The home is, for many people, the location for their most intense relationships with visual things. Because they are constructed through the objects we choose, domestic spaces are deeply revealing of a range of cultural issues. How is our interpretation of an object affected by the domestic environment in which it is placed? Why choose a stainless steel teapot over a leopard print one? How do the images hanging on the walls of our homes arrive there? In placing contemporary art in the context of the ordinary home, this book embarks on the contentious topic of whether high art impacts on ordinary people. What is the size and nature of the audience for contemporary art in Britain? Do people really visit more art galleries than attend football matches? What is the significance of the home in relation to such questions? Indeed, what constitutes art in the home? This book carefully unpicks these questions as well as the troubled relationship between the home as a place of comfort and reassurance and the often unsettling and challenging images offered by contemporary art. Within the art world, the home has been addressed as a subject and even used as a temporary gallery and a space for installations, and yet it is not common for works by todays avant-garde artists to be conceived and marketed to participate in the domestic lives that most people live. Handsomely illustrated, this book unites contemporary art, craft and design, with sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to provide an unusual and forthright addition to ongoing art and culture debates.

Devoted to the Arts and Crafts Movement past and present, this new magazine celebrates the revival of quality and craftsmanship. Each issue is a portfolio of the best work in new construction, restoration, and interpretive design, presented through intelligent writing and beautiful photographs. Offering hundreds of contemporary resources, it showcases the work not only of past masters, but also of those whose livelihoods are made in creating well-crafted homes and furnishings today. The emphasis is on today’s revival in architecture, furniture, and artisanry, informed by international Arts & Crafts and the early-20th-century movement in America: William Morris through the Bungalow era. Includes historic houses, essays and news, design details, how-to articles, gardens and landscape, kitchens and baths. Lots of expert advice and perspective for those building, renovating, or furnishing a home in the Arts & Crafts spirit. From the publisher of Old-House Interiors magazine and the Design Center Sourcebook. artsandcraftshomes.com

Devoted to the Arts and Crafts Movement past and present, this new magazine celebrates the revival of quality and craftsmanship. Each issue is a portfolio of the best work in new construction, restoration, and interpretive design, presented through intelligent writing and beautiful photographs. Offering hundreds of contemporary resources, it showcases the work not only of past masters, but also of those whose livelihoods are made in creating well-crafted homes and furnishings today. The emphasis is on today’s revival in architecture, furniture, and artisanry, informed by international Arts & Crafts and the early-20th-century movement in America: William Morris through the Bungalow era. Includes historic houses, essays and news, design details, how-to articles, gardens and landscape, kitchens and baths. Lots of expert advice and perspective for those building, renovating, or furnishing a home in the Arts & Crafts spirit. From the publisher of Old-House Interiors magazine and the Design Center Sourcebook. artsandcraftshomes.com

Our homes contain us, but they are also within us. They can represent places to be ourselves, to recollect childhood memories, or to withdraw into adult spaces of intimacy; they can be sites for developing rituals, family relationships, and acting out cultural expectations. Like the personal, social, and cultural elements out of which they are constructed, homes can be not only comforting, but threatening too. The home is a rich theme running through post-war western art, and it continues to engage contemporary artists today - yet it has been the subject of relatively little critical writing. Art and the Home: Comfort, Alienation and the Everyday is the first single-authored, up-to-date book on the subject. Imogen Racz provides a theme-led discussion about how the physical experience of the dwelling space and the psychological complexities of the domestic are manifested in art, focusing mainly on sculpture, installation and object-based practice; discussing the work and ideas of artists as diverse as Louise Bourgeois, Gordon Matta-Clark, George Segal and Cornelia Parker within their artistic and cultural contexts

Playing at Home explores the different ways in which contemporary artists have engaged with ideas of the house and home - from 'broken homes' to haunted houses, doll's houses, mobile homes and greenhouses.

Between 1890 and 1930, the domestic arts, as well as the daily life of the American family, began to reflect rapid advances in technology, aesthetics, and attitudes about American culture. Pictorial, literary, musical, and decorative arts from this era all reveal a shift from clutter to clarity and from profusion to restraint as modern conveniences, ranging from pre-stamped needlework patterns to central heat, were introduced into the domestic environment. However, the household arts were also affected by an enduring strain of conservatism reflected in the popularity of historically inspired furnishing styles. In this collection of essays, ten experts in turn-of-the-century popular and material culture examine how the struggle between modernity and tradition was reflected in various facets of the household aesthetic. Their findings touch on sub-themes of gender, generation, and class to provide a fascinating commentary on what middle-class Americans were prepared to discard in the name of modernity and what they stubbornly retained for the sake of ideology. Through an examination of material culture and prescriptive literature from this period, the essayists also demonstrate how changes in artistic expression affected the psychological, social, and cultural lives of everyday Americans. This book joins a growing list of titles dedicated to analyzing and interpreting the cultural dimensions of past domestic life. Its essays shed new light on house history by tracking the transformation of a significant element of home life - its expressions of art.