Contours of Contemporary “Textiles”, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a two-part post on this subject. If you have not seen Part 1, you can reach it using
this link:

(insert link after publication)

Part 1 is shorter than Part 2.

There’s another book we should draw on and I’m
going to do that extensively. Lots of quotes
without specific page references.

It’s Elissa Auther’s “String, Felt, Thread: The

Hierarchy Art and Craft in American Art,” 2010.

Its title announces that it will focus on that old

question of whether a given piece is an instance of
art or craft. And on what basis.

You can tell that her treatment is somewhat

advanced over the TM’s with a Curator of
Contemporary Textiles.

She is not talking about “textiles,” “cloth” or

“woven fabric.” Her initial focus is on the more
general usage: “fiber.”
In the late 1960s, when her analysis begins, the
reigning rule was that “art” always occurred at the
level of conception, not at that of “execution.”

The prevailing art critiques of that time were

reluctant to admit fiber works to the arena of “art.”

Typical objections were that the means of

execution attracted too much attention to
themselves, thus diminishing the central
conception.

Criticisms included words such as: figurative,

decorative, utility, pretty, domestic, emphasize
technique, too polished or finished, too
symmetrical, mechanical, or feminine.

Critic: “…a white shag rug…crafts more than art..”

As we mentioned above, the Thelma Becherer
first strategy that figures like UNTITLED, 1969
Constantine and Larson and 36” x 14 ½ “
some others mounted to bring Velon monofilament, black cotton
some items of fiber fabric into thread, wood shavings
Collection: Evan T. Williams, Brooklyn, New York
the arena of art was one of
assimilation. The surprising dynamic profiles of the wood
shavings and their textures make a rich contrast
“Beyond Art Fabric,” is seen as with the Vilon monofilaments used for warp and
weft and with fine black weft. Deft use is made
a veritable catalog of that of the dark and light transparent materials, which
effort. have been packed together to make a dot-dash
pattern.
You’ve seen some instances
from it but here are two more.
 UNTITLED
Commissioned for a crematorium, Fruytier’s “ropes” vary in size and twist, in fiber
WILHELMENA FRUYTIER
Ockenburgh, the Netherlands and surface. Some were patinated by the sea
Dutch Born 1915
4’11” x 26’3” or darkened with oil and creosote. Always
Tapestry they were sufficiently hard to maintain their
Self taught
ropes of manila hemp and cotton, character when packed into the web. The
natural, dark neutrals. heavy relief is produced by the soumak
technique of diagonally
wrapping wefts or pairs of
wefts around successive warp
ends. The depth is
exaggerated by the relative
flatness of the white ground
and by the black areas that
suggest deep shadows.
Particularly successful are the
handling of the composition
and the relation of the
alternating woven pattern to
the brickwork.
Next, Auter treats two who worked with fiber in the “process, Postminimalist” period.

Robert Morris, “had already established a central place for himself in the art world as a minimalist (ed.
sculpturer) with a strong interest in exploring the phenomenology of viewing and the physical space of the
gallery. “”…he had demonstrated these interests in a series of large geometric forms in plywood, a series of
modular works in fiberglass and a series of four-part geometric sculptures.”

“Between 1967 and 1983, Morris produced an extensive group of sculptures made from a
single material, industrial felt. They called attention to felt as a “raw, soft, non-precious
material.

His early work here “referenced felt’s “utility as cushioning, packaging or insulation,” or like
others who use of felt “underscored its potential for softness and tactility.”

Robert Morris, Untitled, 1967-70. Gray felt, variable

dimensions. Williams College Museum of Art. Gift of Leo
Castelli (78.50). Copyrught 2009 Robert Morris/Artosts Rights
Society (ARS), New York
Subsequent series are “composed of single sheets of felt through which long, simple
cuts have been made.” “These pieces continued to foreground the tactile qualities of
felt and introduced the element of chance in the production of form.” “Morris strove to
allow felt’s susceptibility to the forces of gravity, humidity, and its own weight and
density to create form.”
Another reason why Robert Morris’ work with felt was not criticized as craft was that he
published, indicating what sort of process-oriented work he was engaged in. In an important
article “Anti Form,” he indicated that he was attempting to do with felt what Jackson Pollock and
Morton Louis did with paint.

“… Both used directly the physical, fluid properties of paint. Their “optical” forms resulted from
dealing with the properties of fluidity and the conditions of a more or less absorptive ground. The
forms and the order of their work were not a priori to the means…”

Louis actually poured his paint.

Morton Louis
Dark Thrust, c. 1953, 50 1/2 x 35 in. (128.3 x 88.9
cm), Acrylic resin (Magna) on canvas, DU49
Copyright © 2014 MICA
Rights administered by Artists Rights Society (ARS)

“After 1961, Louis painted in striking parallel streams of color that flowed across the bottom of
his pictures.”
Morris is exploring how the character of the felt he is using allows the art being made with it to “make
itself.” It’s not that he is not making any interventions on it, but rather than he can’t tell in advance how
the felt itself will determine the artistic character of a given work.

In addition to being recognized, perhaps as the best sculptor of his time, he demonstrates in his
publications that and how he is grappling with some of the problems and opportunities that kind of
process art he is working within entails.

Both of these things made it possible for him, when he made some moves with his felt that would draw a
criticism of “craft” in the work of others, not only to avoid that critique but to sometimes be given credit
for new kinds of creativity.

This is not to say that Morris entirely escaped critique by eminent art figures. He had a long debate with
Clement Greenberg about one of Greenberg’s “rules.” Morris drew on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein,
the philosopher, to demonstrate the error of Greenberg’s critique. Morris is a dangerous person to
debate.
That Morris was able to set the terms of the
critical evaluation of his work meant, in part,
that when he produced felts like this one, that
exuded sexuality, it did not result in critical
commentary, pressing them back into the
category of craft.

The critical arguments here are many and

complex. Just one said that Morris’ intellectual
framing was not a “disavowal of the feminine.”

Femininity was held to be perfectly acceptable

as long as it was “contingent” rather than an
“essential” aspect of Morris’ practice.

In any event, Morris was largely able to insulate

even some of his unconventional moves from
the craft criticism.
Eva Hesse was born in 1936 to a Jewish family in Germany, who came to the US to escape
the Nazi regime. Auter emphasizes her work with fiber, but there are some other
contextual things of interest.

Hesse had training in art. She graduated from New York's School of Industrial Art at the age
of 16. During this time, she also took classes at the Art Students League. From 1954–57 she
studied at Cooper Union and in 1959 she received her BA from Yale University. While at Yale,
Hesse studied under Josef Albers and was heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism.

Her early work (1960-65) was with drawings and paintings. She did the work with string and rope, that Auter
reviews, but she was eventually seen primarily as a sculptor working with newly defined fibers: latex, fiberglass and
plastic. Her fiber work can be seen as instances of her work with sculpture. She did not have long to do it. She died
in 1970 of a brain tumor.

“Hasse’s work in string, rope and cord was openly and positively assessed as nonlogical, eccentric and even inspired
by craft…”. These associations did not lead to a dismissal of her work as non-art.

Some examples may suggest why this was the case.

Eva Hesse was a different kind of
process-postminimalist artist.

She wanted to be a painter but

could never manage success there.

She had a studio space in what had

been a German textile factory.
There was a great deal of string and
tensile cord, covered in a woven
cotton, laying about.

Although she discovered latex soon,

her use of rope and other forms of
twisted fiber, such as string or cord Eva Hesse
became a signature aspect of her Tomorrow’s Apples (5 in
work. White)
Varnish, gouache, enamel,
She began with a series of reliefs. cord, metal, paper-cache,
papier-mache, unknown
modeling compound, particle
These reliefs were a major artistic board, wood.
breakthrough for Hesse. She June,1956
exhibited 14 of them in a group, in
1965 in Germany, before returning
to New York.
In January, 1966 Hesse made this strange but important
work, Hang-up. She used “woven cloth, which she wrapped
around a stretcher and then painted graduated gray. A long,
flexible cord attached to opposite corners of the frame loops
out into the space of the gallery.”

Hesse: “It was the first time my idea of absurdity or extreme

feeling came through…it’s the most ridiculous structure I
ever made and that’s why it is really good. It has the kind of
depth I don’t always achieve, and it is the kind of depth or
soul or absurdity or life or meaning or feeling or intellect
that I want to get.”

Absurdity has to do with conflicts. She sought to make

“nothings:” a form of abstraction that was highly allusive but
not symbolic.
Hesse’s work has, and is intended to have, physical, emotional impact on a
viewer.

One critic, Barry Schwabsky observed about it:

"Things folded, things piled, things twisted, things wound and unwound;
tangled things, blunt things to connect to; materials that have a congealed look,
materials that seem lost or discarded or mistreated; shapes that look like they
should have been made of flesh and shapes, that look like they might be made
of flesh but should not have been – you can look at these things, these
materials, these shapes, and feel the shudder of an unnamable nanosensation,
or you can let your eye pass by them without reaction; maybe you can do both
at once.“

Such impact is general, not directed toward any particular part of the body.
In 1970, the year she died,
Hesse produced this work.

Eva Hess
no title
1970
Latex, rope, string, wire.
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York
One of the things that Auther’s treatment emphasizes is that often the indication that a work in fiber is craft rather
than art has not much to do with the conception on which it is based, the character of the materials used, or the
work done on it, but is, importantly, an instance of sociology.

If you are working in one of the traditionally defined areas of art, say painting or sculpture, before you begin to
work with fiber it is more likely that your fiber creations will both be accepted as art and that any moves you make
that would traditionally be seen as diminishing your work as art, will be given a pass, or even celebrated as a
creative and legitimate artistic move.

It is also true that those who are not male or white have (and will) find it more difficult to have their pieces seen as
art.

This seems especially true for women working with fiber. The entire critical universe has created a largely male-
created vocabulary and a set of standards that make it nearly impossible for women working with fiber to claim
that their results are “art” rather than “craft.” (Hesse is an exception to this strong tendency.)

Auther has a substantial chapter in which she examines and evaluates this problem and assesses the efficacy of the
recent feminist politicization of it as a strategy for moving the way that entire groups of fiber works predominantly
produced by women are seen critically that opens up the possibility that some of them can legitimately asserted
as instances of art.
She chooses Faith Ringgold, an established painter who saw her work as
an articulation of African American experience.

Here is her “Race Riots” painting from her “American People” series in
1967.

Ringgold, inspired by Tibetan thankas, began to put fabric borders on her paintings and called them “quilts.”
She said that she moved from typical painting to fabrics in order to get away from the association of painting
with Western/European traditions.
Ringgold saw herself, importantly as a
feminist and painted a Slave Rape series in
which she teamed with her mother, Willi
Posey, who was a fashion designer and a
skilled seamstress. Ringgold, herself, had
sewing skills.

She did the paintings and they added

fabric borders.

Her work was shown in both art

exhibitions and quilt exhibitions.
Triggered by a question about why,
as an African, she was painting
instead of doing an African craft, like
masks, Ringgold, who also had skills
in beadwork and basket weaving,
began to make masks, again with
fabric components.

Her masks were made so that they

could be worn.

She entered some of her masks in an

art exhibition, once, and found that
they were being placed in an obscure
craft location.

She withdrew them and had them

worn at the opening reception
Beginning in 1974, Ringgold made some, larger
than life, soft sculptures.

She did the work that interested her, called it

“art,” and refused to be categorized, saying:

“…you use all your things. I have the advantage

of using the American experience, such as it is,
from Europe, which I was trained in. And I have
the advantage of my own cultural, classical
form, which is African…”
One more Ringgold quilt, one of
the last done with her mother.

Notice the care of the resolved

corners of the main border.

Faith Ringgold, Echoes of Harlem,

1980, Acrylic on canvas, dyed, painted,
and pieced fabric, 96 x 84 inches.
Created in collaboration with Willi
Posey. Copyright 1980 Faith Ringgold.
Courtesy of the artist.
Auter says that the work of Ringgold
contributed to “the acceptance of quilt-making
as an art form,” but that, as a general
outcome, this was more likely the result of the
work of some other feminist artists like
Mariam Schapiro and Judy Chicago.

Shapiro wanted to build an alternative abstract

language from materials associated with
women’s experience in the home. She meant
to embrace such things as “decorativeness” In
1972 she made a set of collage paintings that
she called “femmage.”
She saw her monumental
Anatomy of a Kimono,
1976, as a “ceremonial
robe for the new
woman.” She integrated
women’s hand
embroidered textiles into
the painted abstract
patterns of the kimono.

Critical comment said

that “Schapiro’s
originality lies in the fact
that she takes women’s
traditional art forms –
needlework,
handkerchiefs, ginghams,
laces, calicoes – and
transforms them; thus, a
women’s sensibility
becomes a legitimate
basis for a new art form.”
 Pattern: 
About the time Ringgold Rainbow Stripes
and Schapiro were Maker: 
appropriating quilting, E. S. Reitz
the art world was Circa
discovering, in a Whitney 1890
Museum exhibition of 1910
some abstract, bold, Possibly made in
pieced quilts, work that Pennsylvania
the critics said United States
complimented current 73
trends in abstract 80
painting in ways that IQM, Jonathan
granted them a new Holstein/Gail van der
aesthetic status as high Hoof Collection
art. 2003.003.0041
Some Navajo blankets were also being shown
and some critics said about them:

“I am going to forget, in order to really see

them, that group of Navajo blankets are not
only that. In order to consider them , as I feel
they ought to be considered – as Art with a
capital “A” –I am going to look at them as
paintings – created with dye instead of
pigment, on unstretched fabric instead of
canvas – by several nameless masters of
abstract art.”

Chief's-style blanket/rug, third phase 

ca. 1890-1900
Tapestry weave, dovetailed joins
1.725 x 1.43 m; Tassels 0.070 m
56.299 x 67.913 in.; Tassels 2.756 in
Catalog No. E-1600
Gift of Margaret Link Schevill, 1942
The feminist fiber artists, of course,
cheered this seeming acceptance of
quilts as art. Critics were quick to
contain it. They held that the
pieced, abstract quilts could be
seen as art because they were
similar to some painting.

They used words like “bold,”

”vigorous,” and “toughness” to
describe these pieced quilts, but
excluded appliqued quilts with
descriptions that said they were
“pretty,” “elegant,” and “beautiful,”
but “decorative,” and, hence,
“craft.”

They also ignored that fact that

women made both types.

Applique quilt, Barbara Korengold, Textile Museum program, 2013

Feminist quilt makers like Schapiro held that quilts did not need the support of analogies with painting to be
considered art. There was no need to separate them from women’s work in which they are historically
embedded or the characteristics of that work.

Schapiro: “Quilts must be accepted on their own terms…If we remove them from the frame of women’s
culture, we would obscure a unique aspect of their identity and women would lose a significant element of
their own history.”

Harmony Hammond: “My work is for and about women. I want to develop a personally based feminine art.”
She wanted to connect her work to that of her female ancestors, but still wanted to “collapse aesthetic
hierarchies between women and craft.”

Judy Chicago: “Yes, I do think there’s a distinction between art and craft and I think it’s a distinction that needs
to be maintained…but “there’s a tremendous amount of sexism and racism and classicism in the traditional
distinctions between art and craft.” For me, “the distinction is that in art, the technique or the material is in the
service of meaning, and in craft the technique, or the material or the process is an end in itself.”
Auter argues that these are all
assimilation strategies and while
they sometimes licensed particular
artists to work with fiber and still
be seen to creating art, they didn’t
impinge much on the traditional
hierarchies between art and craft. Ghada Amer
Red Diagonals, 2000
Auter says that “…the positive Acrylic, embroidery, and
impact of the feminist critique is gel medium on canvas
72 x 72 inches
registered by the institutional and Copyright Ghada Amer
commercial success of artists (she Courtesy of Gregosiam
names Ghad Amer as one) who Gallery
“employ embroidery, sewing, lace-
making and other forms of
needlecraft in diverse ways…the
legitimacy of their fiber-based
practices in the contemporary art
world is no longer questioned.”
Auter cites “installation art” as another
genre having real impact by taking
fiber and textiles into the world to
“make further statements about
society, history, vulnerability, peace,
war, urban reality and more.”

One of her examples is this political

installation of mannequins without
heads, by Yinka Shonibare, seated
around a table in African printed
garments, apparently making a
decision.

The installation is entitled “Scramble

for Africa.”

The textiles themselves are ironic

since they are "Dutch wax-printed
cotton.“ They have a colonial history
and have been passed between and
among the Indonesian Dutch, African
consumers and textile makers.
Installations can be inside,
but some have to be outside.

Here is another from Africa

that has an ecological protest
message.

It is a protest against
deforesting in order to make
charcoal.

Bundles of charcoal are

wrapped in red and white
chevron-striped cloth.

Such deforestation will also

impact local wildlife.

GEORGIA PAPAGEORGE, Kilimanjaro/Coldfire Project, 2009

Installation with a chevroned red and white banner/barrier
done at a selling point in Zambia, 2009.
Auther also lists the internationalization of
the contemporary art world.

Historically, non-western art and art have

been excluded but we have seen in this
review that biennial events that started in
western Europe are going on in Eastern
Europe and in China.

The 16th International Triennial of Tapestry

(note that word) was held in Lodz, Poland, in
2019.

And there is an important, active,

international Chinese biennial series that has
been going on since 1999. This year it was
given virtually. It is entitled “From Lausanne
to Beijing” 11th International Fiber Art
Biennale.”

We will include some works from both of

these events below.
Auter says that this internationalization of
art has also led to the emergence of
curators interested in working in this
enlarged arena.

She names the late Okwui Enwezor as one

such.

He suggested that changes involved the

jettisoning of modernism: a shift in
curatorial language to one more attuned to
the tendencies of the 21st century. 56th Vencie Biennale
Okwui Enwezor, the Biennale's curator and its first from Africa

I looked around for other non-western

curators of the sort Author cites, but the
center of gravity of such curators is still
western.

One sign of this latter tendency is that the

Chinese organizers of Beijing” 11th
International Fiber Art Biennale have
selected as their top curator, Joan Schulze, a
US contemporary quilt maker, with a
dedication to the “collage aesthetic.”
A person who knows the fiber art world suggests that Jenelle Porter is another
good example of the kind of emerging curator Auther cites as forces for opening
up discourse to include textiles and fiber works as legitimate instances of art.

Porter curated “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present,” an exhibition, 2014-2015,

which was a history of how artists have used fiber as a medium for
contemporary sculpture.  She also edited the sumptuous book that was its
catalog.

Porter’s other work tends to address larger themes that incorporate

what we think of as fiber when relevant to the ideas she’s examining.

Here is a link to a short clip that is an example: 

https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions
/figuring-color-kathy-butterly-felix-gonz
alez-torres-roy-mcmakin-sue-williams

You need to be persistent about this link.

It will initially say that things are closed
but you can find and use it.
Porter is conceptually articulate, and I am not sure I
can characterize her curatorial thinking accurately,
but I’ll give you some phrases and images from her
Fiber: Sculpture 1960 – Present volume.

She writes an early essay, “The Materialists,” which

begins with a quote from Donald Judd:

“It’s not like a movement; anyway, movements no

longer work. Also, linear history has unraveled
somewhat.”

Porter’s essay has six labeled parts: Transfigured,

Dimensioned, Conceptualized, Grounded, Gendered,
Transcended.

I’ll give phrases and images from each one.

TRANSFIGURED

Quotes Auther as saying that fiber had

symbolic power that subordinated it in
the history of art to utility and craft
but also had a capacity to push the
parameters of what counted as fine
art in the 60s and 70s.

Resisting factors included: cultural

connotations of fiber, popular trends
in fiber crafts and gender bias deriving
from fiber’s association with women
and the domestic realm.

Ed Rossbach, World Egg, 1969, sisal, jute and polyvinylchloride, 28½ x 26 inches
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Daphne Farago Collection.
DIMENSIONED

…fiber preserves its integrity through

abstraction. It signifies nothing other than
itself.”
“…eccentric abstraction is more allied to the
nonformal tradition devoted to opening up
new areas of materials, shape, color and
sensuous experience. …announce a changed
understanding of art.

“…painting became sculptural…sculpture

became architectural.”

“Consider rope” long seen as purely

utilitarian.” Flanagan threaded it through
rooms, Grossen plaited it to generate floor-
bound and suspended masses, Hesse
threaded it through a panel or hung it in
space; Winsor made towering forms; Rohm
created sagging grids on walls.
Grossen setting up in an exhibition.
CONCEPTUALIZED

“Grid” is a basic fiber concept. “..the loom expresses the

grid’s potential for infinity.” “Grid is as close as we can come
to perceiving pure being free from any rationale or
emotional activity…”

“…Artists who begin to work with the grid usually destroy

it.” Sheila Hicks:”…not applicable to all occasions.” “Artists
found it necessary to break with the right angles of the
grid.” Even works that retain its logic, loosen its rigid
organization with pliable materials.

Grid is rendered absurd, as in Eva Hesse’s Ennead, on the

right which starts with strings hanging on a grided
background and then “descends into an unruly jumble.”
Porter’s next facet of her The
Materialists article is
GROUNDED. This is something
we’ve seen examples of before.
Here are two again.
GROUNDED

But let’s look at what she says (Inside, looking up)

here. Gravity is important. Some
of these fiber pieces don’t take
their shape until gravity bears on
them.

Barbara Shawcroft’s Meditation

Space, 1974 is 10 feet tall and
weighs over 1,000 pounds. It
slumps. A lot. It can be entered.

Some of these grounded fiber

works (look back at Slide 36) lay
flat.

For fiber to move to the floor was

a complete rejection of the
tradition of tapestry.
GENDERED

Feminists seized on fiber to unravel sexual politics embedded

in most critical separations of art and craft. They used
weaving, sewing, needlecraft and knitting to overthrow critical
entrenched notions.

Faith Wilding’s Crocheted Environment, 1972, was room-

scaled, inhabitable, and adamantly celebratory of domestic
handicraft.

Wilding is an older artist. Porter names some younger ones

doing gendered fiber work. Haegue Yang is one of these.
Porter gives us Haegue Yang’s installation
Floating Knowledge and Growing Craft-Silent
Architecture Under Construction 2013.

This installation includes some macrame pieces

and mundane things in Yang’s office; a kettle
and a podcast-loaded ipod that eased her hours
of labor.

They are also meant to signal that these

macrame pieces are not your grandmother’s.

Also, cutting in another direction, they say that

art is a job and that artworks take hours to
make, another way that Yang is saying that her
work is considered sculpture (not craft) because
of the trajectory of fiber in art.
TRANSCENDED

The fiber art movement lacked the critical

apparatus that attended main street
movements.

Fiber’s vulnerability as an art form has to do

with its connection to utility…and the refusal
of many artists to be defined by the material
they use.

Geography is another barrier. Most

prominent artists are scattered around the
world.

This book shows that artists use fiber for all

the reasons others paint, sculpt, perform,
dance, that is, to give form to ideas.
Auter says the “increasing visibility of fiber
as a material in contemporary art is partly
fueled…by the renaissance of popular
fiber-craft in American culture.”

She cites “knitting, sewing, felting and

embroidery” saying that they are
“connected to a range of social forces
associated with third-wave feminism’s
ironic embrace of women’s traditional
craft, indie culture’s veneration of the
handmade, the Do-It-Yourself Movement
lifestyle.

She says that Debbie Stoller author of the

Stitch ‘n Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook,
indicates that we had forgotten that Knitting:
knitting, isn’t just a part of women’s social (left) Doll’s sweater, wool, buttons,
obligation, serving others, it serves the full-fashioned sleeve, 12½ x 6½
knitter as well: the incredible satisfaction inches, Grace Howe, 1970s.
and sense of serenity that could come
(right) Sampler, wool, various
from the steady click, click, click of one’s stitches, 11 x 23 inches, Nancy
knitting needles.” (Howe) Perkey, 1980s.
I’m not female and don’t knit but
can report something similar from
my years tying knots in macrame.
Macrame, cotton dyed
cord, double half hitch,
The feel of good cord in your alternating square knot,
hands, as you worked, was drumstick, 8¼ x 13 inches.
sensually pleasant.
Study in double half hitch
placement
And the early ego reward from
being able, constantly, to see your R. John Howe,
progress, enhanced the 1980snd alterna080s.
satisfactions you experienced long
before you finished a given piece.
Although she may have alluded to it in her citing of the increased visibility of textiles and fiber
as art, I would like to have seen a more explicit recognition, by Auther, of the role that the
computer and its capabilities, and then the web, have played in it.

I cannot exaggerate how much and how often my computer, and even my relatively limited
knowledge of the web’s potentials, have enabled my work in attempting this summary.

And this reminds me that video is the

only way some installations can be
experienced fully.

The next slide is of an outdoor, three-

part installation by the African artist
Georgia Papageorge.
GEORGIA PAPAGEORGE, Genesis, Crucifixion, Aftermath
(from Africa Rifting, 2003
Ultrachrome prints, 3 parts, each 69 3/8 x 47 1/4 inches
Installation view, Environment and Object – Recent African Art
Tang Museum,2011

Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire Nambia/Brazil, 2001

Looped DVD,15:39 minutes
 And some
textile
artists seem
to be
getting
more
interested
in light.

Haegue Yang
Warrior, Believer,
Lover, 2011.
anthropomorphic
light sculptures,
mixed media,
variable
 Rebecca R. Medel
Pleiades Star Field
Embroidered silk floss French knots and glass beads on
digitally printed cotton19 x 19 inches
One reason that Joan Schulze has been selected as the top curator at the current Chinese Biennale is,
likely, that she has introduced a variety of techniques into her art. Its not adequate to say that she’s a
quilt maker, although she makes quilts.

The most prominent methods which Schulze has utilized in the creation of her art include dyeing fabric
(1967-1987), photography and photocopy processes (since 1970); “painting, Xerox transfer, direct and
glue transfer processes” (beginning in 1980) and digital technology (1990 to present).

Despite being an artist of many disciplines, photography is one of the most central elements in her
work. For Schulze, her photographs can serve as means of inspiration, but more importantly these
images are oftentimes transferred onto fabric or paper, becoming the work of art itself.

While film, point and shoot, and phone cameras have all served Schulze, Schulze cites the photocopier
 as her “favorite and most important camera.” 

Starting in the mid 90's, Schulze began to create line drawings in a new way, making photocopies of
stitched organza and printing these manipulated images onto silk, leaving the artist with what she
refers to as “toner drawings. In her quilting process, Schulze layers the silk overtop batting and
backing, and finishes by adding stitched lines that give depth to her pieces.

Here are some of her pieces.

Schulze is standing front of one of her City Woman, 38 x 50 inches, 2010
collages at an earlier Chinese Biennale.
 “Schulze, Opus (2017), a
monumental collage (94 by
134 inches) that expands
her signature techniques
and themes. She creates
long strips using packing
tape and found images
from contemporary
magazines. These are torn,
cut, ripped, and pulled into
strips that are graffitied into
entirely new images. The
strips are sewn onto silk
organza, layered on canvas,
and sewn together as a
montage of images that
Opus—Center (2016), engages the viewers in a
from Schulze's ‘people’s meeting’.”
exhibition as FAM's
Distinguished Woman
Artist of 2017
One more book that
Auther suggests I Right away you can see how
should look at is different it is.
David Revere
McFadden’s Radical Cal Lane says this cover work
Lace and Subversive was inspired by watching her
Knitting. It came a grandmother decorate
few days ago. cupcakes by placing a doily on
top of the cake, sifting
I’m going to mine it as powdered sugar through it,
shamelessly as and removing the doily to
before. expose a powdered print.

Cal Lane Lane has covered a person

Covered, 2005
Sifted soil on person
with a large lace and sifted
Dimensions variable colored soil, to create
Collection of the artist “beautiful filth.”
Courtesy Foley Gallery,
New York.
 Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting , is David Revere McFadden’s catalog for
the exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York
City in 2007, four years before Auther’s book which references it.

I have been warned repeatedly that things are moving so fast and in so many
directions in the fiber arts world; that one should be cautious about claiming to
be describing what is going on now, that’s early 2021.

McFadden retired in 2013 and all of the artists (the pieces) in Radical Lace and
Subversive Knitting are nearly 15 years older.

Although some of it might be a bit dated, let me show you some of the work in the Radical Lace and
Subversive Knitting catalog. McFadden warns that “the exhibition makes no attempt to define either knitting
or lace in any specific historical or technical sense.”

So, you need to get rid of most expectations you might to have about what you are going to see.

McFadden presented 38 pieces in this exhibition, allocated to named groups.

I’ll give you one work from each of these groups.

 Corporal Constructions
Freddie Robbins says that she never
associated sewing and knitting with
things by and for frumpy old ladies.

She’s focused on undermining and

mocking these associations.

She has created a web site (

www.iniva.org/xspaceprojects/robin
s
) that lets users make nonsensical,
multi-sleeved garments based on
knitted patterns.

This piece is a series of four-sleeved

sweaters knit together by machine to
form a honeycomb. 5.5 x 10 x 10 ft.

Successfully subverts conventional

ideas about the knitted object.
 Matters of Scale

Janet Echelman has reinvented

public sculpture using fiber and
wind effects to make large pieces
that are fluid and changing.

This is a 300-foot lace basket over a

travel circle in Portugal.

Mesmerized by fishing nets, she

had an engineer (and expert on
sails) design software that let her
test the performance of her nets,
before they were made, at different
wind velocities and directions

She Changes, 2005

Light Constructions
Bennett Battaile applies
mathematical concepts to
structural form to make lace-
like glass sculptures.

The original inspiration for

History (on the right) was a
gyroid shape (below, left)
composed of saddle-shaped
curves.

He constructs his pieces a

single element at a time. Black
rods are the “lace” design;
white pieces are structural
support.

The link with lace remains

visual and conceptual.
 Interconnections
Sabrina Gschwandtner’s multifaceted practice defies
categorizing.

She produces works that relate tactility, hand

process and textile skills to filmmaking.

As a curator, she organizes participatory knitting

sessions and knitting-related performances and
installations.

As the founding editor of

KnitKnit magazine, she seeks
to identify and develop a
community of people who
use knitting in various ways
and to disseminate
information about them and
their work to the general
public in a format that is itself
a work of art (far right side).
Creative Deconstructions
Cal Lane, who
created our doily
decorated body on
the cover of Radical
Lace and Subversive
Knitting, has another
side to her practice in
which she uses a
welding torch to put
doily patterns into
very male objects like
shovels, wheel-
barrows, even
I-beams.

Maybe a little humor

here. She mentions
female “marking” of
traditional male
territory.
The Beauty of Complexity
Hilal Sami Hilal works,partly, in handmade paper he
has made from old, cotton clothes. He uses it to create
delicate structures that evoke the fragility and
sensuality of lace.

Some of his work includes ornamental text, but the

holes are as important to
the piece as are the
delicate lines and shapes
that define them.

In these works, language

becomes abstract and real
letters and words become
an indecipherable
alphabet.

Some take the form of

books but in this work the
book has become a series
of screens forcing viewers
to “read between the
lines.”
That’s the end of what I’ve mined from the books I’ve collected and read.

But the youngest of the pieces treated in them are likely about 15 years old. Given the way that things
in the fiber art world are proliferating and accelerating, a lot can happen in 15 years.

Fortunately, there two more recent “windows” that let us see some of what has been going on in
more recent years,

The first of these is the 16th International Triennial of Tapestry was held in Lodz, Poland, in 2019.

I’m going to show you a few works from

it. (There is a link that let’s you look a bit
more widely. I’ll give it to you at the
end.)
Two Gold Medals Awarded

Gold Medal
Dobroslawa Kowalewska/PL:
” A Letter to Helena”, 2018;
150 x 180 x3 cm;
embroidery, painting,
synthetic and natural fibers,
acrylic paint,
Jacquard fabric;
1st Prize, photo

Photo: Beatrijs Sterk

 Alex Younger
Gold Medal Awarded Solidarity (installation)
Hand-dyed, handwoven bamboo with thiox monoprint, 
150in x 100in,
2017
Silver Medal
Aurélia Jaubert/
France:
“3eme Age (le retour
d´Ulysse), 2018 ;
300 x 204 cm;
assemblage,
appliqué and
sewing, embroidery
fragments on
canvas;
2nd Prize; photo

Photo:Beatrijs Ster
Bronze Prize

Ieva Augaityté/ Lithuania:

“The Touch. Echoes of Silence”, 2018,
4 frames, 90 x 68 cm;
tapestry technique, wool, fishing line, jute, viscose, linen, milk fiber, LED strip, arduino board,
wire;
3rd Prize;

photo Beatrijs Sterk

 Wlodzimierz
Cygan/
Poland :
„Tapping“,
This piece drew a lot series of
of admiring critical woven works,
comment. 6 pieces, each
15 x 280 cm;
fiber optic
has been
used in each
one in a
different
way ; photo:
Wlodzimierz
Cygan
Agata Ciechomska/PL:”Distinct Connection”, 2017;100 x
80cm, 100 x 70cm, 100x 80cm; weaving, hand quilting ,
monofilament, cotton; photo Beatrijs Sterk
Tina Stuthers /Canada: “L
écoulement”, 2018 ; 150 x
200 x10 cm;knit fabric,
hand stitching, leather,
magnetic tape and VHS
metal parts , buttons,
sequins; photo

Beatrijs Sterk
Ane Henriksen/ Denmark:
“Urban Growth”,
2018; 260 x 135 12 cm; own
technique ,
found gloves,

photo Beatrijs Sterk

Anna van Stuijvenberg / NL :
”Do you see it, it doesn’t see you”,
285 x 270 x 300 cm,
2015,
own technique,
industrial felt; Bronze medal;

photo Beatrijs Sterk

Chikako Imaizumi/ Japan:
”Between Borders”, detail,
2017;
240 x 210 x 150cm;
own technique,
wool, silk, cotton, banana
fiber, metal, wood;

photo Beatrijs Sterk

There was an
exhibition of
miniatures
associated
with the Lodz
event.

(I don’t mean for

you to be able to
read this text. I
just want you to
see that this
associated event
was held.)
And, last, there is an important, active, international Chinese biennial series that has been going on since 1999. This year it is
being given virtually. It is entitled “From Lausanne to Beijing” 11 th International Fiber Art Biennale.”

The exhibition is jointly hosted by the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University and the China National Arts and Crafts
Society. Over 300 works of fiber art by artists from five continents are featured in this Biennale. They will be available for
online viewing to audiences across the globe through February 16.

The web site is a little complicated to work with (I’ll give you the link at the end here) but it’s the current last word on what’s
going on in the fiber arts world.

I’ll show you some of the award-winning entries.

The Biennale pursues the intrinsic nature of fiber while also exploring a new format: The virtual
exhibition.

The virtual exhibition hall revolutionized the relationship between fiber and space, making it possible to
experience art from anywhere in the world. By the "2.5D" virtual venue, audiences were provided with
all-new perspectives and experiences.

Over 1,000 submissions by artists from 56 countries were sent to the organizing committee.

One Gold Award, four Silver Awards, 11 Bronze Awards, and 79 Excellence Awards were presented in
recognition of fiber artists who created outstanding works in this pandemic-stricken time.

This year's Biennale widely features works that speak of artists' social responsibility in a time of disease.

For the theme Symbiosis and Coexistence, artists reflected on how to transform crisis into action.
Notice that most of these are installations. The age
of the single piece seems largely to have passed.
 Mi-Kyoung Lee, Korea/US, Symbiosis [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Gold Medal
Depicts both today's natural landscape and our symbiotic artificial landscape.
So, we have seen that Rowland Ricketts’ caution to me before I began, that the field of contemporary
textiles/fiber arts is increasingly difficult to characterize generally, is correct.

Its varieties have multiplied, especially since the traditional hierarchies between art and craft have been
penetrated by some fiber artists; even, successfully, globally, rejected in some areas.

More, the centrifugal forces emanating from the desires of some artists to work with other materials are
strong (do I want to work with fiber or light or photography or photocopied images? the list could go on
endlessly). And some are focused on political issues like the environment or on the lesbian or gay male
experience.

And although the best textile artists can often travel internationally, that’s not the same thing as working
in a community of artists in Paris or New York City or Lodz or Beijing. And a gifted individual artist,
especially in Asia or Africa, could go unstimulated and unseen.

As Porter quotes Donald Judd saying, “It’s not a movement…also linear history has unraveled
somewhat.” It’s difficult to suggest its general shape. It has shapes and shapes and they are often
dynamic.

So, even with the help of the literature and some folks with a personal knowledge of what is going on
with contemporary textile and fiber art, I may have not given an accurate introductory sketch of the
actual ongoing contours.

The Lodz and Beijing events have given use the best sense of the present.
I hope you have enjoyed this exploration by an interested amateur of some of the
contours of contemporary textile and fiber art.

 Red and Black in Seven Parts, Marla Mallett

  1972.  Horsehair and wool, 4’ 6” x 11’

Collection:  Regency-Hyatt Hotel, O'Hare
Several kinds of thanks are due.

First, of course is the huge one owed to the authors and creators of the books and catalogs that I
have drawn on shamelessly (but with global credit). I listed them in one of the slides above.

Thanks, also to Caroline Kipp, the Curator of Contemporary Textiles, here at The Textile Museum in
Washington, DC. Caroline suggested that the book by Giselle Eberhard Cotton, Magali Junet,
From Tapestry to Fiber Art: The Lausanne Biennials 1962-1995, 2017, was a good starting point for
discerning what is and has been going on in the area of contemporary textiles. And it has been
what she suggested.

Once I had a draft of this Powerpoint document, I shared it with a number of people. And I got a
lot of help. Special thanks are due to Barbara Korengold, Floris Flam, Gwen Lanning, Hillary Steel,
Karthika Audinet, Lori Karthchner, the Curator of Education at The Textile Museum, Marla Mallett
and Rowland Ricketts.

Errors in this Powerpoint treatment remain mine alone.

R. John Howe
Eccentric Wefts Two links on separate slides below.
January, 2021
https://www.google.com/search?
hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1177&bih=590&ei=AIwHY
O7cM-
eu5NoPq_aAeA&q=16th+International+Triennial+of+Tapestry
+in+Lodz+2019&oq=16th+International+Triennial+of+Tapestry
+in+Lodz+2019&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1CYI1iYI2CUN2gAcAB4AI
ABPYgBPZIBATGYAQCgAQKgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZw&sclie
nt=img&ved=0ahUKEwju3J_AsqnuAhVnF1kFHSs7AA8Q4dUDC
Ac&uact=5
It’s best to copy and paste this link.
 This Chinese event
is a wonder.

The web site takes

some getting used
to and it was
buggy for me in
places.

But it gives a
healthy look at
what is going on in
fiber arts, right
now, early 2021.

Here’s the link: https://lbfiberart.ad.tsinghua.edu.cn/