In recent years, many prominent and successful artists have claimed that their primary concern is not the artwork they produce but the artistic process itself. In this volume, Kim Grant analyzes this idea and traces its historical roots, showing how changing concepts of artistic process have played a dominant role in the development of modern and contemporary art.
This astute account of the ways in which process has been understood and addressed examines canonical artists such as Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, and De Kooning, as well as philosophers and art theorists such as Henri Focillon, R. G. Collingwood, and John Dewey. Placing process art within a larger historical context, Grant looks at the changing relations of the artist's labor to traditional craftsmanship and industrial production, the status of art as a commodity, the increasing importance of the body and materiality in art making, and the nature and significance of the artist's role in modern society. In doing so, she shows how process is an intrinsic part of aesthetic theory that connects to important contemporary debates about work, craft, and labor.
Comprehensive and insightful, this synthetic study of process in modern and contemporary art reveals how artists' explicit engagement with the concept fits into a broader narrative of the significance of art in the industrial and postindustrial world.
By:
Kim Grant
Imprint: Pennsylvania State University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 21mm
Weight: 408g
ISBN: 9780271077451
ISBN 10: 027107745X
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 01 April 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents Introduction: Process as Value Chapter One: Conceptualizing the Artist's Labor Prior to the 19th Century Chapter Two: Art, Craft, and Industrialization Nineteenth Century Philosophical and Theoretical Views of the Artist's Process The Arts and Crafts Movement and Artistic Process Photography and Artistic Process Chapter Three: The Artist's Process from the Academic to the Modern Chapter Four: New Conceptions of the Artist's Process The Artist's Labor in Time -- Series and Stages Modern Art and Industrial Processes - Purism Physicality and Matter - The Modern Artistic Process and the Artist's Medium Chapter Five: The Artist's Process as a Means of Self-Realization Chapter Six: The Artist's Process at Mid-Century Artistic Process and Amateur Artists Changes in Artists' Education Chapter Seven: Art and Social Processes Chapter Eight: Process Art Systems Aesthetics, Series, and Conceptualism The Artist's Work and the Artist's Role Process Art and Craft Artists' Education and Process after 1960 Chapter Nine: It's All about the Process Notes Bibliography Index
Kim Grant is Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art at the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of Surrealism and the Visual Arts: Theory and Reception.
Reviews for All About Process: The Theory and Discourse of Modern Artistic Labor
This is an elegant, clear text that will serve as an excellent primer for anyone interested in the histories of thinking about making and the artistic process. Art students as well as students of aesthetics and history of art will benefit from its careful, thoughtful synthesis of an array of complex, foundational texts pertaining to the theme of 'process' and making. --Jo Applin, author of Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Room--Phalli's Field This book is essential for libraries supporting graduate programs in art history or curatorial studies and is recommended for schools of art and design. --Ian McDermott, ARLIS/NA Reviews All About Process brings a wealth of art-historical knowledge and perceptive theoretical insight to analyze the crucial but elusive concept of artistic process and makes a powerful argument for its importance, not simply as an indispensable tool for creating more interesting art objects but as part of the essence of art itself. Kim Grant's book provides a welcome resource for resisting the forces of commodification while closing the gap between art and life. --Richard Shusterman, author of Thinking Through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics
- Nominated for Robert Motherwell Book Award 2017
