THE PERSISTENCE OF CRAFT

摘要

It is always a pleasure to read Paul Greenhalgh; he is witty, daring, fluent, fast, and posits theoretical connections that are just outside what we knew. In this book he writes the introduction, the first essay/chapter on 'The Genre' where he explores a division in the heart of the visual arts between positivist and ironic practice, and the conclusion where he glides through a fashionably scientific comparison with complexity theory. In all of these his skating and fireworks style is in full force. Importantly in this book the coexistence of international perspectives is taken seriously, and there is great diversity - of theme, quality, and approach - in the other fifteen essays which include authors from Canada, Australia, Norway, Japan and America, though half are from the UK. They are more like essays than chapters, without discernible meaning in their sequence. Only Karen Livingstone, a former colleague of Greenhalgh's at the V&A, had the chance to cross-reference her piece with other essays.