The Fiber Game

Abstract

Fiber art in the early 1970s has received little attention from art historians, despite its evident affinities with the much-studied field of Postminimalist sculpture. The article provides an overview of this moment, describing a divergence among practitioners between several strains: designers for production (exemplified by Jack Lenor Larsen); tapestry weavers, who often worked to cartoons heroic installation artists (such as Sheila Hicks and Magdalena Abakanowicz); and those who wished to preserve textiles as a modestly scaled “craft.” This was a politically tinged set of distinctions that played out in the actual usage of work and display spaces. Using Ed Rossbach's 1974 article “The Fiber Game” as a focal point, the article examines the available positions of this moment. It reviews key exhibitions of the period, including “Deliberate Entanglements” (1972); and concludes by suggesting continuities with the present state of affairs in contemporary art, using the example of Anne Wilson.     

Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo,Nicholas de Monchaux

Abstract

In this article, Cooks examines quilts is echoed in the work of other contemporary artists. She analyzes how references to the how the aesthetic of Gee's Bend quilts lend Black credibility to the art that has the potential to critically comment on the history of race, poverty, and social injustice in America.     

India Inside Out: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Mrinalini Mukherjee

Abstract

This essay examines the critical responses, both in the UK and India, to the work of Mrinalini Mukherjee, a well known artist whose woven and majestic forms cross over between sculpture and textiles. The essay traces the ways in which Mukherjee's art was increasingly associated with religious questions during the 1990s, and situates this tendency in the context of the rise of religious fundamentalism within India. The energetic trade of “orientalizing” perspectives on Mukherjee's art between the UK and India has largely diverted attention from Mukherjee's core artistic concerns and the processes, histories and influences that have inspired her. Amongst her major influences are the writings and philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, the teachings of K. G. Subramanyan and the sculptures of Ram Kinkar Baij. This analysis of art criticism around Mukherjee's art raises the problems facing contemporary artists in post-colonialist contexts.     

“Africana” Textiles: Imitation,Adaptation, and Transformation during the Jazz Age

Abstract

Despite centuries of missionary work and trade along the African coasts, not until European colonization at the end of the nineteenth century did African art reach significant levels of visibility in Europe. French interest in Africa gained momentum when Picasso and others witnessed public performances by African-Americans of ragtime music and the cakewalk dance. This exposure led these artists to better appreciate the African sculpture they saw at Parisian flea markets, or in the many world and colonial expositions held after 1900 (Blake 1999). Contact with African music and art then contributed to abstraction in modern art. What began early in the twentieth century was, by the mid-1920s, a full-blown “negrophilia” fueled by jazz music, the Charleston dance, and the Harlem Renaissance (Archer-Straw 2000). Interest in Africa was reflected in the design of everything from furniture, ceramics, and jewelry, to garment styles and textiles (Wood 2003a).

This article examines three ways in which textile artists in Europe and the United States borrowed from African and African-American art sources in order to create “Africana” textiles during the 1920s and 1930s: through imitation, adaptation, and transformation. Imitation occurred when artists borrowed by copying directly from African art. Artists adapted African art patterns to suit their creative and commercial needs, also adapting the energetic sounds of jazz onto textiles perceived to be simultaneously primitive and modern. A third group of artists transformed their source of inspiration, creating images that were the products of Western stereotypes and fantasies long associated with the African landscape, its animals, and its people, rather than images based on African art.     

丁勇：从艺术到时装的中国式跨界

正是时装背后蕴含的巨大潜力,艺术殿堂竖起的高高门槛,让画了十几年画的丁勇毅然掷下画笔,从广州白马市场的服装摊位上,开始了一生一世的跨界。     

Interiors of 1900. Photographs by Adolf Mas

Abstract

The markings associated with the physical wear and tear of denim garments are an integral aspect of material culture, pursued as creative concepts through deconstructed fashion approaches. For some designers a textile's heritage and the effects of time are as important as reworking silhouettes from history. While fashion is inherently forward thinking, it is the patina of age that comes from “wearing” a garment that can be integral to the designer's artistic vision. Denim garments possess unique possibilities for articulating the human form in ways that transcend the vagaries of the latest cut, through evidencing (or simulating) practices of wearing and concepts of longevity. This paper explores denim's capacity to act as a canvas for the body through analysis of a series of conceptual and commercial approaches drawn from contemporary fashion and textile designers, who have reinforced denim's origins or reinterpreted it through creative experimentation. The study is underpinned by the author's empirical research, which seeks to reveal both the recognizable and more abstract visual qualities embodied within denim as a fashion construct. Denim is evaluated as a surface for conveying complex visual signifiers relating to temporality, demonstrated through the cloth's unique facility to embody narrative and illusion.     

T-shirts,Testimony, and Truth: Memories of Violence made Visible

Abstract

In the township of Crossroads, South Africa, a group of Xhosa women artists have created an extraordinary space of female agency and empowerment. This women's group, called the Philani Printing Project, has formed a place where art and feminist politics intersect with political action. This paper considers a series of five t-shirts that Philani artists created to testify to their individual experiences with violence. Worn in the tradition of the protest t-shirts that were donned by anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s, these shirts bear slogans that call upon other people to join alongside the women and speak out on issues such as gender equity, violence against women, and other forms of women's rights. In presenting these works, this article aims to frame Philani artists as political actors who strive to make visible the conditions of their lives by focusing their artistic efforts on the exploitation and survival of Black South African women despite apartheid policies that discriminated against them, and a current environment which in many ways continues to be hostile towards the emancipation of women.     

Young Originals: Emily Wilkens and the Teen Sophisticate

Abstract

This article explores the use of newspaper-printed fabric in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fancy dress costumes, as well as its employment by fashion designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli and John Galliano. It examines the use of authentic newspaper clippings and paper applied to fancy dress and fashion, and discusses Viktor and Rolf's innovative method of using real newspaper within their conceptual framework.     

Weaving the Murray: Mapping Connection and Loss

Abstract

Craft theorist Sue Rowley noted in Craft and Contemporary Theory: “Craft objects, stories and performance are integrally bound up in our sense of identity, our understanding of the past and our articulation of the unresolved concerns of the present” (1997: 84).

In 2001 Australia celebrated the “Centenary of Federation,” an anniversary that marked the uniting of the Australian states under a federal government in 1901. In South Australia an official Centenary of Federation project, Weaving the Murray brought together seven Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to weave a narrative based on the social and cultural history of the Murray River, the driest continent's largest watercourse.

This paper outlined how the artists used Indigenous stories and textile traditions as strategies for recalling the past history of the river to explore issues of identity, community and loss in the present. It also discusses how the artists negotiated some of the tensions inherent in commemorating, through intercultural art practice, an event that forged national identity through the exclusion of Indigenous Australians.     

Weaving the Two Cultures of Aotearoa/New Zealand Together: From the Art of Making Traditional Off-Loom Garments to a Contemporary Practice of On-Loom Weaving

Abstract

This paper explores the artistry of a renowned Māori artist and weaver and how this had led to her weaving work with the community, helping to develop skills to produce fine quality contemporary Māori weaving. It explains how Raranga – the art of Māori weaving is much more than simply skills and techniques and embodies the spiritual values of Māori people. The action of artists like Roka to develop skills and weaving are aimed to give a sense of pride and cultural identity. In particular the Māori cloaks and their symbolic significance have a special place within the Māori culture. This chapter explains the various materials and techniques used in this off-loom weaving. It discusses exhibitions that explored Māori weaving as art and that have led to her teaching people within the community to do this prestigious work at the meeting centre that she and her husband have rebuilt with community help.     

探析当代艺术与时尚产品设计的关联

当代艺术(Contemporary Art)在世界范围内广泛流行、传播,极具影响力,其题材形式种类繁多,象征意义涵盖范围广泛,具有多元审美、教育、娱乐功能,部分具有商业价值,对时尚产品设计有借鉴意义。本文对当代艺术作品及艺术家进行梳理、比较分析,从当代艺术的象征意义出发,分析受众对当代艺术的认同和时尚领域之间的关系,并运用案例分析法,对时尚领域具有当代艺术风格的产品与当代艺术家跨界现象及作品进行案例分析。最终得出结论:当代艺术的时尚价值是与生俱来的,其艺术创作的方法能为时尚产品设计提供独特视角,创造新的文化符号,实现社会价值,这是现阶段不可或缺的艺术与设计的关联显现。     

Exotic Quilt Patterns and Pattern Names in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

A strong characteristic of American popular culture in the 1920s and 1930s was its fascination with all things “oriental,” or generally exotic. It was expressed in a multitude of areas, including furniture, fashion, movies and architecture. It was also evident in quiltmaking, an extremely popular pastime of the era, in the preponderance of patchwork patterns that had an exotic theme or name. Sometimes the designs of these patterns directly reflected their exotic names; most often they did not. The reasons for the popularity of exotic pattern names are varied. Certainly, pattern designers were capitalizing on the fashion for anything oriental. But, as this paper will propose, ladies' magazine publishers and quilt column writers also were reacting to Americans' ambivalence about Asians—their fear of the “yellow peril” mixed with their admiration for Eastern design. By naming and renaming patterns and, more importantly, by mixing oriental, “colonial,” and modern imagery and verbiage, they diluted the negative connotations of the exotic and potentially made it more palatable to the tradition-centered quiltmaking world.     

Electronic Textiles: Wearable Computers,Reactive Fashion,and Soft Computation

Abstract

Electronic textiles, also referred to as smart fabrics, are quite fashionable right now. Their close relationship with the field of computer wearables gives us many diverging research directions and possible definitions. On one end of the spectrum, there are pragmatic applications such as military research into interactive camouflage or textiles that can heal wounded soldiers. On the other end of the spectrum, work is being done by artists and designers in the area of reactive clothes: “second skins” that can adapt to the environment and to the individual. Fashion, health, and telecommunication industries are also pursuing the vision of clothing that can express aspects of people's personalities, needs, and desires or augment social dynamics through the use and display of aggregate social information.

In my current production-based research, I develop enabling technology for electronic textiles based upon my theoretical evaluation of the historical and cultural modalities of textiles as they relate to future computational forms. My work involves the use of conductive yarns and fibers for power delivery, communication, and networking, as well as new materials for display that use electronic ink, nitinol, and thermochromic pigments. The textiles are created using traditional textile manufacturing techniques: spinning conductive yarns, weaving, knitting, embroidering, sewing, and printing with inks.     

情·景·意境——川音嘉苑艺术家社区景观设计实践

本文论述了作者对川音嘉苑（四川音乐学院教职工住宅小区）艺术家居住社区的景观设计实践。设计者力图通过艺术语言的符号化,来营造具有独特艺术家气质的景观环境,由情生景,由景入意的环境景观营造手法。     

A Fur Headdress for Women in Sixteenth-Century China

Abstract

The Victorian writer Mary Philadelphia Merrifield (1804–1889) exploited her considerable knowledge of art and science in order to validate the study of fashion and to raise it in seriousness as a topic. Merrifield covered a broad range of topics in her publishing career, ranging from fresco and fashion to flora and fauna; she was an important contributor to debates about the materials and techniques of painting, the diffusion of colour theory and the aestheticization of dress. This article will demonstrate how her Dress as a Fine Art (1854) challenged prevailing stereotypes, not by denying women's fascination with fashion, but by associating it with higher intellectual principles. In particular it will show how her scholarly approach to fashion countered the long-standing notion that women were interested only in ‘idle fripperies’.     

Way Beyond Craft: Thinking through the Work of Mildred Constantine

Abstract

“Way Beyond Craft: Thinking through the Work of Mildred Constantine,” examines the legacy of Mildred Constantine (American, b. 1913). As curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1948 to 1971, and co-author of Beyond Craft: The Art Fabric (1973) and The Art Fabric: Mainstream (1981), Constantine's contributions to fiber-based production throughout the 1970s and 1980s are important and have been long overlooked outside of a small constituency of artists and historians directly impacted by her work.     

Textile Form and Counter Form: The Revival and Reinterpretation of Composite Knit and Crochet Constructions of the 1930s–1940s

Abstract

For decades doilies designed for domestic interiors and produced in a time of economic depression have lain discarded, neglected, and abandoned. This article discusses the historical development, domesticity, and social change associated with starched mats or doilies in the shift from modernity to postmodernity. It first charts the modernist composite knit and crochet structures produced by combining the mathematical chartering and the complexities of geometry with intricate knitting and crochet construction techniques to create organic fluidity in the design form and counter form. It then considers how renewed interest in the form and counter form of the doily in a postmodern era has transformed the starched mat from an item of familiarity and domesticity to be eclectically reinterpreted and utilized in the work of contemporary designers from many disciplines. As such, the article reviews the interface between traditional and contemporary design techniques and analyzes how designers from various disciplines have drawn on the potential of pattern, construction, scale, and form adapted from the doily to create new and innovative designs. To support this article, some historical illustrations from the past, together with selective examples of contemporary designers’ work from the specialist fields of fashion, textiles, furniture, interior, and product, have been included. These highlight the current development and reinterpretation of the doily, as a source of inspiration and increasingly as an integral part of design.     

Fabricated Skins

Abstract

This Dialog piece details the current collaborative work underway between Sean Miller's Art Museum Dust Collection and Kelly Cobb's textile-based studio project Garment/Research.¹ The Art Museum Dust Collection is an ongoing conceptual project that spans more than 13 years and includes dust from art museums worldwide. The Art Museum Dust Collection consists of a plethora of art-related activities and media, including a photographic series utilizing microscopy, dust-collecting actions in museums, dust-collecting equipment, performances, multiples, wearable art, and a miniature gallery featuring an art-museum dust montage mural.     

Politics and Trade in Design: Emmy Zweybrück-Prochaska's Influential Textile Designs in Needlework Development Scheme Collections

Abstract

This paper discusses the Emmy Zweybrück-Prochaska textile collection, the largest collection by a foreign designer in the pre-war Needlework Development Scheme (NDS), set up and funded anonymously by J&P Coats, the Glasgow thread industrialists between 1934 and 1962. The paper seeks to analyze Coats's rationale for the collection, their role in the production of designs alluding to political events or themes in a manner acceptable to the ruling regimes, and their impact on British design. Most of Zweybrück's NDS textiles survive in collections at the National Museums of Scotland (Edinburgh), Glasgow School of Art, Dundee University, and Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen). The paper clarifies the provenance and influences on the significant Zweybrück designs held in these collections. Consideration is given to the dissemination of this dissenting, marginal, fragmentary style on British artists, educators and students. Played out in this history are issues of aesthetics, collecting, education and marketing.     

Digital Imagination: The Impact of Digital Imaging on Printed Textiles

Abstract

Digital imaging technology is providing textile practitioners with a medium that is changing and challenging the processes used in the generation and production of printed textile artifacts. The phenomenological research being undertaken at University of Wales Institute Cardiff indicates that when the technology is used as a creative medium rather than a production tool it facilitates an evolving visual language, new hybrid craft practices, and the opportunity for collaboration through the sharing of digital imagination. The findings reveal that since physical experience in the world informs thought and fires imagination, future developments in computer interfaces and humanization technology will provide even greater opportunities for the creative exploitation of the media by printed textile practitioners.

A number of innovatory printed textile artists and designers based in the USA and Europe who are using digital imaging in their creative practice have contributed to this research through informal interviews, personal correspondence, and case studies.