Handwerk / Kunsthandwerk

What is the difference between handicraft (Handwerk) and Arts and Crafts (Kunsthandwerk)? Which is better, craft or mass production? Terms should help us create order in the world around us, so it becomes easier for us to orientate ourselves, but terms are nevertheless always particular to a specific time and place. This essay will present a brief outline of the disciplinary patterns that have shaped the terminology relating to the creation of artefacts, as well as describing Muthesius’s own analysis, before discussing the corresponding terms in Estonian with the help of a few examples. In the present article, Stefan Muthesius has examined the specialised terminology relating to the creation of artefacts that has been used in the German cultural sphere and has explained the semantic field of each of these terms as shown by their etymology and usage. Rather than making clear distinctions, Muthesius’s approach blurs the lines between art, design, and handicraft and concentrates upon their common features. Furthermore, he illustrates how the terminology of a creative sphere (i.e. art) has, amongst other things, been influenced by economic processes, for example by the commercial price and quality of different types of products. The large number of terms used, especially since the nineteenth century, clearly reflects the changes in both material culture and in society in general. Kunsthandwerk of post-industrial societies has been greatly influenced by the discourse of modernisation and industrialisation. It was nostalgically and ideologically associated with the era preceding industrialisation and mass culture. The need to redefine oneself gave way to modern applied arts (studio craft) which have artistic ambitions, and at the same time make use of traditional materials and techniques to a greater or lesser extent. In the post-war Estonian context, it is possible to draw a parallel with the term ‘applied arts’ (tarbekunst in Estonian) that rather declaratively replaced the previously used term, rakenduskunst. During the Soviet period, artists specialising in applied arts created unique objects and limited-edition items, as well as mass-produced designs. In the 1960s, ‘decorative arts’ came to be thought of as a subcategory of applied arts. Nowadays, the relevant semantic field in question is almost completely covered by the umbrella term ‘design’. The term Handwerk (käsitöö in Estonian) has made a fascinating, yet somewhat peculiar comeback. The term no longer refers to a phenomenon that could be described as primitive and related to folk art and peasant culture, but instead it expresses criticism against neoliberal capitalism: a sense of nostalgia for an honest and fair mode of production. This analysis of terminology related to the creation of artefacts graphically demonstrates how various power relations have shaped this field of activity where tradition, creation, and art intersect with institutional frameworks, economics, politics, and national identities

L’histoire de l’architecture et du design au XIXe siècle : avant et après l’authenticité

Historians of architecture and the applied arts in the late nineteenth century developed a peculiar notion of a borderline around 1840: before that date, they maintained, designing and building was done largely unconsciously, entailing a ‘true’ ethnicity of design, especially of workmanship, and styles emerged somehow authentically from the broadest national or regional groups - whereas from 1840 onwards everything was done consciously and artificially. The article discusses the emergence of that notion in England, Germany and France

‘Towards an “exakte Kunstwissenschaft”(?), A report on some recent German books on the progress of mid-19th century art history. Part I: Work by German art historians on nineteenth Century art-historiography since 2000’

Part I. Some younger German art historians have lately spent much effort on exploring the history of their discipline, especially that of the period c. 1820 to 1880. This article concentrates on three works, by Locher, Prange and Rößler, but takes note of books and articles by a number of other recent authors as well. Of particular interest has been the nineteenth century conundrum, summarised as: empirical ‘scientificness’ and, or versus, the metaphysics of ‘art’. It can be found in the writings of two to three generations of German art historians, from Rumohr to Kugler, to Schnaase and to Burckhardt, Springer and Justi. In order to reach an understanding of how the old authors arrived at their analyses, as regards their theories as well as in their dealings with individual works of art, the new investigations use a range of approaches: A broadly contextualised cultural history, a history of ideas approach which concentrates on major philosophical tenets and an approach which explores the textual-organisational structures of the old writings in a more literary sense. In due recognition of both the perspicacity and the thoroughness of the new books this article aims to provide a comprehensive report rather than an overtly critical review. Summarising considerations as well as further problematisations of some of the major issues can be found in ‘Part II’

Efficacy of Integrated Social Cognitive Remediation vs. Neurocognitive Remediation in Improving Functional Outcome in Schizophrenia: Concept and Design of a Multicenter, Single-Blind RCT (The ISST Study)

Background: Although clinically effective treatment is available for schizophrenia, recovery often is still hampered by persistent poor psychosocial functioning, which in turn is limited by impairments in neurocognition, social cognition, and social behavioral skills. Although cognitive remediation has shown general efficacy in improving cognition and social functioning, effects still need to be improved and replicated in appropriately powered, methodologically rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Existing evidence indicates that effects can most likely be optimized by combining treatment approaches to simultaneously address both social cognitive and social behavioral processes. Objectives: To assess whether Integrated Social Cognitive and Behavioral Skill Therapy (ISST) ismore efficacious in improving functional outcome in schizophrenia than the active control treatment Neurocognitive Remediation Therapy (NCRT). Methods: The present study is a multicenter, prospective, rater-blinded, two-arm RCT being conducted at six academic study sites in Germany. A sample of 180 at least partly remitted patients with schizophrenia are randomly assigned to either ISST or NCRT. ISST is a compensatory, strategy-based program that targets social cognitive processes and social behavioral skills. NCRT comprisesmainly drill and practice-oriented neurocognitive training. Both treatments consist of 18 sessions over 6 months, and participants are subsequently followed up for another 6 months. The primary outcome is all-cause discontinuation over the 12-month study period; psychosocial functioning, quality of life, neurocognitive and social cognitive performance, and clinical symptoms are assessed as secondary outcomes at baseline before randomization (V1), at the end of the six-month treatment period (V6), and at the six-month follow-up (V12). Discussion: This RCT is part of the German Enhancing Schizophrenia Prevention and Recovery through Innovative Treatments (ESPRIT) research network, which aims at using innovative treatments to enhance prevention and recovery in patients with schizophrenia. Because this study is one of the largest and methodologically most rigorous RCTs on the efficacy of cognitive remediation approaches in schizophrenia, it will not only help to identify the optimal treatment options for improving psychosocial functioning and thus recovery in patients but also allow conclusions to be drawn about factors influencing and mediating the effects of cognitive remediation in these patients

‘The Cracow school of modern art history: the creation of a method and an institution 1850-1880’

This article examines the origins of the ‘Cracow School of Art History.’ It argues that the title is well deserved, denoting a specific intellectual tradition that was tied to the milieu of the city. Its beginnings lay in the 1860s to 1880s, when Cracow fulfilled a role as the unofficial cultural capital of the divided Polish lands. Saturated with monuments of the past, it called for thorough art historical research. Until the 1860s this was supplied mainly under the auspices of the new specialist Austrian heritage organisation. Soon, however, scholars in Cracow organised their own institutions devoted to pure research, notably the Akademia in 1872. Subsequently the University installed its new department of art history. The teachers in the latter institution in particular generated an unusual degree of intellectual continuity and coherence. The new model of scientific kind of research was introduced by Władysław Łuszczkiewicz (1828-1900) in his trenchant analyses of Polish Cistercian monasteries, combining empirical investigation with rationalist architectural maxims. Since then the belief in, and the rhetoric of an incorruptible academic-scientific search for art-historical truth has provided the principal tie for this group

The beginnings of the "Cracow School of Art History" from Jerzy Malinowski (ed.), History of Art History in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (2012)

Because Polish art history, that is, art history written by Polish scholars, has tended to be rather inward-looking as a whole, its first and most important school, that of Cracow, has not received the attention it deserves. The term ‘school’ is here used in a way akin to that of ‘Vienna School’. Cracow modern art history originated in the 1860s to 1880s in the small but culturally extremely vigorous capital of Austrian Poland, as a co-operation between the newly-founded art history section at the Academy of Sciences and the Department at the Jagiellonian University. It pursued two principal, interlinked aims: the investigation of Polish art and architecture and the use of new methods that were being developed in Western and Central Europe. What comes across most strongly is the constantly foregrounded ethos of scientific, empirical exactitude and the intense institutional togetherness. All are united in an absolute devotedness to their academic task. One of the results was the way in which recruitment has remained within the school until this day. It has to be remembered though that other Polish centres only started teaching the history of art after WW I. This article is a- preliminary attempt to characterise, firstly, some of the chief factors of institutionality and, secondly, some methodological aspects of the work of the two chief protagonists, Władysław Łuszczkiewicz and Marian Sokołowski

‘Towards an “exakte Kunstwissenschaft”(?). Part II: The new German art history in the nineteenth century: a summary of some problems'

This article is based on what has been outlined in ‘Part I’ and on additional references to other new German work, as well as to articles by two of the protagonists of the 1870s and 1880s, Anton Springer and Moritz Thausing. The central issue is the nineteenth century’s desire for a Verwissenschaftlichung of the subject, to render the subject ‘purely scientific’. Principally this concerns the way in which older kinds of connoisseurship were juxtaposed to the new claims of a strictly ‘historical’ approach. Much shorter sections touch on aspects of style, iconography and form, as well as on the history of the provision of illustrations