"Modernist sculptor Alexander Archipenko, (born 1887, Kiev; died 1964, New York City) has been called the "Picasso of Sculpture" for the Cubist elements he introduced to create a new way of looking at the human figure. This deeply personal biography written by his artist wife during his last eight years, casts a new light on this extremely productive, innovative, but little-known period of his career."--Site Web de l'éditeur

Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at Eykyn Maclean, New York, November-December 2018 (and extended through January 2019)

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.