Craft Objects Aesthetic Contexts

Craft Objects, Aesthetic Contexts examines the place of contemporary craft in traditional aesthetics. Though philosophers have usually either ignored craft or denigrated it as mechanical and unimaginative, a careful examination of their comments often indicates that they nevertheless took a lively interest in several important issues facing craft artists today. Although Kant is famous for emphasizing that aesthetic judgments must be pure and therefore concern themselves with objects that have no useful purpose, he took this position simply to clarify his argument, and in fact many of his examples involve objects we would today consider craft, such as furniture and even decorative wallpaper. Similarly, Heidegger and Adorno have been valued largely for their interest in complex and influential art objects, but their comments on art also frequently address issues central to craft, especially the significance of history, functionality, techniques, and materials. This book examines these comments in order to begin a process of appreciating how philosophical aesthetics, as practiced by these important writers, can contribute to our analysis of contemporary craft.

Fenner presents an overview of the arguments about the importance of considering relevant context in determining the merit of a work of art.

Throughout the 20th century, there were increasing numbers of artists who chose to work within a fine art aesthetic (i.e., expressive, communicative, innovative, unique) while simultaneously embracing qualities associated with craft production (i.e., intimacy, materiality, labor, ritual). At the periphery of their world loomed issues of status, gender, community, and economics. This fluid situation made for an exciting mix of ideas that helped perpetuate an ongoing debate within an art world no longer as monothematic as it appeared in print. Objects and Meaning expands upon a national conversation questioning how various academic disciplines and cultural institutions approach and assign meaning to artist-made objects in postmodern North America. Although most of the discourse since the mid 20th century revolved around the split between art and craft, the contributors to this collection of essays take a broader view, examining the historical, cultural, and theoretical perspectives that defined the parameters of that conversation. Their focus is on issues concerning works that appeared to 'cross over' from mainstream art to an amorphous and pluralistic aesthetic milieu that has yet to be defined. The essays collected for this volume, loosely organized into three groupings_Historical Contexts, Cultural Systems, and Theoretical Frames_contribute to a deeper understanding of the meaning of objects and how that meaning comes to be defined. Although the style of writing in this collection ranges from passionate conviction to cool observation with points of view from different professional backgrounds, each essay reflects original ideas introduced into the cultural dialogue during this period.

Craft lives inside the artist, and it operates in the mind, not in standards or techniques. Creative writers navigate thresholds in consciousness as they develop their arts practice. Craft Consciousness and Artistic Practice in Creative Writing explores what it is to be an artist as it traces radical, feminist, and culturally embedded traditions in craft. The new term "craft consciousness" identifies the nexus from which writers explore making processes and practitioner knowledge. Writers, as with all artists, create and reimagine themselves anew, and it is in this perpetual state of becoming that they find ways to enlarge their sense of artistry through an exploration of forms, processes, and mediums beyond the written word. For writers, this book initiates a reexamination of the mission of creative writing through disrupting patriarchal, racist, colonialist, ableist, and capitalist associations with dominant craft. Drawing from twenty-five interviews with living artists outside of writing and in a host of fields from conceptual art to leatherwork and dance, the book shines a light on how the processes associated with craft are embodied. Craft is an internalized matrix; it need not be commodified for the marketplace or codified in the standards necessitated by institutions of higher education. By redesigning writing workshops and MFA/PhD programs through craft consciousness, new potentials and collaborations emerge, and it becomes more conceivable to imagine dynamic, inclusive relationships between writers, scientists, and other artists.

What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? In A Theory of Craft, Howard Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Modern design today has taken over from craft the making of functional objects of daily use by employing machines to do work once done by hand. Understanding the aesthetic and social implications of this transformation forces us to see craft as well as design and fine art in a new perspective, Risatti argues. Without a way of understanding and valuing craft on its own terms, the field languishes aesthetically, being judged by fine art criteria that automatically deny art status to craft objects. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost. A Theory of Craft is a signal contribution to establishing a craft theory that recognizes, defines, and celebrates the unique blend of function and human aesthetic values embodied in the craft object.

Through an examination of three wooden boat workshops on the East coast of the United States, this volume explores how craftspeople interpret their tools and materials during work, and how such perception fits into a holistic conception of practical skill. The author bases his findings on first-person fieldwork as a boat builder’s apprentice, during which he recorded his changing sensory experience as he learned the basics of the trade. The book reveals how experience in the workshop allows craftspeople to draw new meaning from their senses, constituting meaningful objects through perception that are invisible to the casual observer. Ultimately, the author argues that this kind of perceptual understanding demonstrates a fundamental mode of human cognition, an intelligence frequently overlooked within contemporary education.

Sloppy Craft: Postdisciplinarity and the Crafts brings together leading international artists and critics to explore the possibilities and limitations of the idea of 'sloppy craft' – craft that is messy or unfinished looking in its execution or appearance, or both. The contributors address 'sloppiness' in contemporary art and craft practices including painting, weaving, sewing and ceramics, consider the importance of traditional concepts of skill, and the implications of sloppiness for a new 21st century emphasis on inter- and postdisciplinarity, as well as for activist, performance, queer and Aboriginal practices. In addition to critical essays, the book includes a 'conversation' section in which contemporary artists and practitioners discuss challenges and opportunities of 'sloppy craft' in their practice and teaching, and an afterword by Glenn Adamson.

This book examines labour in the age of US hegemony through the art that has grappled with it; and, vice versa, developments in American culture as they have been shaped by work’s transformations over the last century. Describing the complex relations between cultural forms and the work practices, Art, Labour and American Life explores everything from Fordism to feminization, from white-collar ascendency to zero hours precarity, as these things have manifested in painting, performance art, poetry, fiction, philosophy and music. Labour, all but invisible in cultural histories of the period, despite the fact most Americans have spent most of their lives doing it, here receives an urgent re-emphasis, as we witness work’s radical redefinition across the world.