TYING UP LOOSE ENDS

How Women Changed The Way We See Textile Art

In the summer of 2018, I visited New York from London and had the chance to visit the Museum of Modern Art. Out of all the works from the museum’s collection, Geta Brătescu’s Medea’s Hypostases II, III and IV (1980) were most indelibly etched into my mind. I was intrigued by the medium listed on the adjacent placard: ‘Drawing with sewing machine on textile.’ My return home coincided with the first major retrospective of textile artist Anni Albers in the United Kingdom. Learning about Albers’ life as well as the criticism other women artists have faced while working with textiles, I became interested in the history of textile art with regard to women. I found that women have often been the primary textile artists as a consequence of division of labor. However, gendered opinions and prejudice led to devaluation of skills and techniques employed by the “inferior sex,” not to mention the creative pieces themselves. Looking back in time from famous 16th century collections to contemporary artists like Judy Chicago, we can see how women artists have used textiles in skilful and innovative ways to change preconceived negative opinions about textile art in their respective Western societies. Whilst textile production first emerged with practical purpose alongside ceramics, woodworking, stonework and metalwork circa the 7th millennium BC, centuries of tradition, skill development, and refinement elevated its status Pre-Industrial Revolution. Although men who acted as representatives in the form of merchants and trade guild owners took the lion’s share of credit, works can still be noted as the collaborative efforts of men and women. Variety in sophisticated manufacture, design complexity, creativity and material opulence deemed textiles luxury goods and eventually secured them a tentative position amongst other fine arts.

Why was this fine arts label a tentative one? The main reason was the nature of textile products, lying on the border between narrative and decorative intentions and practical use. One of the best examples of this ambiguity is a series of tapestries titled The Lady and the Unicorn (c. 1500). The sextet of large wall-length tapestries features a flaxen-haired medieval lady juxtaposed with a unicorn and occasionally her handmaid. Its origin has been traced back to Flanders (Northern Belgium), known for weaving the wool of neighboring lands into cloth. While the artists behind the piece are unknown, it can be assumed that they were mostly women as they were trained in the craft from a young age and were sanctioned cheap labor.

Reasons for present-day appreciation of the pieces are clear considering the intricate techniques and elaborate symbolisms utilized. Made by a team consisting of a patron, designer, cartoonist, master weaver, workers who set up the loom and weavers who wove, The Lady and the Unicorn series is the intertwining and elaborate product of several minds, skills and talents. The ornate background of flowers and plants is called mille-fleurs (thousand flowers) and swift production of woven fabrics. Inventions such as Spinning Jenny, invented in 1764, coincided with widespread use of bleaches and dyes to decorate fabric. The efficiency generated by textile mechanization demolished the exclusivity of elaborate textiles and eclipsed the acknowledgement of the laborious and slow art of weaving that was previously the primary source of practical and artistic fabrics. Additionally, textile work involving personalisation, individual stylisation and distinct creative technique waned upon their mass, consumer-targeted production. Unique textile work shifted exclusively to the domestic household where several elite women would embroider and sew as a coveted wifely asset. This increased the correlation of textile works with women and thus perpetuated the general undermining of the art form. and was a specialty of Flanders’ weavers. Every plant was individually designed, improvised by the weavers as they worked. Composed of wool and silk dyed with rich, natural dyes, the dainty flora are captivating, drawing the beholder into the mystical setting within the tapestry while golden fibers compliment details with different forms such as the patterns on the tent.

Ensuing efficiency due to the mechanization of textiles was certainly one of the causes of the devaluation of textile art. However, it is important to note the strengthened association of textiles with women and consequent labeling as a mundane, unskilled craft. In 1986, feminist theory pioneer Sandra Harding wrote: “In virtually all cultures, whatever is thought of as manly is more highly valued than what is thought of as womanly.” Her statement highlights the negative connotations associated with all women-related activities as well as the natural inclination of society to disparage women’s work. The employment of women in textile factories as cheap labor brought about a correlation of all textile products with words akin to “cheap.” Contrary to woodwork and metal sculpting, a typically male pursuit or profession, work with textiles was unanimously categorized as a mundane, domestic and unvalued hobby.

The dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 1760s marked the beginning of a shift in the appreciation of textile arts. The invention of cotton gin and the use of waterwheels to power textile machinery transformed the textile manufacturing industry, resulting in inexpensive

The Tate Modern’s Anni Albers retrospective I visited showcased an extensive collection of works and written texts on techniques and the creation of textile art spanned eleven rooms, visually recounting how Albers came to redefine textile art first in the German Staatliches Bauhaus (1922-1932) and then in the USA where she went on to become the first textile designer to have a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1949). Albers reformed discriminatory opinions and prejudice against the traditionally female art practice in several ways. With no qualms about gender stereotyping, Albers took advantage of industrial mass production of textiles, infused her works with numerous other academic disciplines and in depth experimentation with texture, color, material and form to create versatile pieces.

One way Anni Albers transformed negative perceptions was through conceptualisation of woven pieces as works of engineering or architecture and by implementing highly regarded

Bauhaus art school qualities in her works. For example, in response to male Bauhauslers who attempted to make walls membranous, Albers created a membranous wall covering that behaved like a sound-absorbing and light-reflecting wall. Using carefully selected fabrics such as cotton, chenille and cellophane, her piece not only reflected light like architectural spaces but also absorbed sound. She described such pieces as works of textile engineering. Albers worked around Bauhaus exclusion of women through innovation of new techniques and the introduction of novel technologies to the Bauhaus’ weaving workshop. She also popularized the idea of weaving as a hands-on, intensive and researchheavy sculptural art form. Quoting Albers, “Sculpture uses a given material… [Weaving] is closest to architecture because it is a buildingup out of a single element, building a whole out of single elements.” The German term bauhaus translates in English to “building house.” Albers essentially brought the male-dominated art school of architecturally minded students to acknowledge her redefinition of building and architecture through textiles and fabrics.

The piece Black White Yellow is a manifestation of Albers’ expressive and extensive experimentation with texture, color, material and form. Several typical Bauhaus qualities are reflected within the piece, including inventive color use, intriguing geometric patterns and sleek and sharp lines typical of Modernist art. Her colors and design reveal mathematical elements, and her application of modernist ideas to the ancient craft of the loom directly opposed criticisms identifying weaving as an outdated art. Seeing no distinction between mass production of textiles and artworks, Albers embraced mechanization and industrialisation to distribute several of her original designs to the eyes of the public. Albers’ clever technique, in its commercial success, was also victorious in fulfilling the Bauhaus school’s aim to bridge the gap between art and industry via coalescence of crafts and fine art.

While Anni Albers can be credited for confronting several notions of prejudice against textile art, American artist Judy Chicago’s works are different in that they directly confront textile art’s history as a “women’s craft” by politicizing it. She works towards altering the perception of traditionally female crafts by directly addressing sexist ideas and highlighting female efforts, literally through narrative textile pieces and metaphorically by demonstrating labor intensive yet delicate and engaging techniques. With Chicago’s founding of the first feminist art program in the United States (1970), Chicago and affiliated artists, such as Miriam Schapiro, sought to reclaim and re-contextualise fabrics and thread as media.

Judy Chicago’s sculptural installation The Dinner Party (1979) is considered by many fine art critics as the first epic feminist artwork. A tribute to women, it is composed of a large triangular table with thirty-nine place settings dedicated to illustrious goddesses, historical figures and important women throughout history. It incorporates ceramic cutlery and porcelain plates but the most fascinating features are the table runners that are embroidered with imagery drawn from each woman’s story, executed in techniques and needlework from the periods in which each woman lived. In addition to a variety of techniques, decorative styles and motifs typical to the different time periods are used, often interacting with the imagery upon the plates. The 20th century marked a change in the way textile arts were generally perceived. Anni Albers and Judy Chicago’s artwork rallied welldeserved respect for the previously undervalued art form. Contemporary textile artists have followed in their footsteps, advancing and evolving unique forms of textile arts and even breaching through the flat, two-dimensional plane.

Mimi Jung is a Los Angeles based textile artist who works with large-scale weaving. Her pieces tend to involve constructed forms woven with delicate panels of natural fibers. Her pieces tend to involve constructed forms woven with delicate panels of natural fibers. Similar to Albers, she seems to have architectural influences and create membranous “walls,” but Jung seems to permeate through space to a much greater extent. For instance, in her installation Four Teal Walls (2015), Jung’s twenty meter tall frames wind through the hollow gallery setting in all directions. They interact with space such that their forms are indicative of privacy and yet translucent weaving of graduated thickness allows light to weave through the threads. With unfinished edges juxtaposed with straight steel skeletons, Jung’s process is evident and just as mesmerizing as the quiet and meditative environment Four Teal Walls generates. The clear distinctions of every thread compel the observer to contemplate the hours of work such a monumental piece entailed, as well as the meditative practice involved in expansive weaving.

When I first delved into weaving, I was fascinated by the minute details in Brătescu’s abstract thread portraits. Brătescu’s Medea’s Hypostases (“Hypostasis of Media”) was my insight into the extent to which a sewing needle could mimic a pen. The turbulent background in The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series is evidence of the fragile history of textile art despite the skilful techniques, such as mille-fleurs, and complex motifs utilized. The mechanization of textiles seemed to have negatively skewed the appreciation of textile art. However, Anni Albers used mechanization as a facet to popularize the art form and heighten appreciation through creation of new techniques based on ancient ones. Later on, the second-wave feminism movement inspired artists such as Judy Chicago to make textile art, traditionally derogated as ‘women’s work’, polemical. With large, imposing works such as The Dinner Party, Chicago exhibited women’s achievements and fascinating histories through embroidery and fabric. More recent artists have been experimenting with threads in new and innovative ways by engaging with both techniques, cultural significance and space. For instance, although Mimi Jung appeals to emotion much like Chicago, her sculptural work is entirely different in its abstraction and minimalist qualities. The diversity of textile art created by women artists illustrate how much new territory in the art is yet to be traversed. The varied techniques and motifs that Albers, Chicago and Jung have employed prove that textile art is in no way inferior to other fine arts in its variety, versatility and potential to connect with the spectator via intellectual, historical and cultural motifs. My piece is inspired by the women artists I have explored, with many elements drawn from the work of Albers, Chicago and Jung: geometrical patterns, yellow turmeric-dyed wool that links to my own Indian heritage, and slightly threedimensional, bulbous forms that protrude from the textile art’s primary plane.