Emily Zilber Knihy

Albert Henry Munsell (1858-1918) was an American painter, teacher of art, and the inventor of the Munsell color system. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, attended and served on the faculty of Massachusetts Normal Art School, and died in nearby Brookline. As a painter, he was noted for seascapes and portraits. Munsell is famous for inventing the Munsell color system, an early attempt at creating an accurate system for numerically describing colors. He wrote three books about it: A Color Notation (1905), Atlas of the Munsell Color System (1915) and one published posthumously, A Grammar of Color: Arrangements of Strathmore Papers in a Variety of Printed Color Combinations According to The Munsell Color System (1921).

Redefining the boundaries of what we call craft Contemporary art and craft presents a profusion of paradoxes. It bridges ancient traditions and state-of-the-art technologies, cutting-edge concepts and enduring tenets about skilled making and beauty, and in so doing blurs the lines between art, craft, architecture and design. This pioneering publication brings together work by nearly 40 international artists, whose varied approaches are not only pushing but redefining the boundaries of what we call craft today. Author Emily Zilber investigates the role of new tools and materials, the connection between craft and performance, and the power of craft's interactions with space. Along the way, readers encounter a diverse group of works across a wide range of materials and practices, including 3-D printed ceramics, a dancelike performance with molten glass and a piano deconstructed to form jewelry that can surround or adorn the body. Enhanced with approachable text and abundant illustrations, Crafted invites readers to explore these stunning and surprising objects in flux.

Contemporary art is a vast and complex field representing artists, ideas and trends from every imaginable cultural and geographical background. This book introduces the art of our times by taking the reader through a tour of some 70 examples from the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Thematic chapters present artistic categories, concepts and propositions that offer a path toward understanding the different subjects, forms, styles, purposes and techniques of contemporary art. Some, such as portraiture, are long-standing notions in the history of art; others, such as site appropriation, raise provocative questions and may be less immediately obvious. But it is the works themselves--brilliantly conceived by some of the most creative minds of our times--that make the case for embracing contemporary art in all its diversity.

All of the artists use the topic of Nature as a means of asking what it is to be human in a world increasingly chaotic and divorced from our physical landscape.