The Unity of Art as Resistance in Walter Crane’s The Claims of Decorative Art

Abstract

Though Walter Crane is very famous for his illustrations, his work as a theoretician is sometimes overlooked. Strongly influenced by John Ruskin and William Morris, Walter Crane developed the idea of the unity of art as an essential condition for a rewarding artistic production and a satisfactory social life. In The Claims of Decorative Art, a collection of essays, he successfully mixed a presentation of architecture and the decorative arts influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement with a sharp criticism of an alienating industrial society based on profit and individualism and a description of socialism as the only way to regain harmony. Opposing division in all its manifestations, he consistently encouraged a cooperation between artists and artisans while working with different socialist groups, trying to transcend the political tensions that often tore them and adopting a patient but firm political position. His unflinching artistic, political and educational commitment is obvious in his writings and his career and testifies to his major role in the resistance to what he described as the negative forces of commercialism.