Thinking through craft

Co-published in Association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London This book is a timely and engaging introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Workmanship is key to today's visual arts, when high 'production values' are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet craft's centrality to contemporary art has received little serious attention from critics and historians. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion. The interesting thing about craft, he argues, is that it is perceived to be 'inferior' to art. The book consists of an overview of various aspects of this second-class identity - supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. It also provides historical case studies analysing craft's role in a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, contemporary art, and the crafts themselves. Thinking Through Craft will be essential reading for anyone interested in craft or the broader visual arts.

Introduction. Craft at the limits. Craft as a process. Supplemental. Homage to Brancusi. Wearable sculptures: modern jewelry and the problem of autonomy. Reframing the pattern and decoration movement. Props: Gijs Bakker and Gord Peteran. Material. Ceramic presence: Peter Voulkos. Natural limitations: Stephen De Staebler and Ken Price. Crawling through mud: Yagi Kazuo. The materialization of the art object, 196672. Breath: Andrew Lord and Emma Wooffenden. Skilled. Circular thinking: David Pye and Michael Baxandall. Learning by doing. Thinking in situations: Josef Albers from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain. Charles Jencks and Kenneth Frampton: the ad hoc and the tectonic. Conclusion: skill and the human condition. Pastoral. Regions apart. Versions of pastoral: Phil Leider and Art Espenet Carpenter. North, south, east, west: Carl Andre and Robert Smithson. Landscapes. Amateur. The world's most fascinating hobby: Robert Arneson. Feminism and the politics of amateurism. Abject craft: Mike Kelley and Tracey Emin. Conclusion. Notes. Index

List of Plates and Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Supplemental; 2. Material; 3. Skilled; 4. Pastoral; 5. Amateur; 6. Conclusion; Notes; Index