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Tapestry 08
British Tapestry Group
Catalogue essay written by Anne Jackson
SLOW ART: Contemporary Woven Tapestry in the Twenty-First Century
Woven tapestry is produced by intertwining threads on a vertical warp
to form a strong, dense, textile structure. In its traditional manifestation
it is associated with long walls and grand buildings, monumental and luxurious
in its enrichment of space. Over the centuries, art that is flexible,
durable, expressive and rich has been produced by highly-skilled tapestry
designers and artisans. In the twentieth century, individual weavers began
to emerge. These were artists working to their own designs, individually
expressing ideas and feelings within the paradigm of the painter, sculptor
or installation artist, rather than making work to fulfil "the principle
role tapestry has played…as an expensive and slow, though skilful,
(mode of) fine art reproduction."(1) Since the mid-twentieth century,
tapestry artists have sought the recognition of their medium as 'fine
art' within the Western canon. This has proved to be problematic, largely
due to the identification of textile art forms with the domestic, 'feminine'
sphere, rather than with the wider public arena. In spite of tapestry
having developed through similar channels to painting and sculpture, and
after great efforts in the twentieth century, it is still largely associated
with the decorative arts in the eyes of the critical establishment.
The historic roots
of woven tapestry run deep. Ancient fragments of Nazca textiles from Peru,
and Coptic weaving from Egypt, are preserved in museums worldwide. Sumptuous
hangings have survived which originally decorated and warmed the walls
of European princes, emphasising their wealth and status.(2) Historic
records show that tapestry workshops in medieval and early modern times
were often thriving businesses, employing highly-skilled artisans who
worked with sumptuous materials. The idea of the individual artist-weaver
began to emerge through the Arts & Crafts movement in late nineteenth
century England. It grew through the teaching philosophy of the Bauhaus
in Germany, and the work of Jean Lurçat, a painter who revitalised
tapestry in France after World War II, collaborating with the weavers
at Aubusson and launching the Lausanne Biennales. This series of international
exhibitions was extremely influential in developing the reputation of
tapestry as an art form.(3)
In the UK, the
foundation of academic courses and departments, such as at Leeds and Edinburgh
Universities, grounded tapestry in the field of Art and Design education.
At Edinburgh, Archie Brennan, an apprenticeship-trained weaver and Director
of the Dovecot Studios, encouraged the combination of technical skill
with the expression of ideas, and the cross-fertilisation between the
professional studio and the art college was very fruitful. In Sussex,
the tapestry studio at West Dean provided another vibrant centre of learning
and training. These studios "worked with internationally known artists,
(which)
helped to promote the medium. They encouraged and inspired students to
explore their own ideas and to develop new approaches to the techniques."(4)
Around the world,
especially in the 1960's and 70's, the teaching of tapestry, the characterisation
of the 'Art Fabric' movement through books and publications (often associated
with a new acknowledgement of women artists), and the commissioning of
large-scale textiles for new public buildings, widened the audience and
the market for tapestry.
In recent times,
however, progress has slowed. Historical and cultural developments have
not favoured the advancement of this ancient 'noble art'. Across Europe,
the impact of the downfall of the Soviet Union has been felt deeply by
weavers, especially in countries where the state formerly provided degrees
of support and sponsorship for tapestry artists, often in the form of
commissions and exhibitions. The Lausanne Biennales ended in 1995 amid
political and financial pressures, and conflicting visions of tapestry
as textile art. Under the influence of contemporary critical thinking,
academic institutions are inclined to devolve tapestry into more general
departments, or close it down altogether. Students, accustomed to screen-
or lens-based approaches to creative expression, are finding less appeal
in such a labour-intensive medium. Around the world, there is the relentless
rise of consumer culture, with its emphasis on cheap and immediate gratification
and globally-produced goods which are appealing, exotic and inexpensive.
In response to
these circumstances, and looking further ahead in the twenty-first century,
several new initiatives have been launched. In Europe, these include the
foundation of the British Tapestry Group and European Tapestry Forum,
which aim to provide opportunities for exhibition and professional development,
and to raise the status of tapestry as an art form. These organisations
are encouraged by the clear evidence of public support for tapestry exhibitions.
In the UK, attendance numbers are always high. In Denmark, Germany and
France, when the European Tapestry Forum exhibition ARTAPESTRY was shown
in 2005-7, visitors routinely came to see the exhibition from neighbouring
countries.
Although popular
with the public, tapestry does not fit easily into the dominant artistic
discourse of our time, which privileges high technology, new media, the
instant and seemingly effortless. The proponents of Modernism, the dominant
cultural discourse of the twentieth century, discounted anything that
showed evidence of effort or 'skill of the hand' in making. At the present
time, "we are still left assessing work within established (Modernist/Post-modernist)
cultural conventions…it could be considered that in recent years
it has been taboo to 'make' anything that might be process-led, to practice
an art that relies upon its making for its form and content or transformation
of materials through process, and have it seriously critiqued."(5)
For artist-weavers,
the day-to-day discipline and rhythm of the work, the desire to express
ideas and feelings through this particular medium, continue. The exploration
of surface, colour and texture, choosing and handling materials and creating
unity from previously disparate elements, is still satisfying. The "underlying
progressive nature, the sequential growth inherent in the structure"(6)
produces visible evidence of a good day's work, fixed as solidified time
on the warp. "The structure enhances the
image …Single fibres are like letters of an alphabet or numbers;
with them one can form words to create poetry or a formula to develop
a new rule."(7) By its nature, the woven image is integral to the
tapestry rather than being applied to a surface. As the structure is built
up, the image is created. The twist of each particular thread in the weft,
coarse or fine, intensifies its vibrant quality, as the fibres absorb
and reflect light. Practitioners also explore new materials, such as recycled
plastics and reflective or fluorescent yarns, in order to create "the
surface you get from weaving (which) you don't get anywhere else. It's
rich, it's tactile, it's got depth. It's not a thin layer, it's dense.
Materials are crucial - it's to do with what can happen by placing yarns.
There's enough happening if you get it right to make the piece sing."(8)
Tapestry is a
medium of rhythms. When artist-weavers speak or write about their work,
the sense of rhythm is a repeating motif. There are the physical movements
involved in doing the work, likened by Magdalena Abakanowicz to "the
natural rhythm of my body, to my breath."(9) Kay Lawrence speaks
of "the connection between the processes of weaving and the rhythms
of the body…a contemplative quality in the practice of weaving".(10)
There is a strong sense of physical connection to the work, of embodiment.
For all weavers there is also the everyday rhythm of going into the studio
and getting on with weaving. The labour-intensiveness of the medium requires
an almost monastic discipline, without which the final tapestry will never
appear.
Finally, there are the visual rhythms within the object itself. The warp,
running through or underneath the image, like the beat in music, is sometimes
barely perceptible, but its unbroken linear quality is always there. It
contributes to "tapestry's undeniable ability to bring together disparate
images on one picture plane."(11)
In expressing
their ideas, some weavers immediately engage with the warp, working without
a cartoon - the paper image or drawing created to serve as a guide in
the making of the tapestry. Some use the cartoon as a reference, departing
from it at times to "improvise on the warp."(12) Others work
directly over a drawing, collage or painting, in dialogue with the image,
using the interaction as a way of interrogating the original idea. Tapestry
is always "a decision-making experience".(13) Every pick or
knot involves choices, of colour, thickness, tension, and faithfulness
to the underlying idea or cartoon. This intensity of labour and thought
gives tapestry a presence, a monumentality, even when the work is miniature
in scale. The viewer registers, however subconsciously, that a great deal
has gone into the making of this object. Often gestures or marks are made
quickly and spontaneously at the cartoon stage, then slowed to glacial
speed while being made part of the tapestry surface. This characteristic
communicates to the mind and eye a density, a gravitas. The viewer knows,
even without consciously recognising, that seriousness of intention and
commitment went into this series of transformations. Whether medieval
or contemporary, the sense of gesture caught, distilled in time, and slowly
built up on the warp is a key characteristic of tapestry.
Contemporary artist-weavers
approach the medium in a wide variety of ways. Some use the surface as
a site for the depiction of landscape, or dream, or memory. Others convey
challenging messages or information, while keeping the viewer engaged
with rich surface qualities and imagery. Some artists see the association
of 'textiles' with the domestic and decorative as a way of subverting
ideas about femininity, and saying uncomfortable things. Others work with
painterly abstraction, or sculpturally, exploring space and form. Many
artist-weavers incorporate other media and materials into their tapestries,
or create installations. Some move into other media entirely, or include
tapestry as one part of their overall artistic practice.
In the early twenty-first
century, in a digital, multi-media society, we can only try to articulate
why such this ancient art form is relevant to our evolving world and culture.
The desire to make these concrete, expressive artefacts is, apparently,
tenacious in the face of an unsympathetic art world. Perhaps the present-day
tapestry artist, raising his or her eyes to the enormous, vibrant, fifteenth-century
Apocalypse Tapestries in Angers, France, feels part of a continuum, a
maker of something with the potential to last beyond the present context.
Judging by public response at tapestry exhibitions, the medium's ability
to communicate and elicit responses is clear, as if it answers an essential
need to acknowledge the human handprint in a technology-dominated world.
As the challenges and limitations of contemporary culture are exposed,
and questions arise about sustainability and unending technological progress,
it is possible that there is still a place for such 'slow art'; rhythmic,
of the body and corporeal; strong, vibrant, and rich in imagery and presence.
Ann Jackson
Notes and References
1. Pat Taylor,
'The West Dean Tapestry Workshop', ITNET Journal
Vol. 5, No. 3 (1994) p.18
2. In 1466 the Duke of Burgundy commissioned a suite of eight tapestries,
paying "a sum with which almost as many stone-built town houses of
several stories could have been built in the city of Bern at the time."
Elke Jezier-Hübner, 'A Noble Art: Burgundian Tapestries in the Historisches
Museum', International Tapestry Journal Vol. 5 No. 1 (2002), p.4
3. Tapestry as an art form has developed in many parts of the world, including
Australia, North America, Latin America and the Far East. For the purposes
of this essay, I have focussed largely on the European context.
4. Fiona Mathison, correspondence with author
5. Janet Bezzant, Manchester Metropolitan University
'Reflexive Textile - Investigating the Subject/Object'
Conference Proceedings: 'Textiles: What is Critical?' a conference organised
by the North West Textile Forum, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester,
29-30th September, 2000
6. Archie Brennan, interviewed by Sally Brokensha, International Tapestry
Journal, vol. 4 No. 1 (2001), p.18
7. Jilly Edwards, 'Art Textiles of the World: Great Britain Volume 3',
p.100 (Telos Art Publishing, 2006)
8. Sara Brennan, 'Art Textiles of the World: Great Britain', p.26 (Telos
Art Publishing, 1996)
9. Magdalena Abakanowicz, quoted in Diana Wood Conroy, 'Janet Brereton:
Knotted Against Fate', International Tapestry Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1 (1998),
p. 3
10. Kay Lawrence, 'Voyage: Home is Where We Start From', K. Lawrence &
L. Obermeyer, 'Reinventing Textiles Vol. 2: Gender and Identity', ed.
Janis Jefferies, p.64 (Telos Art Publishing, 2001)
11. K.T.Doyle, Review of 'Kate Derum, Afternoon Gestures-Tapestry Anecdotes',
International Tapestry Journal Vol. 3, No. 1 (2000) p.24
12. Christine Sawyer, conversation with author
13. Shelly Goldsmith, 'Art Textiles of the World: Great Britain Volume
2, ed. Jennifer Harris, p.51 (Telos Art Publishing, 1999)
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REVIEW:
Demons Yarns & Tales (The Dairy, London)
The Dairy
7 Wakefield Street
London
10-22 November, 2008
Placing the practice of woven
tapestry in the context of contemporary art is a task usually reserved
for its practitioners. The outside world is largely oblivious, and critical
discourses tend to relegate it to the 'craft' sphere, if they consider
it at all. The exhibition 'Demons, Yarns & Tales' was an unusual experiment,
putting woven tapestry centre-stage in a prestigious London venue, and
inviting fifteen high-profile visual artists, from the U.K. and around
the world, to provide designs to be woven in editions of five. The tapestries
were made in China, where "the factory is situated in a rural community…and
the weavers, all of whom are women, work part time so they can be free
to help in the fields…" (Kent, 2008, p.15)
Woven tapestry in Western culture
is usually seen in terms of its history as a luxurious form of decoration,
status symbol and even 'hugely expensive draught excluder', as Gary Hume
says in the exhibition catalogue. Tapestries were frequently commissioned
by medieval princes, and in more recent times have been associated with
heritage, aristocracy, immense wealth and sometimes dubious taste. In
the twenty-first century, however, tapestry is a medium which functions
in two distinct arenas; that of contemporary artists' practice, and that
which is usually called 'studio weaving'.
Tapestry has been practiced
as an individual art-form since the mid-twentieth century. It flourished
in the 1960's and 70's, with the growth of discourses such as feminism
and 'art vs. craft', prestigious exhibitions such as the Lausanne Biennales,
and being taught in educational institutions across the Western world
and Eastern Europe. Yet tapestry artist/practitioners still struggle for
recognition. In critical terms tapestry has been immovably situated within
the 'crafts' field, where artefacts "become tied up with cultural
authenticity and are presumed to be timeless, ancient and to some extent
lacking in significance and meaning (while 'works of art' are) commonly
perceived as innovative, the product of the Zeitgeist and steeped in deeper
meanings."(Ray, 2008, p. 195) Recently tapestry has even been critically
separated from 'art textile' practice, in which media associated with
clothing, the body, the feminine and domestic spheres are often used "to
invoke not only metaphors of connection and relationship, but also an
inchoate, pre-linguistic, corporeal aspect of materiality" (Conroy,
1995, p.14). Tapestry, with its roots in public displays of wealth and
status, doesn't easily fit this paradigm. The major tapestries of the
twentieth century, created in response to large-scale commissions (especially
in the former Soviet Bloc), the Lausanne Biennales and the Art Fabric
movement, have a closer relationship to architecture than to the territory
of domesticity. They are innately of the walls, of public and other buildings.
Although the majority of contemporary tapestry practitioners are female,
it's possible to argue that woven tapestry is of masculine rather than
feminine descent, perhaps adding to a sense of tapestry as an ambiguous
medium.
The term 'tapestry' may refer
to individual practice, artisan production, or even needlepoint embroidery,
encompassing multiple meanings confusing to anyone unfamiliar with the
milieu. Even practitioners don't always make clear distinctions in their
discourse. Most outsiders don't realise that tapestry exists anywhere
other than in various collections of faded historical artefacts. 'Demons,
Yarns & Tales' organizer Christopher Sharp, the owner of a successful
rug business, characterizes it as "a lost art (which) faded long
ago" (Sharp, 2008, p.5).
The works in the exhibition,
made by a company in rural China, would fall into the category of 'studio
weaving', in which tapestries are produced by artisans from designs by
separate artists. It was the original mode of production in Europe, revived
by William Morris in late 19th century England, continuing through the
Bauhaus in the 1930's and the initiatives of Jean Lurçat at Aubusson,
France, in the 1940's. In the UK, West Dean Studios in Sussex and the
Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh (established in 1910) weave tapestries, usually
as large-scale commissions. They are made by teams of highly-skilled weavers,
to designs by artists such as Henry Moore, David Hockney and Frank Stella.
Individual tapestry practitioners often spend periods of time as studio
weavers, to gain additional training or to supplement their income.
'Demons, Yarns & Tales',
shown in central London, and later Miami, Florida, was a prestigious event.
The illustrated catalogue, extensive press coverage and high-profile private
view indicated confidence, and entrepreneurial investment to a degree
with which contemporary tapestry is rarely associated.
The show was mounted in a former milk depot, each tapestry hung on a purpose-built
plinth or moveable wall with built-in lighting. The works were large-scale
and the space was cavernous, evoking associations with tapestries in medieval
cathedrals.
The exhibition was intended
to activate translations between media, employing artists largely unfamiliar
with tapestry. In the resulting works, some engaged fully with the challenge
of the "transformation (from) known medium into the uncharted and
the unknown" (Sharp, 2008, p.5). Others adapted previously existing
works, utilizing the medium's traditional role as a "slow, though
skilful (mode of) fine art reproduction." (Taylor, 1994, p.18)
Inevitably some results were more successful than others. For example,
the fine warp and weft of the tapestries sometimes manifested as a thin
surface which evoked the domestic more readily than the monumental or
mural. Beatriz Milhazes' tapestry, 'Carioca' (Figure 1), was based on
an existing painting. Her work is usually vibrant and full of life, but
the image she selected, when woven and hung on a wall bore some resemblance
to a furnishing fabric from the1960's. The context made it unlikely that
this was intentional. Had she been aware of the possibility, or more familiar
with the characteristics of tapestry, she might have chosen a different
original design. Peter Blake's 'Alphabet' suffered the same fate, as did
Jaime Gili's 'Zelada'. (Figure 2). His paintings often comprise near-Vorticist
abstractions in primary colors. The transition of hard-edged imagery into
a soft medium could have created a dynamic effect, but the comparatively
subdued coloration in the tapestry evoked twentieth-century corporate
textile design more than vibrant, autonomous art work.
Gary Hume, whose paintings
also present a shiny, almost machine-finished surface, made a more successful
transition in his work, 'Georgie and Orchids' (Figure 3). Heavily reliant
on well-drawn line, the design was executed with virtuosic skill by the
weavers, although the embellishment of the surface with raised silk embroidery
distracted somewhat from the graphic qualities beneath. In any case, Hume's
work appeared to benefit from his acquaintance with contemporary European
tapestry practice, giving the piece a fundamental coherence.
Grayson Perry, also familiar
with contemporary tapestry and textile art, had his work executed in needlepoint
(causing confusion in the press coverage). His tapestry, 'Vote Alan Measles
For God' (Figure 4), was an Afghan 'war rug' (a recent practice of weaving
imagery of weapons, tanks, etc.) filled with references to our contemporary
international conflicts, and dominated by the figure of his iconic childhood
teddy bear, wearing a suicide bomber's belt. Perry stipulated that the
tapestry hang naturally, without intervention to force it into an immaculate
rectangular shape. His fluency in the language and references of textile
media allowed his work to communicate clearly to the viewer.
Fred Tomaselli is also acquainted
with tapestry. The imagery of 'After Migrant Fruit Thugs' (Figure 5),
in which a pair of tropical birds peered out of a background of richly-bejewelled
fig leaves, was reminiscent of 'millefleur' medieval tapestries, and glowed
with the chromatic intensity of Jean Lurçat. Its seductive materiality
was counterbalanced by awareness that his characteristic rich mosaics
of found imagery and resin often refer to drug use. This gave his tapestry
an underlying edge.
A number of works successfully
integrated tapestry's narrative tradition. Kara Walker's 'A Warm Summer
Evening in 1863' referred to the atrocities of slavery and racism in America.
Gavin Turk collaged a large-scale map of the Earth from packaging and
detritus found near a petrol filling station (Figure 6). Paul Noble's
idiosyncratic pencil-drawn fantasy world was translated into a large-scale
monochrome landscape, 'villa joe', in which one could become childishly
lost, wandering among the ruins of familiar twentieth-century sculptures
(Figure 7).
The exhibition reflected the
mode of contemporary practice in which the artist need have little connection
to the manufacture of his or her work. Art is no longer "defined
as an artisanal activity…(it can now) be seen as a set of operations
performed in a field of signifying practices, perhaps centred on a medium
but certainly not bounded by it." (Victor Burgin, quoted in Adamson,
2007, p. 168) In the exhibition catalogue, the artists frequently marvelled
at the skills of the Chinese weavers; some tapestries took up to two years
to complete. Several artists stated their belief that such works couldn't
have been executed in the West. The softness of the tapestry surface cannot
disguise the hard facts of globalized labour markets. The tapestries could
have been woven in a Western studio, but only at a price that would have
been prohibitive, even in a flourishing art economy.
Conveying designs across the
world, to be realised by artisans from a totally different culture, creates
a risk of mistranslation. Gavin Turk's 'Mappa Mundi' (Figure 6) floated
his collaged continents on a pale blue field whose color and texture,
once woven, were more reminiscent of a baby blanket than of water or paper.
This may have been intentional, or a function of different aesthetics,
and distances too great for close collaboration between artist and artisans.
The organizers's choice of
artists was bold, and setting them an unfamiliar task involved risk. Though
some of the tapestries conveyed a sense of exploration and transformation,
many appeared remarkably conservative. This may have been the result of
heavy speculative financial investment, or ignorance of the range of technical
and aesthetic possibilities available. For example, the structure of tapestry
is inherently flexible, literally and metaphorically. It need not produce
a flat rectangle on a wall. In this exhibition, only Kara Walker and the
anonymous Brazilian collective avaf (figure 8) explored this potential.
Perhaps consigning the work to artisans who spoke a different cultural
language imposed a requirement to keep things simple, on a literal and
conceptual level.
One could speculate whether it is reasonable to produce this kind of monumental,
painstaking work in the age of digital downloads and Face Book.
It may be that it conveys a sense of luxury and self-indulgence which
doesn't equate with the current economic climate, especially when produced
by Chinese farm labourers earning necessary extra income. The worldwide
body of artists working in the medium of contemporary tapestry clearly
think it a worthwhile career path, but on the whole they are individuals,
with only their own studio and business infrastructures to support.
The high profile of this exhibition
may well benefit tapestry artists and Western weaving studios. It involved
influential artists and critics, whose awareness of the medium will have
been raised as a result of it. If contemporary tapestry practitioners
had been more successful in penetrating the citadel of critical theory,
the artists and organizers of 'Demons, Yarns & Tales' might have had
more familiarity with the possibilities of the medium. Apparently the
company, 'Banners of Persuasion', is considering future exhibitions. If
so, those with an interest in contemporary woven tapestry can hopefully
look forward to a better-informed grounding in the medium, producing a
wide range of responses from the participants, and contributing to an
improvement in the fortunes of contemporary tapestry, both as individual
practice and studio production.
REFERENCES
Burgin, Victor, "The Absence
of Presence",
quoted in Adamson, Glenn, 'Thinking Through Craft', Berg, 2007: p.168
Conroy, Diana Wood, 'Curating
Textiles: Tradition as Transgression'; International Tapestry Journal,
Vol. 1, No. 4, Winter 1995: p.14.
Kent, Sarah, 'Introduction'
in 'Demons, Yarns & Tales' catalogue, Banners of Persuasion, London,
2008: p.15.
Ray, Eleanor, Review of 'A
Tapestry of Memories: The Art of Dinh Q. Lê', Textile: The Journal
of Cloth and Culture, Vol. 6, Issue 2, July 2008: p.195.
Sharp, Christopher, 'Foreword',
in catalogue, op.cit.: p.5.
Taylor, Pat, 'The West Dean
Tapestry Workshop',
International Tapestry Network Journal, Vol. 5, No.3, 1994, p.18.
FIGURES
1. Beatriz Milhazes, 'Carioca',
2008.
Wool and silk woven tapestry. 2 metres x 2 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
2. Jaime Gili, 'Zelada', 2008.
Wool, silk and artificial silk woven tapestry, 2.5 metres x 2.14 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
3. Gary Hume, 'Georgie and Orchids', 2008.
Wool woven tapestry, silk embroidery, 2.5 metres x 2.05 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
4. Grayson Perry, 'Vote Alan Measles For God', 2008.
Wool needlepoint embroidery, 2.5 metres x 2 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
5. Fred Tomaselli, 'After Migrant Fruit Thugs', 2008.
Wool and silk woven tapestry, 2.5 metres x 1.6metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
6. Gavin Turk, 'Mappa del Mundo', 2008 (preliminary artwork).
Wool, silk, and metallic thread woven tapestry, 3.13 metres x 2 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
7. Paul Noble, 'villa joe', 2008.
Wool woven tapestry, 4.48 metres x 4.56 metres.
Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
8. avaf, 'aaxé vatapá alegria feijão (preliminary
artwork)', 2008.
Wool, silk, artificial silk, and metallic thread woven tapestry,
3.50 metres x 2.05 metres. Courtesy of the artist and Banners of Persuasion.
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BOOK REVIEW:
CONTEMPORARY TEXTILES:
THE FABRIC OF FINE ART
Nadine K. Monem (ed.) (London; Black Dog Publishing Ltd.) 2008
This book is presented as "a
comprehensive introduction to textile art", the selected artists
"producing some of the most important, inspiring and evocative work
being done today" (Monem; 2008 p.6). It features work by sixty artists
(including collaborations) whose practice incorporates textile media,
with good-quality illustrations and a short text representing each contributor.
Nearly half the artists featured are based in the U.S. and a number in
the U.K.; fourteen countries are represented overall. The publication
encompasses internationally famous figures and relative newcomers, and
features a wide range of work, from the embroidery of Tilleke Schwarz
and the sculpture of Mike Kelley, to the collages of Rachel Coleman and
the installations of Yinka Shonibare.
In contemporary textile publishing, numerous high-quality exhibition catalogues
and well-illustrated books are available, profiling individuals and groups
of selected textile artists, designers and makers. This volume attempts
a wide-ranging contemporary survey of the contested territory where 'textiles
as art practice' meets 'fine art'. It is an ambitious project. Sarat Maharaj
has theorised the position of textiles as being "an undecidable -
as Derrida puts it, something that seems to belong to one genre but overshoots
its border and seems no less at home in another."(Maharaj; 2001 p.7)
Arguably a high level of expert scholarship and dedication would be required
to cover this field fully, containing as it does the problematic nexus
between art, design and craft. 'Contemporary Textiles: The Fabric of Fine
Art' should be commended for attempting the task.
Artists have long been attracted to textile media, by their potential
as carriers of multiple meanings. Cloth is "inscribed within a range
of humanist and universalist discourses as a container for full human
expression."(Jefferies: 1995 p.164). Many works included in this
book relate to the body, clothing, identity, and sexuality. Notions of
safety, comfort, shelter and the domestic are interrogated. There is frequent
use of collage and bricolage, creating the disjunctions that are a classic
strategy in textile practice. Among the artists represented, Kent Henricksen
makes silk-screened Rococo wallpaper patterns, with delicate figures wearing
embroidered gimp-masks and balaclavas engaging in acts of violence and
punishment. Silja Puranen applies digitally-manipulated images of herself,
in roles associated with the glamour and grotesquery of the circus, to
'found' domestic textiles. Satoru Aoyama stitches densely-machined representations
of his sewing machine and studio space which are wittily self-referential
and quietly powerful.
The book is prefaced by two introductory essays, by Bradley Quinn, author
of 'Textile Designers at the Cutting Edge' and 'Techno Fashion', and by
Janis Jefferies, Professor of Visual Arts in the Department of Computing
at Goldsmiths, and Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research
Centre in Textiles. There is also a foreword by artist Jann Haworth. In
his essay Quinn gives a concise history of modern art's conjunctions with
textile practice, interspersed with numerous brief descriptions of contemporary
artists' work. The sheer numbers can make it difficult to follow his argument,
but they create a useful context. The accompanying images elucidate the
text, including some photographs of installations and exhibitions, which
would have also been useful in the main body of the book. In 'Contemporary
Textiles: The Art Fabric' Janis Jefferies provides a historic, academic
and personal overview of some of the key texts and movements in textile
art. She introduces Mildred Constantine & Jack Lenor Larsen's 'Beyond
Craft: The Art Fabric' and 'The Art Fabric: Mainstream'. She profiles
the Pattern and Decoration Movement, feminist discourses, and several
other strands of related practice, charting rehabilitation of the idea
of the decorative after its Modernist banishment by Clement Greenberg.
She also examines the present use and future potential of digital media.
Her essay includes useful references to many key texts, including a number
of her own publications.
'Contemporary Textiles: The Fabric of Fine Art' functions well as an introduction
to textiles in art practice. It represents itself as authoritative, profiling
"the most cutting edge textile work emerging from the contemporary
art world today"(Monem; 2008 p.6). However, beyond the range of the
introductory essays, it has several weaknesses. It is divided into sections,
entitled 'Drawings', 'Paintings, 'Sculptures' and 'Spaces', categories
which seem outmoded. Some of the distinctions, particularly between work
shown as 'Drawing' or 'Painting', appear arbitrary. The methodology that
produced the book is unclear. Apparently artists applied to be included,
but there is no indication through what channels. Tracey Emin is featured,
but Sarah Lucas, Cathy de Monchaux, Shelly Goldsmith, and Maxine Bristow
are not. Nor is Grayson Perry, whose recent explorations in embroidery
and digital tapestry illuminate new aspects of his practice. Magdalena
Abakanowicz, Jann Haworth, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are present, but
other representatives of the 20th-century canon are not.
The volume lacks a unifying editorial thrust. Apparently seven writers
produced the texts on individual artists, and they tend to be repetitious,
with no argument building throughout the book. Academic language sometimes
seems to veil a lack of specialist knowledge, and apparently the texts
aren't intended to relate specifically to the images, which can be confusing.
There is some poor editing; in Janis Jefferies' essay a quote from Clement
Greenberg is rendered incomprehensible by the loss of two words, making
a dense text more difficult to understand.
Work utilizing fabric and stitched media predominates in the book. In
spite of several references to weaving in the introductory material, with
the exception of Lia Cook, the worldwide practice of tapestry and related
media is not represented, even though work by artists such as Marcel Marois,
Jane Kidd and Peter Horn would have demonstrated a suitable level of conceptual
rigour for inclusion.
The selection is arguably some distance from the 'cutting edge', with
little coverage of digital work or conceptual practices. For example,
although the book is a U.K. production, there is no apparent awareness
of the 'Arttextiles' exhibitions generated by Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery
from 1996 to 2004. These were rigorously selected to present a contemporary
view of art practice associated with textiles. 'Arttextiles3' included
a number of digital and conceptual works, such as Farhad Ahrarnia's "Mr.
Singer", a screen-based work referring to trade and imperialism in
the context of the Singer sewing machine, and interventions such as Andrea
Stokes' 'Butter Net 2002', where she screen-printed a net curtain onto
a gallery window with butter, evoking a sense of suffocating and fragile
respectability.
This book does not present a well-constructed critical argument for textiles
"fast becom(ing) the fabric of fine art"(Monem; 2008 p.6) However,
it offers a worthwhile introduction to the general subject. Jann Haworth
points out in the foreword that the struggle to incorporate textiles into
the expanded field of fine art has been going on since the 1960's. As
Pennina Barnett once wrote, "Textile Art and Fibre Art are 'unfinished
closures'…They don't sound 'right'". (Barnett; 1995 p.82) If
this book contributes to moving such a longstanding discourse forward,
then it is to be welcomed. However, to quote Polly Binns from a previous
review in this journal, "there is still ground to cover and further
territories to explore" (Binns; 2005 p.324).
Anne Jackson
References:
Barnett, Pennina 1995. 'afterthoughts on curating "The Subversive
Stitch"', pp76-86, Deepwell, Katy (ed.) New Feminist Art Criticism.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Binns, Polly 2005. Exhibition Review: 'The arttextiles Project:An Ongoing
Concern', pp319-325, Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture, Volume
3 Issue 3. Oxford: Berg.
Jefferies, Janis 1995. 'Text and textiles: weaving across the borderlines',
pp164-173, Deepwell, Katy (ed.). New Feminist Art Criticism. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Maharaj, Sarat 2001. 'Textile Art - Who Are You?' pp7-10, Jefferies, Janis
(ed.). Reinventing Textiles vol.2: Gender and Identity. Winchester: Telos.
Monem, Nadine (ed.). 2008. 'note from the editor', p6, Contemporary Textiles:
The Fabric of Fine Art. London: Black Dog.
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|
REVIEW:
GRAYSON PERRY
The Walthamstow Tapestry
Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
9 October- 7 November 2009
In his essay, 'Textile Art-
Who Are You?' Sarat Maharaj proposes textile art as an example of Derrida's
concept, the "'undecidable'...something that seems to belong to one
genre but overshoots its border and seems no less at home in another.
Belongs to both, we might say, by not belonging to either."(Maharaj
2001: 7)
The artist Grayson Perry could be said to embody this idea in several
ways; he defines himself as a potter, but sometimes works in other media
including textiles, printmaking and film. He is also a transvestite, who
appears on TV, at gallery openings and parties dressed as Claire. She
is "not an alter ego for Perry: she is simply him in a dress."(Klein
2009: 101)
He is a figure publicly located at the centre of the contemporary art
world, but he espouses 'old fashioned, conservative' ideas, saying "in
this day and age, we can often mistake meaning, or humor, or political
importance for good art. For me ...the 'unique selling point' of art is
visual pleasure, because everything else is being done better by something
else."(1)
Janet Bezzant has observed that, "in recent years it has been taboo
to 'make' anything that might be process-led, to practice an art that
relies upon its making for its form and content" (Bezzant 2000: 39).
Perry has overcome the usual obstacles that confront craft media in the
art world, where "craft (is) the 'other' of art" (Rowley 1999:
1), to the point where his work is placed in major museums and collected
by Charles Saatchi, among many others; in 2003 he won the prestigious
Turner Prize.
"The sex of the artist matters" (Parker & Pollock 1981:
50). In Grayson Perry's case, the sexuality matters as well. "Those
who fail to do their gender right are regularly punished" (Butler
1988: 522), and Perry's experiences as a young transvestite and a working-class
child from a broken home feed his aesthetic, imagination and imagery.
In particular, textile media would appear to resonate with his transvestism;
"the decorative impulse of textile (art)...act(s) as a form of resistance:
womanliness as masquerade, as camouflage, as a way to protect oneself
from the dominant order."(Perron 1998: 122)
For his most recent exhibition, at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London,
Perry chose to produce a monumental textile work, entitled 'The Walthamstow
Tapestry'. Designed specifically for the proportions of the gallery wall
upon which it was displayed, it measured 3 metres by 15 metres, a remarkable
size for a contemporary textile work. It was allowed to hang freely, as
a textile, with the corners curling slightly and the edges warping away
from the wall. Six of Perry's signature hand-built vases, two large etchings
and a smaller tapestry completed the show, in the elegant top-floor gallery.
The Walthamstow Tapestry operates visually as a long, detailed narrative,
full of incident, social comment and humor (Figure 1). It depicts "the
Long Shopping Trip of Life" (1). In 'Society of the Spectacle', Guy
DeBord wrote, "The society based on modern industry is fundamentally
spectaclist...the visual reflection of the ruling economic order...human
fulfilment (is) no longer equated with what one (is), but with what one
possess(es)."(Debord 2002: 10-11)
In his art practice, Perry frequently addresses consumerism and "what
I regard as the trash of contemporary culture: the visual pollution of
brands, sport, advertising, footballers' wives and celebrity" (Klein
2009: 60). The Walthamstow Tapestry displays his personal vernacular world,
relying on visual tropes from European, Asian and American folk art, with
an underlying vein of moral instruction. The tapestry narrative moves
from birth to death, akin to the biblical 'Seven Ages of Man'. Small,
stylised human figures, objects and decorative motifs are crammed into
a shallow picture plane, partly continuous narrative, partly a series
of random, whimsical vignettes. They traverse the surface, following a
'pilgrimage path', or the river of blood flowing from the graphic birth-scene
framing the image at the left end (Figure 2). The color range enhances
the folkloric presentation, being predominantly blue, pink and red on
a yellow background. Across the surface are scattered hundreds of names
of well-known companies and brands in a small, uniform text, punctuating
or commenting on the action. Usually they relate to the imagery they label
with sly humor. Thus, the blind figure Guggenheim is led by the guide
dog, Sotheby's, and a urinating drunk is labelled Louis Vuitton. There
is a Ship of Fools with a patched sail and the names of recently-failed
financial institutions(Figure 3), a Bayeux Tapestry-like Hand of God (labelled
'Prudential') and marginal figures pushing pushchairs while talking on
mobile phones and smoking cigarettes.
There is an evident zest in portraying homeless people, vomiting drunks
and drug addicts (Figure 4), in a traditionally genteel medium. The terrain
depicted is littered with fast-food containers, crushed cans and cigarette
packets. As well as the woman giving birth at the beginning of the narrative,
a number of large, slightly religious figures dominate the foreground;
a pig-tailed girl with a doll of the crucified Jesus, a boy with a halo,
a cigarette, and a knife, a defeated-looking business man with a glass
of wine, a bent, elderly woman with a carrier bag labelled BBC, and the
peacefully-curled figure of a naked, dead old man. Both birthing mother
and dead old man lie on patchwork quilts, the sort of textiles which operate
as "transitional objects in the psychology of (birth and) death."(Hobbs
2001: 54) The central image, presiding in a mandorla, is a headscarfed
woman, Madonna-like, passionately clutching a designer handbag to her
breast (Figure 5).
While depicting the "society of the spectacle"(Debord 2002:
title) the Walthamstow Tapestry is in itself a spectacular object. As
it presents a critique of mass consumer culture, "the invasion of
brands" (1), it is, of course, a luxury consumer item in itself,
produced under "the 'brand' that is Grayson Perry" (Klein 2009:
101). He reflects this, saying his initial idea was to make "something
to stand in front of; a logo board, like Formula One (car racing) or a
fashion show" (1), for his recent book launch. In saying this, Perry
may have been playing with tapestry's 'undecidable' aspect, its "capacity
to shift within traditions, to shuttle between theoretical positions,
to hover around borders' (Newdigate 1995:174).
Tapestry emerges from a different history from other textile media. As
wall-hung, luxurious objects, produced in workshops and studios, woven
tapestries in Europe were historically viewed with "the distancing
vision typically associated with art." (Ferris 2001: 42). Wrought
in gold thread and other precious materials on a scale that could take
years to produce, they were associated with grandeur and worldly power
rather than haptic or domestic qualities. Tapestries resembled flexible,
portable wallpaintings, and served as billboards, banners or decorations
to enhance the prestige of those who could afford to commission or own
them. They helped to set the stages upon which high-ranking individuals
could personify and demonstrate their power and wealth.
In contrast, The Walthamstow Tapestry is a jacquard-woven cloth, not produced
by the skills of the tapestry weaver. The machine-produced weave has traditionally
been associated with domestic items, such as cushions, upholstery fabric
and reproductions of William Morris tapestries. In this case, however,
the scale and positioning of the work in the elite 'natural habitat' of
fine art make its status incontestable. It speaks clearly of the prestige
of the artist, the gallery and its prospective owners, while satirizing
the material culture that made it possible.
This is a strategy that Perry often employs in his ceramics, not only
by forging a space for his work in the art mainstream, but by his uncompromising
use of imagery, ranging from the horrors of war, to sadomasochistic pornography.
In a mode that is familiar in the textile art world, he creates beautiful
objects that convey hard or challenging messages. Working alone in his
studio, without outside assistants, he takes months to produce his large
ceramic vases. With his well-developed 'skills of the hand', he uses multiple
processes, layering transfers and photographic images with lustred decorative
motifs, and drawing desolate landscapes and haunted figures with deep
lines incised into the clay. Often his images are overlaid with sharp,
sarcastic humor. The shapes of his pots refer back to historic ceramics.
"Almost every work of serious contemporary art recapitulates, on
some explicit or implicit level, the historical sequence of objects to
which it belongs...artists have become avid, if unpredictable, consumers
of art history"(Crow 2006: 53).
When he chooses to use other media, Perry continues his "hair-raisingly
frank internal monologue" (Adamson 2007: 167). Everything he produces
codifies his inner world. Describing the first dresses he designed for
gallery display, he explained, "When I have a show I quite like having
something else around because it's almost as if these are artifacts from
a culture-- and the culture is me!"(Hoggard 2006: 24)
In contrast to his approach to ceramics, Perry's textile work, beyond
the design stage, is always produced at the hands of others, usually by
computer-controlled technology. Given his fondness for a portraying a
particular idea of Englishness, folky, kitschy, and middle-brow, one can
see how the medium of jacquard weaving might attract him; and there have
been recent moves by a number of other contemporary artists to have works
produced in this way. Its appeal to him could be as a form of textile
which can be "represented as unpretentious, simple, honest...pick
up a knitting pattern, cross-stitch your Textile Heritage of bygone memories
and release your longing for a romanticized mythical past when flags were
waved in the Empire..."()(JJ New Fem AC pp164-5
Perry's exploration of textile media began with a love of costume and
desire to design dresses for himself as Claire, often decorated with computer-controlled
machine embroidery motifs. He has produced works in the form of quilts
and flags, and in 2008 his first tapestry, Vote Alan Measles For God,
was executed in hand stitched needlepoint, to his design, by artisans
in China.
The Walthamstow Tapestry was produced in Ghent, Belgium, and visually
reflects Perry's strong interest in printmaking. The treatment of the
picture plane in the tapestry is similar to Perry's large-scale etchings,
and the scattering of brand names, both in deliberate juxtaposition to
the imagery and in a sort of dreamlike free association, appears there
also. The computer-controlled weaving is very like a print; a design which
takes on new qualities as a result of the reproduction process that creates
it. The jacquard weave gives the original drawing a range of new and different
characteristics, in terms of color, surface etc. "What distinguishes
the (physical) approach to a woven image is that the dissolution of image
into constituent parts ...is not the familiar dissolving into a field
of printer's dots, photographic grain or brushstrokes, but is rather the
resolving and recognition of another dimensional object- thread"
(Leeman 2007: 334). The textile reproduction becomes a new work in its
own right, leaving the design behind.
In Perry's work the surface is always full; he admits to suffering from
"horror vacui" (Jones 2006: 183); and in whatever medium he
is utilizing, he "play(s) with the 'ornamental, with its traditional
connotations of effeminacy', and flirt(s) with the metaphorics of femininity
by privileging the detail."(Jefferies 1995: 168-9). At the same time,
he loves motorbikes, fighter planes and the aesthetics of weaponry (Figure
6).
"I put on a dress, and have a laugh, and I enjoy that, but I wouldn't
say I became a different person. (I am) me in a dress." (2)
"There are a great many....people living 'Western' culture fluidly
and 'incorrectly' in their own way, questioning the established cultural
order through artistic practice which is both critical and political"
(Bono 1999: 101).
"Art needs these elements of multiplicity, ambiguity and uncertainty
to subsist and exist, and to structure the act of thinking as a constructive
display of meaning" (ibid. 100).
"I am a conceptual artist masquerading as a craftsman" (Klein
2009: p225), Perry declared in the recent monograph on his work.
Perhaps we could paraphrase what Sarat Maharaj wrote in his consideration
of textile art and ask "should we comprehend (Grayson Perry) under
the chameleon figure of the 'undecidable'? (Maharaj 2001: 7).
NOTES
1. Grayson Perry, gallery talk, 'The Walthamstow Tapestry', Victoria Miro
Gallery, London, 13th October 2009
2. Grayson Perry, TV interview, "Where is Modern Art Now?" BBC4,
18th November, 2009.
REFERENCES
Adamson, G. 2007. "Thinking Through Craft". Oxford: Berg. p167
Bezzant, J. 2000. "Reflexive Textile- Subject/Object". Conference
Proceedings: 'Textiles: What is Critical?' North West Textile Forum, Whitworth
Art Gallery, Manchester, 29-30th September, 2000.
Bono, J.R. 1999. "All Ornaments Are Useful to Scale Facades"
in S. Rowley (ed). Reinventing Textiles Vol.1: Tradition and Innovation.
Winchester: Telos Art Publishing, pp. 95-110.
Butler, J. 1988. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay
in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory". Theatre Journal Vol 40 No
4 pp519-531. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Crow, T. 2006: "Unwritten Histories of Conceptual Art" in A.
Alberro & S. Buchmann (eds). Art After Conceptual Art. Cambridge,
Mass: MIT Press, p53
Debord, G. translated by Knabb, K. 2002. "Society of the Spectacle".
London: Rebel Press, pp.10-11
Ferris, A. 2001. "Forbidden Touch: Anne Wilson's Cloth" in J.
Jefferies (ed). Reinventing Textiles Vol.2: Gender and Identity. Winchester:
Telos Art Publishing, pp. 39-47.
Hobbs, P. 2001. "The Sewing Desire Machine" in J. Jefferies
(ed). Reinventing Textiles Vol.2: Gender and Identity. Winchester: Telos
Art Publishing, pp. 49-59.
Hoggard, L. 2006. "Grayson Perry- The Heraldry of the Subconscious".
Selvedge Magazine Issue 01, 2006, pp. 22-25
Jefferies, J. 1995. "Text and textiles: weaving across the borderlines"
in K. Deepwell (ed). New Feminist Art Criticism: Critical Strategies.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 168-9
Jones, W. & Perry, G. 2006. "Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Girl". London: Chatto & Windus p. 183
Klein, J. 2009. "Grayson Perry". London: Thames & Hudson,
pp. 60, 101,
Leeman, J. 2007 "Lia Cook: Re-Embodied". Textile Vol. 5 Issue
3, pp. 332-339
Maharaj, S. 2001. "Textile Art- Who Are You?" in J. Jefferies
(ed). Reinventing Textiles Vol.2: Gender and Identity. Winchester: Telos
Art Publishing, pp. 7-10.
Newdigate, A. 1995. "Kinda art, sorta tapestry: tapestry as shorthand
access to the definitions, languages, institutions, attitudes, hierarchies,
ideologies, constructions, classifications, histories, prejudices and
other bad habits of the West" in K. Deepwell (ed). New Feminist Art
Criticism: Critical Strategies. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Pp174-181.
Parker, R. & Pollock, G. 1981. "Old Mistresses: Women, Art and
Ideology". London: Pandora, p. 50.
Perron, M. 1998. "Common Threads: Local Strategies for 'Inappropriated
Artists'" in I. Bachmann & R. Scheuing (eds). Material Matters:
The Art and Culture of Contemporary Textiles. Toronto: YYZ Books, pp121-132.
Rowley, S. 1999. "Craft, Creativity and Critical Practice" in
S. Rowley (ed). Reinventing Textiles Vol.1: Tradition and Innovation.
Winchester: Telos Art Publishing, pp. 1-20.
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REVIEW:
Author: Anne Jackson
EXHIBITION REVIEW
EVA HESSE: STUDIOWORK
Camden Arts Centre
Arkwright Road, London
NW3 6DG
11 December 2009- 7 March 2010
In 1965, Eva Hesse wrote to
her friend Sol LeWitt, describing her first venture into three-dimensional
work. "Do more," he replied. "More nonsensical more crazy
more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever.....Make your own,
your own world" (Lippard 1976: 35). In the following five years she
did, a great deal more, producing a body of radical and innovative sculpture,
before dying, at age thirty-four in 1970. The exhibition, 'Eva Hesse:
Studiowork', curated by Briony Fer and Barry Rosen, focussed on the small,
experimental works, or test pieces, that formed a central part of her
sculptural practice, and were left in her studio at her death.
In the Camden Arts Centre gallery, the collection was displayed in four
vitrines, with a few wall-mounted works and a separate group in a second
room. The works were constructed in a variety of media, including latex,
wire-reinforced cheesecloth, sculpmetal and fiberglass. Though some may
have been intended as finished works (Figure 1), most appeared to be experiments
with casting materials and construction methods, and some could have been
bits of studio waste that just missed being thrown away. Hesse sometimes
exhibited collections of these test pieces in glass pastry-cases, making
compositions that verged on the surreal. The individual elements were
often rough, lumpy, crushed, or absurd; there were tangled clusters of
sculpmetal and odd containers, crumpled pieces of latex and a fabric 'boat-bumper'
tasselled with knotted strings.
In the catalogue, co-curator Briony Fer writes, "Most art-historical
interpretation tends to assume that we know what is the object of our
attention. Here, the point is that I do not know what these objects are"
(2009: 15). Later she describes the objects' "brute and mute thingness...Moulding,
flattening, pressing, hollowing out, cutting", she says, "There
may be something primordial in such basic, repetitive and habitual movements"
( 2009: 71).
"Matter matters"(Chave 2000:149), according to Carl Andre. Hesse's
sculptural practice relied on experimenting, and making objects as a mode
of thinking. "There is the smell of the studio in her work"
(2002: 43), her friend Mel Bochner said. As she moved from painting into
sculpture, she was first inspired by "the qualities of rope, string
and cord...their weight, elasticity, unruliness, pliability and tactility"
(Auther 2010: 68), the potential for moving line from two dimensions into
three. "String was what really got her going" (ibid: 69), her
ex-husband Tom Doyle commented.
She moved into exploring modern industrial materials, known to be unstable
and subject to deterioration over time. She began casting in rubber, applying
latex to textile and other surfaces in thin layers, and working with fiberglass.
The test pieces and sculptures she made in these materials have now changed,
as she foresaw they would. Many have darkened in color, becoming brittle
and falling apart. She appeared unconcerned by this prospect, especially
towards the end of her life, telling an interviewer, "Life doesn't
last; art doesn't last. It doesn't matter" (Nemser 2002: 18). In
the catalogue of 'Chain Polymers', the one-woman show mounted two years
before her death, she wrote, "I would like the work to be non-work...find(ing)
its way beyond my preconceptions" (Sussman 2006: 9). In the corner
of the 'Studiowork' show, a large, wall-mounted test-piece reflected this
aspiration (Figure 2). Made with the help of assistants after she became
ill, it comprised fiberglass, polyester resin, and latex, painted onto
a cheesecloth support. Hung like a banner, it appeared simultaneously
hard and soft, glassy and skin-like, and had darkened over time. It had
also become stuck-together in storage. Describing it, Briony Fer said,
"It has become something else" (Note 1).
Hesse's early sculpture manifested wit, mischief, and her sense of the
absurd. It was represented in the exhibition by several wall-mounted works,
made by obsessively wrapping cord over papier-mache shapes (Figure 3)
and painting the result. Resembling delicatessen products as much as phallic
symbols, they appeared very small in the space, having lost some of their
transgressive quality since the 1960's.
Hesse often expressed ambivalence about herself and her life. In her diaries
she described herself as "an artist --and one of the best" (Lippard
1976: 56), and wrote another time that "my feelings of inadequacy
are so great that I oppose this (sic) with an equally extreme need for
outside recognition" (Wagner 2002: 105). The rooms which housed 'Studioworks'
at the Camden Arts Centre were large and impressive; and within them some
of the work, particularly on the walls, appeared insubstantial, as if
communicating fragments of a lost message. The test pieces, carefully
arranged, were listed only as 'No title'.
"The fabric of Hesse's identity is a tight weave of intertwined threads
of words and art", according to Helen A. Cooper (2002: 98). Despite
the artist's copious diary-keeping, interviews, and press coverage, there
was little written material in the gallery. The objects were left, or
allowed, to speak for themselves. A certain sense of unease was created,
echoing what we know of Hesse's intention, to create 'non-connotive, non-anthropomorphic,
non-geometric, non, nothing, everything, but of another kind' of art'"
(Auther 2010: 73). This enigmatic quality meant that "the dangers
that beset the studioworks, of becoming a vast reliquary" (Fer 2009:
188), were not entirely avoided.
Coming from a traumatic background as a child refugee from Nazi Germany,
and with dysfunctional family relationships, Hesse was intelligent, intellectual
and well-read. She approached her career with deep seriousness and determination.
After finishing college at Yale School of Art and Architecture, she moved
to New York. Pretty and popular, she became part of an increasingly well-known
group of artists, who inspired and encouraged her, helping her to gain
access to exhibition opportunities and critical attention. In the time
of movements such as Minimalism, Process Art, and Anti Form (Note 2),
she became associated with, and influenced by, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre,
Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and other rising figures in the New York art
scene. As Rosalind Krauss points out, "the 1960's was the time during
which not only American critics but also many artists began, with a new
articulateness and power, to write and to speak...Authority is the consequence
of discourse" (2002: 27-28). In this circle of educated and articulate
peers, Hesse found her visual language, using the "minimalist vocabulary
of industrial materials and serial repetition" (Sussman 2006:1).
Another good friend, the critic Lucy Lippard, published the definitive
monograph on her work, in 1976.
Hesse began to achieve the success she aimed for in her lifetime, and
after her death her friends served her legacy well. Sol LeWitt designed
her monograph, and assisted in the preservation and cataloguing of the
items from her studio now formulated as 'studiowork'. Notes from a meeting
at Berkeley University Art Museum in 1981 show him making judgements about
"'studio leavings/experimental/little pieces/molds to make pieces
out of/unresolved-unfinished pieces' ...Some are 'definitely pieces' while
others 'definitely' not pieces"(Fer 2009: 15).
The second room of the 'Studiowork' exhibition contained a large, low
plinth displaying the items LeWitt described as "really stuff from
studio (sic) rather than pieces as such" (Fer 2009: 126). These were
papier maché, cheesecloth and wire mesh constructions, most probably
produced in Hesse's final months (Figure 4), and may have been intended
for casting, or to be elements incorporated into larger works. They were
unlike anything else Hesse left, and in the gallery, evoked associations
with bandages and hospital accoutrements, or with skin fragments and fingernail
parings.
Unlike most of the work in the exhibition, they aren't pictured in the
series of photographs of the artist taken in her studio, an important
resource for historical research since her death. "Everything that
was directly lived has receded into a representation", according
to Guy Debord in 'Society of the Spectacle' (2002: 7). Hesse was frequently
represented in photographs physically interacting with her work, touching
it, holding it, even reclining beneath a tangle of cord. The connection
appears very feminine and intimate, as if she was happy to be portrayed
associating with it through her body and physical presence, rather than
at an intellectual distance. In other photos, the depicted arrangements
of objects and 'studioworks' have directly influenced the ways in which
her work has been presented in one-woman shows since her death. They have
provided evidence for dates and offered insight into her working methods
and thought processes. As with her diary and other writings, the pictures
of what she was working on, and what was around her in her studio, have
been subjected to careful scrutiny and closely examined for meaning.
Hesse was portrayed as a tragic figure, "a beautiful martyr"
(Wagner 2002: 98) in art publications after her death. Her professional
career lasted only a decade, and was very prolific and concentrated, which
helps to make her a rewarding subject for critical scrutiny. She only
produced sculpture for five years, having trained as a painter. Arguably
she was just beginning to find her true artistic 'voice'. She was extremely
talented, and well-placed to achieve much more, had she lived longer.
Her career coincided with an interesting period in American culture, when
society was in a state of flux. She read Simone de Beauvoir's "The
Second Sex", and wrote about it in her diary, but died weeks before
the first Women's Liberation Movement demonstration in New York City.
Given her acceptance by the notoriously male-dominated New York art scene,
she might have resisted feminism, but in her absence she was borne forward
as an example. In spite of considerable critical and historic attention
as one of relatively few successful women artists of the 1960's, in some
ways, the presentation in 'Eva Hesse:Studiowork' leaves us with an absence,
an artist-shaped hole. Had she lived, she might have achieved much more,
or she might have run out of ideas, or disappeared into domesticity. An
extremely intelligent and articulate artist, the evidence Hesse left behind
is contradictory. She was both hungry for worldly success and capable
of writing of her work, "It is something, it is nothing" (Sussman
2006: 9).
From a twenty-first century perspective, informed by near-infinite digital
possibilities and education in critical discourse, the things Hesse made
while "fooling around" (Fer 2009: 14) in the studio may be significant
objects, or alternatively, fruitful material onto which to project contemporary
ideas. In any case, the making of these things, their preservation and
deliverance into an institutional context, have created a body of work
which stimulates thought. An important adjunct to this process is the
'Studiowork' catalogue. A lucid and persuasive meditation on the curatorial
process, it adds considerable insight and illumination to the task of
considering Eva Hesse. In it Fer writes, "Each small thing may be
so slight as to hardly even warrant the description 'art object', but
together they set up their own play of differences...they are art only,
as it were, by the skin of their teeth...'Near-things' always have an
edge of drama about them, like near-misses or knife-edge finishes"
(2009: 86).
Interviewed in 1992, Hesse's friend Mel Bochner said, "I think there
is a content to her work that one is more aware of now-or better, a metaphor
that wasn't clear during the sixties...What strikes me as a central issue
(is) her involvement with the phenomenology of being Eva Hesse-physically,
emotionally, and intellectually" (2002: 42).
In the catalogue Briony Fer writes, "My intention is not...to distinguish
complete pieces from incomplete ones, or to re-invent them as works in
the established sense of a 'work of art', but rather to ask: what is it
to bring this collection of disparate things into focus and think about
what it is that they are?" (2009: 15).
Anne Jackson
Notes
1. Gallery talk at 'Eva Hesse: Studiowork' Private View, December 10th,
2009, Camden Arts Center.
2. At the same time as Hesse and her peers were exhibiting sculptural
works in felt, string, and rope, the 'Art Fabric' movement , characterized
by Jack Lenor Larsen and Mildred Constantine, was at its height, with
shows such as 'Wall Hangings' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York
(1969). The compartmentalization of the art world was well-illustrated
when, in her 1976 Hesse monograph, Lucy Lippard wrote, "Women are
always derogatorily associated with wrapping, binding, knitting and so
on...Hesse's art transcends the cliché of 'detail as women's work
(Lippard 1976: 209)." See also Auther (2010: xxv)
References
Auther, Elissa. 2010. 'String, felt, thread: the hierarchy of art and
craft in American art'. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bochner, Mel. 'About Eva Hesse: Mel Bochner Interviewed by Joan Simon
(1992)'; in Nixon, M. (ed.) 2002. 'Eva Hesse' (October Files; 3). Boston:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chave, Anna C. 2000. 'Minimalism and Biography.' The Art Bulletin, Vol.82,
No. 1; March 7, 2000. pp149-163. New York: College Art Association.
Cooper, Helen A., quoted in Wagner, Anne M. 'Another Hesse (1996)', in
Nixon, M. (ed.) 2002. 'Eva Hesse' (October Files; 3). Boston: Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
DeBord, Guy, trans. Ken Knabb. 2002. 'Society of the Spectacle'. London:
Rebel Press.
Fer, Briony. 2009. 'Eva Hesse Studiowork'. Edinburgh: Fruitmarket Gallery.
Krauss, Rosalind. 'Eva Hesse: Contingent (1979)'; in Nixon, M. (ed.) 2002.
'Eva Hesse' (October Files; 3). Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Lippard, Lucy. 1976. 'Eva Hesse'. New York: New York University Press.
Nemser, Cindy. 'A Conversation with Eva Hesse (1970)'; in Nixon, M. (ed.)
2002. 'Eva Hesse' (October Files; 3). Boston: Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
Sussman, Elisabeth. 2006. 'Eva Hesse: Sculpture'. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Wagner, Anne M. 'Another Hesse (1996)'; in Nixon, M. (ed.) 2002. 'Eva
Hesse' (October Files; 3). Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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