Textile art, or as Anni Albers said, “the poetry of materials,” has had many lives.
In the 40s, we loved fabric. 24 foot stage curtains. Men’s trousers up to their stomachs. Women dripping in silk, satin, taffeta.
“Some styles used up to fifteen yards of fabric,” writes Karina Reddy of the 40s, a fashion writer who manages the Fashion History Timeline on the Fashion Institute’s web site.
During a time of rationing, the surplus of fabric sparked civil unrest in Los Angeles in June 1943. Alice Gregory of Smithsonian Magazine wrote, “For over a week, white U.S. soldiers and sailors traversed Los Angeles beating up allegedly ‘unpatriotic’ Mexican-American men, identifiable by their conspicuously voluminous attire.”
The 60s saw textiles discussed as “art” in itself more, pioneered by women like Annie Albers and Sheila Hicks who moved beyond traditional notions during a time of significant experimentation across various art forms.
Textile art, or as Anni Albers said, “the poetry of materials,” has had many lives.
In the 40s, we loved fabric. 24 foot stage curtains. Men’s trousers up to their stomachs. Women dripping in silk, satin, taffeta.
“Some styles used up to fifteen yards of fabric,” writes Karina Reddy of the 40s, a fashion writer who manages the Fashion History Timeline on the Fashion Institute’s web site.
During a time of rationing, the surplus of fabric sparked civil unrest in Los Angeles in June 1943. Alice Gregory of Smithsonian Magazine wrote, “For over a week, white U.S. soldiers and sailors traversed Los Angeles beating up allegedly ‘unpatriotic’ Mexican-American men, identifiable by their conspicuously voluminous attire.”
The 60s saw textiles discussed as “art” in itself more, pioneered by women like Annie Albers and Sheila Hicks who moved beyond traditional notions during a time of significant experimentation across various art forms.
“Along with the miniskirt came a craze for the playful, innovative use of new materials and a focus on scientific progress,” writes Karina.
“Newly developed materials … acrylics, polyesters, and shiny PVC were used in women’s clothing… Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges debuted space-inspired designs in shades of white and silver.”
In 1970, fifty years ago, Janice Lourie started a revolution in textile manufacturing with IBM’s first software patent. The program, known as the Textile Graphics System, made the automated computer-driven loom possible, allowing designers to produce a weave or pattern in minutes that would take days or weeks on graph paper—a milestone for computer-aided design, or CAD.
Image from the press release of IBM and detail from page 5 (of 80) of US Patent 3,529,298, 1970.
Recent ExhibitsOn Fabric
“Anni Albers: In Thread and On Paper’ at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, is on display until June 30th.
Anni Albers was a pioneering textile artist who transformed the art of weaving. Her work was characterized by a focus on restraint, simplicity, and an underlying math. Math that made a sense of quiet beauty and serenity.
Albers started her artistic journey at the Bauhaus, where she studied painting but eventually gravitated to fabric.
Dorothy Liebes
“A Dark, a light, a bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes” at Cooper Hewitt ended February 4, 2024.
Dorothy Liebes (1897-1972) was a pioneering American designer and weaver who had a significant impact on 20th-century interior design, fashion, and industrial design.
A recent exhibit on the beautiful second floor of the Cooper Hewitt on E 91st St showcased her start as a California handweaver to a key figure in the popularization of American modernist design across interiors, transportation, industrial design, fashion, and film.
iPhone photo from A Dark, a light, a bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes at Cooper Hewitt.
Exhibits On Fabric Happening Now In New York
Embrace the Past: Mourning, Memory and Lace Part of Acquired! Shaping the National Design Collection Cooper Hewitt, 2 E 91st St, 2nd Floor Ends September 2, 2024
Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5th Avenue Ends June 16, 2024
By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection Guggenheim, 5th Avenue Ends January 12, 2025
Making Their Mark Shah Garg, W 22nd St Ends March 23, 2024
The home of 18th century monastery in the Regola district, 500m from Rome's new Ponte district. Photo via @salvalopez
ROME—Rome is giving one of its oldest neighborhoods a new identity. This month, the city introduced the Ponte Art & Design District, a permanent zone... Text by Simona Alberi. Read More
Raphael, Self-portrait (1506–08). Florence, Uffizi Galleries, Gallery of Statues and Paintings. Photographic Cabinet of the Uffizi Galleries – Courtesy of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.
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Auguste Renoir, Study for The Great Bathers (1884 to 1887). Photo: The Morgan Library & Museum.
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Slip House, the brand new gallery opened at the base of a 19th-century, three-story former carriage house at 246 East 5th Street.
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Photograph by Erich Höhne. Courtesy of Deutsche Fotothek.
Wassily Kandinsky, a painter of color and form, once envisioned a future where dance would shed its ornamental constraints and move toward abstraction. In Concerning... Text by Marguerite de Ponty. Read More
BASEL—Going to Art Basel is always a unique experience. For the majority, the art on display is merely entertainment; after all, any work, whether mighty... Text by Madina Tulakova. Read More
Franco Maria Ricci in 1984, at the launch of FMR U.S.A. at the New York Public Library.
Caverns were probably the first labyrinthine structures human beings came into contact with, in a distant past. And I, too, rummaged through my own past, finding a version of myself as the guise of a young amateur speleologist, equipped with the right clothes, flashlights, ropes, and climbing-irons. I was a second-year student at the Faculty of Geology and, with some friends, I had founded a so-called Cavern Society. My weekdays moved along on the surface, in the sunlight, while my weekends were usually devoted to the dark bowels of the earth. Text by fmr. Read More
