HARROD, Tanya (ed.)
Craft

A secret history of craft told through lost and overlooked texts that illuminate our understanding of current art practice.

“Craft” is a contested concept in art history and a vital category through which to understand contemporary art. Through craft, materials, techniques, and tools are investigated and their histories explored in order to reflect on the politics of labor and on the extraordinary complexity of the made world around us. This anthology offers an ethnography of craft, surveying its shape-shifting identities in the context of progressive art and design through writings by artists and makers as well as poetry, fiction, anthropology, and sociology. It maps a secret history of craft through lost and overlooked texts that consider pedagogy, design, folk art, the factory, and new media in ways that illuminate our understanding of current art practice.[publisher's note]

Published by Whitechapel Gallery / MIT Press, 2018
Art Theory / Essays / Crafts