This is Judy Chicago’s 1970s  installation “The Dinner Party.” It’s a setting for a banquet  representing 1,038 women from history.

Some have seats of honor, like writer Virginia  Woolf and abolitionist Sojourner Truth. The place settings have embroidered  placemats, gold ceramic chalices,   utensils, and porcelain dinner plates  that look quite a bit like… Georgia   O’Keeffe paintings–including the  plate dedicated to O’Keeffe herself.

Then and now, the plates  can evoke strong emotions. But unlike most works of art, you could  feasibly eat off of some of these. They could actually serve a practical purpose.

So how would we categorize these things? Are they works of art? Or are they something else entirely… Hi!

I'm Sarah Urist Green, and  this is Crash Course Art History. [THEME MUSIC] We might call Chicago’s plates a work  of design, an object meant to improve   some aspect of the world or solve a problem,  in the same spirit as a button or a zipper. To figure out the overlap between art and  design, let’s Venn diagram this situation. In the design circle, curators, scholars,   and collectors might put objects  made for a practical purpose.

Think toasters, furniture, buildings. In the “art” circle, they might put  objects created for a museum or gallery,   like paintings and sculptures, meant to  evoke an emotional or personal reaction. According to these definitions, it’s the intention  behind the objects that forms the dividing line.

But of course, an object can be  useful and evocative at the same time. What about fashion? Pottery?

Quilts? Hand-carved spoons or stained-glass lamps? This little mug with a frog at the  bottom that I’ve had since I was a kid   is still useful and also gives me all the feels.

So…if art and design have so much in  common, why do we separate them at all? Well, to dig into that, we’re  gonna have to go back in time. Boom.

We’re in Medieval Europe. Craft was the name of the game here. We’re talkin’ objects with a domestic  function that require technical skill to make.

Things like metalworks, lace, and tapestries that  were made either collectively or anonymously. But fast-forward to Renaissance Europe,   and the idea of art reflecting  individual creativity took hold. And so did questions, like, “Are painting  and sculpting more than skilled crafts?

Are they expressions of intellect,  talent, perhaps even genius?” The scales tipped in the latter direction,  and elevated artists to a whole ‘nother level. But the boundaries between art  and design were far from settled. In 18th-century France, decorative  furniture became all the rage.

Porcelain factories churned  out extravagant creations   that wealthy collectors just had to have. Like this swan candelabrum or this vase  of fake flowers, both made with porcelain. Or check out this Wedgwood vase, with handles  carved to look like snakes fighting over an egg.

I mean that’s so fancy I think  you have to pronounce it “vahze”. But Enlightenment thinkers debated what to  call these functional yet expressive objects. Did they count as art?

In one corner, French author  Denis Diderot drew a hard line. It took brains to make art, he argued,  placing it on a higher plane than design,   which was, quote “more of the hand than the mind.” Like those people who only like  “highbrow” or “arthouse” films,   where everything is sad and nothing really  happens but it gets nominated for lots of awards. But the Marquis de Laborde, a French  banker and politician, thought it was   time to get rid of the distinction  between art and design altogether.

He thought art should broaden to include   all of life, supporting both our  intellectual and physical needs. Clothes, furniture, swan  candelabrum— it all counts. He’s more like those who can appreciate art films  but can also appreciate all the great fantasy,   sci-fi, and comedies that rarely get nominations.

By the 19th century, The Industrial Revolution   had taken off and the Arts  and Crafts movement was big. While that phrase might call to  mind friendship bracelets and   crocheted pot lifters, it was much more elaborate. It celebrated the handcrafted skill behind useful,   beautiful objects like furniture,  textiles, wallpaper, ceramics, and jewelry.

And the Art Nouveau movement  blossomed at the same time. It featured soft, wavy lines inspired by  nature in the artistic designs of cabinets,   houses, Paris Metro signs, and  this incredible coffee pot that   looks like a fennel bulb,  with a beetle for a knob. These objects, meant to be  both functional and expressive,   complicated the art versus design debate.

It wasn’t easy to put a door  like this into just one category. So, those ideas that began in  Renaissance Europe — praising   some materials as “art,” and others as  lesser than — started to break down. Actually, lots of artistic design exists  outside of this Eurocentric story.

Think about weaving, a method of  textile production that combines   two sets of threads to form a fabric. Weaving is useful, decorative, and often  categorized as folk art — a broad term   for handmade objects and materials that often  serve a function or reflect a shared culture. Weaving has been a form of  artmaking for millennia,   and we know this because ancient  tools and even thread have survived.

And in some cultures, woven textiles  signify important cultural values and ideas. Take this work from the  Indonesian island of Sumatra. It’s called tampan —a woven image exchanged by  families in the Lampung province to celebrate   important life stages, from births  and deaths to building a new house.

This one depicts an enormous ship manned  by a captain, crew members, and musicians. It floats across a sea filled with fish, turtles,   and even a crab, symbolizing safe  passage to the next phase of life. To a 19th-century viewer in Lampung,  the tampan evoked reverence,   which is emphasized by the artist’s use  of red, a sacred color in that region.

While people of all classes used  tampan for rites of passage,   this one’s opulence shows that  it was made for a noble family. And while tampan is mainly an art form  of the past, wealthy Lampung women have   continued wearing woven tapis skirts for  centuries, usually for ceremonial purposes. So, textiles are an excellent example of   meaningful art that serves  a purpose: you can wear it.

But the different ways people wear and style  clothing can also convey artistic meanings. Let’s head to the drawing board… Meet the Sapeurs. Clad in designer clothes, they strut  the streets of Brazzaville and Kinshasa.

Mixing colors, patterns, and luxury labels,   Sapeurs command attention in the mostly  lower-income communities where they live. They’re local celebrities, vying to outdo each  other while projecting confidence and joy. They’re part of a movement called  La Sape, short for the “Society   of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People.” It’s also French slang for “clothes.” La Sape’s origins hark back to the 1920s, when  wearing European clothing was one way Congolese   people could garner respect while living  under French and Belgian colonial rule.

But La Sape truly took off  after independence in the 1960s. Some Congolese started traveling to Europe,  bringing back expensive designer clothes. And remixing French fashion  became a way of expressing   identity and political resistance at once.

Sapeurs have been playing  with their image ever since,   inventing themselves — and inspiring  others — through art you can wear. The Sapeurs curate functional clothing that  expresses complex ideas and cultural identity. So while the art and design worlds argue over  boundaries, artists keep doing whatever they   want to do–creating innovative forms of  culture that blur the lines between both.

Like French artist Thierry Jeannot with  his 2010 work “Green Transmutation”. What looks like crystal is actually  hundreds of discarded plastic bottles,   collected in Mexico City and formed  into a functional light source. It’s actually kind of similar to  the swan candelabrum we saw earlier,   with its wavy lines that take  inspiration from the natural world.

But the two works speak to very  different cultural contexts. While the 18th-century artist was inspired  by nature, elevating it to the level of art   and design, the contemporary artist  peels away that illusion of art as   luxury objects made of fine materials– in  order to highlight environmental concerns. And finally, let’s return to  Judy Chicago’s dinner plates.

Some denounced the work as over  the line, even pornographic. Influential critic Hilton Kramer dismissed it as   “failed art” that was “crass,  solemn, and single-minded.” But the plates are just one element of a  densely layered and meaningful work of art. Chicago’s installation makes space for women  who had been largely left out of history.

She gives them a seat at the table – literally. Chicago used techniques often coded  as craft or design– like embroidery,   ceramics, and china painting— all  historically considered “women’s work”,   and ranked below “high” art in  that tired, old European hierarchy. By merging elements of art and design,  Chicago pushes the boundaries of both.

And she raises fascinating questions about  how history itself gets constructed and told. I think this calls for the canon cannon. So the centuries-long debate of art versus  design comes down to…a difference of opinion.

It’s a battle between what’s considered “highbrow”   and “lowbrow,” not unlike arguments  you find in the depths of Reddit. But when we spend so much time trying to define something as subjective as  art and design, we can miss the amazing stuff that   falls in the middle—the experimentation with form,  the innovation with new materials, and the messy,   complex, and always-shifting  messages that art can convey. These label-defying works show us this  kind of black-and-white thinking isn’t   a useful measure for all times and places.

Because if there’s one thing we do know for sure,   it’s that human creativity is too vast and varied  to be limited by our pesky urge to define it. Next time, we’ll explore how colliding  cultures set off an explosion of new   styles—collectively known as “modern art.” I’ll see you then. Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course  Art History which was filmed at the Indianapolis   Museum of Art at Newfields and was made with  the help of all these uncategorizable people.

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