“Bodily scarification...

“Bodily scarification, waving feathers, gaudy robes, shining ornaments of gold and silver, of emerald and jade, formed the contents of esthetic arts and, presumably, without the vulgarity of class exhibitionism that attends their analogues today.” Thus, “domestic utensils, furnishings of tent and house, rugs, mats, jars, pots, bows, spears were wrought with such delighted care that today we hunt them out and give them places of honor in our art museums.” Dewey developed a critique of the detached “museum art” of modern life and the accompanying penchant for artists to “exaggerate their separateness to the point of eccentricity.” In his view capitalism produced both an international market that detached art from context and also a nouveaux riches who sought to evidence his “good standing in the realm of higher culture…as his stocks and bonds certify to his standing in the economic world.”[^52] Real understanding required attention to context.

“It is a commonplace that we cannot direct, save accidentally, the growth and flowering of plants, however lovely and enjoyed, without understanding their causal conditions,” Dewey wrote.

“It should be just a commonplace that esthetic understanding - as distinct from sheer personal enjoyment - must start with the soil, air, and light out of which things esthetically admirable arise.”[^53] Dewey envisioned a variety of ways to reintegrate art into contexts and, more broadly, a democratic way of life, from the buildings and spaces of the modern world and the educational experiences of young people to the productive activities of workers.

Thus, his ideal of democratic development was tied the work of the craftsman as much as the efforts of the self-conscious artist. Indeed, Dewey saw artists, as he saw professionals in other disciplines, as essentially practicing crafts, with problem-oriented and relational patterns of learning, deeply attentive to context.

Forty years after he had introduced the idea of human development through work in the “Ethics of Democracy,” he argued in Art as Experience that “the intelligent mechanic engaged in his job, interested in doing well and finding satisfaction in his handiwork, caring for his materials and tools with genuine affection, is artistically engaged.” He decried the rarity of such experiences in the modern worksite.

“The labor and employment problem of which we are so acutely aware cannot be solved by mere changes in wages, hours of work, and sanitary conditions.