{"id":559,"date":"2011-01-30T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-01-30T06:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=559"},"modified":"2023-07-07T16:58:18","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T16:58:18","slug":"1884","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/01\/30\/1884\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 24 – 1884: Art and Socialism: A Statement of the Aims and Ideals of the English Socialists of To-day by William Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>London, 1884<\/p>\n

\u201cA work of art, be it never so humble, is long-lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. \u00a0All works of art have the property of becoming venerable amidst decay.\u201d \u2013 William Morris, Art and Socialism<\/em>, p. 17.<\/p>\n

If one were to settle on a principal theme of the work of William Morris, it would very likely be permanence and, more specifically, the predominance of durability over ephemerality. \u00a0Morris\u2019 many writings on art, often published by his own Kelmscott Press, promote the inherent integrity of handcraft over machine production and elucidate the indelible bond between craftsman and user. \u00a0Heir to Gothic Revivalists A.W.N. Pugin and John Ruskin, as well as social critics Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Carlyle, he was prescient in championing simple, durable, handmade home furnishings \u2013 textiles, wallpaper, furniture \u2013 in the face of the ostentatious Victorian design status quo and the concurrent rise of mass-produced consumer goods. \u00a0Though the march of industrialized mass production would prove unyielding, Morris\u2019 own production was an argument for the necessity of art in every person\u2019s daily life.<\/p>\n

Not simply an artisan, Morris was a painter, a poet, an \"\"<\/a>architect, an entrepreneur, and, especially later in life, a political firebrand. \u00a0His beliefs paralleled those of the infamous Luddites (British textile artisans of a generation before Morris who protested the dehumanizing production methods brought forth by the Industrial Revolution), but Morris was anything but politically conservative. \u00a0He was a member of Britain\u2019s first socialist organization, the Democratic Federation, and later, with Karl Marx\u2019s youngest daughter Eleanor, formed the Socialist League, a workers\u2019 advocacy group.<\/p>\n

Not averse to lecturing on street corners despite a London ban on public Socialist oration, Morris, inspired by a recent reading of the French translation of Marx\u2019s Das Kapital <\/em> (an English translation was not published until 1886), delivered a more intimate lecture to the Secular Society of Leicester on January 23, 1884. \u00a0It was soon published as a pocketbook manifesto entitled Art and Socialism<\/em>. \u00a0A very reasonable defense of the sanctity of art in an increasingly alienating marketplace, its message still resonates today. \u00a0But, as an object, it was not built to last.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no small irony that Morris\u2019 book on the durability of art has seen much better days. Indeed it\u2019s only relatively rarely that political pamphlets from this era \u2013 printed in large batches with cheap materials \u2013 still exist. \u00a0MIT\u2019s copy, though torn, sun-bleached, and slightly stained, nonetheless bears signs of Morris\u2019 influence: \u00a0resilient paper, intricate illustrations, floral headpieces, and page layout and typography in a familiar medieval style. \u00a0It is curiously bound together with a large collection of works by contemporaneous communist, socialist, and anarchist British authors \u2013 including H.M. Hyndman and Charles Bradlaugh \u2013 and several other works by Morris, including the Socialist League\u2019s manifesto. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>All are in similar or worse condition than Art and Socialism<\/em>, and none have the same attention to design.<\/p>\n

The condition of this pamphlet is not a contradiction but, rather, living proof of Morris\u2019 dedication to his cause. \u00a0A consummate idealist devoted to handcraft over machines, Morris knew that it often took sacrifice to improve the common good. \u00a0In this case, it took cheap, mass-produced pamphlets to disseminate the virtues of permanence, a message that indeed remains venerable amidst physical decay.<\/p>\n

Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London, 1884 \u201cA work of art, be it never so humble, is long-lived; we never tire of it; as long as a scrap hangs together it is valuable and instructive to each new generation. \u00a0All works of art have the property of becoming venerable amidst decay.\u201d \u2013 William Morris, Art and Socialism, p. 17. If one were to settle on a principal theme of the work of William Morris, it would very likely be permanence and, more specifically, the predominance of durability over ephemerality. \u00a0Morris\u2019 many writings on art, often published by his own Kelmscott Press, promote the inherent integrity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4220,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/4220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}