Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From painting to digital technologies to crowdsourcing, over the last few decades the means of making artworks have become more extraordinary and diverse. Yet we rarely consider the implications of how art is made.

In this wide-ranging exploration of methods and media in art since the 1950s Glenn Adamson and Julia Bryan-Wilson take the reader behind the scenes of the studio, the factory, and other sites where art is created. They show how the materials and processes used by artists are vital to considerations of authorship, and to understanding the economic and social contexts from which art emerges.

Art in the Making focuses on the intersection of thinking and making through chapters focusing on a particular process: painting, woodworking, building, performing, tooling up, cashing in, fabricating, digitizing and crowdsourcing. Discussions of broader themes are woven together with detailed examples and visuals, revealing the logic involved in the choice of techniques and materials.

Artists featured include Alice Aycock, Judy Chicago, Isa Genzken, Los Carpinteros, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Santiago Sierra and Rachel Whiteread.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book is generous with images (200 photographs) but thin on text. Adamson (Museum of Arts and Design, New York) and Bryan-Wilson (Univ. of California, Berkeley) admit to spreading the content out over time, space, and topic, but this results in a treatment that lacks the depth the subject deserves. Primarily, the authors describe how contemporary art is made. Working with assistants, in factories, and within collectives is not a new development for artists, yet it seems more common in recent years. In this scenario, the artist controls concept and design but less so production. In looking at artists and their practice, the authors devote chapters to materials, tools, and a wide variety of media. Among the pivotal artists covered are Judy Chicago, Ai Weiwei, Damien Hirst, and Cory Arcangel. In the conclusion, the authors plead for artists working in this method of "distributed authorship" to credit the people involved in production, as is customary in the film industry. Visually, the cover is uninviting, and the page layouts are crowded, with limited white space. Detailed notes and a bibliography serve the book well, pointing readers to more serious scholarship. Summing Up: Optional. Lower-division undergraduates and above, including students in technical programs; professionals and practitioners. --Anna Calluori Holcombe, University of Florida