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, Cézanne, 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 artists 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 artists 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.
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
“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
