{"id":281,"date":"2009-01-29T00:21:33","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T05:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/?p=281"},"modified":"2009-01-29T00:24:09","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T05:24:09","slug":"art-woodworking-and-a-can-of-worms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/29\/art-woodworking-and-a-can-of-worms\/","title":{"rendered":"Art, woodworking, and a can of worms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/img_1720_edited-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-282  aligncenter\" title=\"img_1720_edited-2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/img_1720_edited-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I spent an enjoyable few hours last week at the <a href=\"http:\/\/mfa.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Museum of Fine Arts<\/a> in Boston. Viewing thousands of years of exciting art is a great way for a woodworker, or any creative person, to exercise and sharpen the aesthetic sense. I imagine at least one or two motifs drifted into my brain, unbeknownst to me, as silent seeds to later germinate into a project idea. A bargain for a bit of lost shop time.<\/p>\n<p>Though I do not make period furniture, it was inspiring to behold pieces by <strong>Seymour, Townsend<\/strong>, and their contemporaries. From the other side of the world, the MFA has a fabulous collection of old <strong>Chinese furniture<\/strong>, displayed in a beautiful, peaceful setting that is hard to leave. Woodworkers will particularly enjoy the permanent <strong>&#8220;Please Be Seated&#8221;<\/strong> program which consists of chairs and benches by modern masters distributed throughout the museum on which visitors are welcome to park their carcasses. Go ahead, have a seat on a Sam <strong>Maloof<\/strong> bench!<\/p>\n<p>I could not avoid some perplexity as I stood in the 19<sup>th<\/sup> &#8211; 20<sup>th<\/sup> century American section where a Maloof chair and a Wendell Castle music stand sit peacefully below a <strong>Jackson Pollock<\/strong> piece of <em>art<\/em> hanging on the wall, his &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/mfa.org\/collections\/search_art.asp?recview=true&amp;id=34114&amp;coll_keywords=number+10%2C+1949&amp;coll_accession=&amp;coll_name=&amp;coll_artist=&amp;coll_place=&amp;coll_medium=&amp;coll_culture=&amp;coll_classification=&amp;coll_credit=&amp;coll_provenance=&amp;coll_location=&amp;coll_has_images=&amp;coll_on_view=&amp;coll_sort=0&amp;coll_sort_order=0&amp;coll_view=0&amp;coll_package=0&amp;coll_start=1\" target=\"_blank\">Number 10, 1949<\/a>&#8220;. Well, I suppose I should not criticize what I don\u2019t understand, but I do know what I like. I guess if the chair had only three legs, rendering it functionally useless, and it made you wince, then it would be far more valuable as <em><strong>art<\/strong><\/em>. I don\u2019t know, maybe I\u2019m too hung up on beauty. I\u2019m glad I\u2019m a woodworker.<\/p>\n<p>Visual high art often seems excessively marketed, valued, and analyzed. <strong>Contemporary fine woodworking<\/strong>, on the other hand, seems to suffer from a general lack of understanding and appreciation by a large portion of society, and is consequently usually undervalued.<\/p>\n<p>There, I\u2019ve done it, <strong>opened a whole can of worms<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent an enjoyable few hours last week at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Viewing thousands of years of exciting art is a great way for a woodworker, or any creative person, to exercise and sharpen the aesthetic sense. I imagine at least one or two motifs drifted into my brain, unbeknownst to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rpwoodwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}