String, Felt, Thread presents an unconventional history of the American art world, chronicling the advance of thread, rope, string, felt, and fabric from the "low" world of craft to the "high" world of art in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence today of a craft counterculture. In this full-color illustrated volume, Elissa Auther discusses the work of American artists using fiber, considering provocative questions of material, process, and intention that bridge the art-craft divide.Drawn to the aesthetic possibilities and symbolic power of fiber, the artists whose work is explored here-Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Claire Zeisler, Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, and others-experimented with materials that previously had been dismissed for their associations with the merely decorative, with "arts and crafts," and with "women's work." In analyzing this shift and these exceptional artists' works, Auther engages far-reaching debates in the art world: What accounts for the distinction between art and craft? Who assigns value to these categories, and who polices the boundaries distinguishing them?String, Felt, Thread not only illuminates the centrality of fiber to contemporary artistic practice but also uncovers the social dynamics-including the roles of race and gender-that determine how art has historically been defined and valued.

String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art

Arts & Photography

Auther, Elissa

History & Criticism

Univ. of Minnesota Press

String, Felt, Thread presents an unconventional history of the American art world, chronicling the advance of thread, rope, string, felt, and fabric from the "low" world of craft to the "high" world of art in the 1960s and 1970s and the emergence today of a craft counterculture. In this full-color illustrated volume, Elissa Auther discusses the work of American artists using fiber, considering provocative questions of material, process, and intention that bridge the art-craft divide.
Drawn to the aesthetic possibilities and symbolic power of fiber, the artists whose work is explored here-Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Claire Zeisler, Miriam Schapiro, Faith Ringgold, and others-experimented with materials that previously had been dismissed for their associations with the merely decorative, with "arts and crafts," and with "women's work." In analyzing this shift and these exceptional artists' works, Auther engages far-reaching debates in the art world: What accounts for the distinction between art and craft? Who assigns value to these categories, and who polices the boundaries distinguishing them?
String, Felt, Thread not only illuminates the centrality of fiber to contemporary artistic practice but also uncovers the social dynamics-including the roles of race and gender-that determine how art has historically been defined and valued.

Machine Dazzle, to my mind, [is] a true theatrical genius who has created some of the most inventive costumes and sets I have ever seen. —Hilton Als, The New Yorker\nMachine Dazzle is the much-in-demand designer and artist behind popular cabaret, drag, and performance stars such as Taylor Mac and transgender icon Mx. Justin Vivian Bond. For the first time, his over-the-top stage creations, made for himself and others, are collected here alongside stage environments, ephemera, and photos from his career.\nIn Machine Dazzle’s world, costumes are transformative objects with world-making capacity. The artist’s “queer maximalism” encapsulates a more-is-better attitude to making and creating, which looks to counter elitist notions that spectacle and extravagance are vapid. For him, these associations are embraced as queer for their affirmation of hybridity and the rejection of hierarchies of every kind.\nOn the occasion of a major exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design, curator Elissa Auther brings together an expansive collection of essays and reminiscences from fellow performers, historians, and cultural critics that consider every aspect of Machine Dazzle’s rich body of work.

Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle

Román, David

MAC, Taylor

Moore, Madison

Bond, Mx. Justin Vivian

Graphic Design

Rizzoli Electa

Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art &amp; Design is a multigenerational survey of strategies of pattern and decoration in art and design. Borrowing its ethos from Robert Venturi’s infamous retort to Mies van der Rohe’s modernist edict “less is more,” it includes works that privilege decoration and maximalism over modernism’s “ornament as crime” philosophy. The catalog begins in the 1970s with artists who sought to rattle the dominance of modernism and minimalism, such as those affiliated with Pattern &amp; Decoration. Less Is a Bore includes experiments in patterning by Sanford Biggers, Jasper Johns and Miriam Schapiro; the transgressive sculpture and furniture of Lucas Samaras and Ettore Sottsass; and the installations of Polly Apfelbaum, Nathalie du Pasquier and Virgil Marti. Also included are works by Roger Brown, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Jeffrey Gibson, Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, Ellen Lesperance, Sol LeWitt, Howardena Pindell, Lari Pittman, Pae White and Betty Woodman, among others.

Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design (INSTITUTE OF CO)

Porter, Jenelle

Goldin, Amy

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

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