years, and adding to the problem by ordering a few online. I recently bought Alexander Langlands' Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts. It has become my afternoon reading between sessions with Ted Nelson's old book Computer Lib / Dream Machines. Dave mentioned he had dug up his copy of Nelson's book from his library, and it gave me the idea to revisit mine. I read it back in the '80s when I had more enthusiasm than experience concerning computers and software, and thought I'd have a another look with my now jaundiced eyes. These two books don't seem related, but they're part of my attempt to learn more about different views on craft and a bit of its history.

Somewhere between sessions with those two, and diving into odds-and-ends on my shelves and online, I came across that opening quote from Raymond Chandler. It struck a chord with me as does alot of Chandler's writing. I realized that this chit-chat with Vince about whether model railroading is an art, craft, or hobby was the wrong question. Model railroading is simply a medium, and it's what people do with it that's important. Some are interested in trains and miniatures and use it in the classic way. Some want to recreate history. Some are into simulating operations. Some focus on perfecting some of the medium's elements like locomotives, buildings, or scenery and so on. For some it's just another facet of our competitive consumer society. Sometimes 'outsiders' use the medium for other things. The list is endless, but the focus should be on people and what they are doing with the medium, and if the medium has a character, that character is defined by what people make of it.

If we're going to go down the art, craft, hobby or whatever road, we'll need to ask some questions about what we see in order to help clarify our understanding. Are compelling objects being created? Is it just a fun and pleasant activity? Are ideas being explored? Has any of it had lasting value? And so on. None of the medium's uses are invalid, and asking questions about them doesn't invalidate them.

None of this forms a watertight argument for the it's-simply-a-medium proposal. I still need to think about things like Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase, the medium is the message, fandom and the creation of model railroading, the misleading 'Lone Wolf' concept, loser stigma and the grown-men-playing-with-trains trope, how commercial imperatives have shaped the medium, and on and on. Maybe my brain will have turned to mush by the time I'm finally sprung :-)

Hockney, however, was not prepared to shut up, and subsequently gave a long interview to a new and lively magazine, Art Monthly, in which he reiterated his views, invoking the respected opinions of his mother, who on seeing the Barry Flanagan installation of coiled rope has asked, 'Did he make the rope?' This seemed to him a good question. 'Modern art generally ignores skills and crafts,' he told the interviewer Peter Fuller, 'or assumes they are not necessary. But the real world of ordinary people is full of them. So they question things by asking "Where is the skill?" I suppose the skill Flanagan knows is that of deciding to do a piece and placing it. But an ordinary person finds that hard to take. They see the skill as making the actual rope. I don't think their question can be just dismissed, unless you think art is just for a few people … instead of trying to hide behind the struggles of the past, the art world should begin to deal with the questions people are asking."

from David Hockney The Biography 1975-2012: A Pilgrim's Progress