NeoCraft: Modernity and the Crafts

by Sandra Alfondy (Editor)

The crafts have long occupied a marginal role in Modernist discourse. "Neo Craft" challenges this assumption with a wide selection of scholarly essays exploring the historical and contemporary positions that the crafts hold within visual culture. This volume is divided into five central themes, the last of which, Craft, the Senses and New Technologies, envisions an innovative future for the crafts. Drawing on their scholarship in the fields of craft history, art history, philosophy, museum studies, anthropology, fashion theory, history, women's studies and design, an international group of leading scholars, craftspeople and curators--including Grace Cochrane, Elizabeth Cumming, Tanya Harrod, Janice Helland, David Howard, David Howes, Love Jönsson, Beverly Lemire, Joseph McBrinn, Bruce Metcalf, B. Lynne Milgram, Alla Myzelev, John Potvin, Mike Press and Larry Shiner--are brought together to contextualize the cultural, political and economic issues facing the crafts today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art

273 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

Reviews

[Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though it is very dense, the essays are very interesting. I didn't read all of them as I was mainly interested in Crafts and new technologies as well as the general recognition of crafts. Still, most of these essays were very insightful on these very topics, with lots of references.
It raises very interesting questions, not only about crafts, but about all the other disciplines and skills revolving around it.

[Lindsay Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a little dry, and unfortunately, "modernity" really does mean it here, only extending past modernism in the digital essays, which I am never a huge fan of. There are ways to be contemporary without making everything about being digital.