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| Untitled, detail. |
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| Untitled (S 407 Hanging Five-Lobed Continuous Form within Form with Two Spheres) |
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The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a sizable new installation of work by female artists titled
Women Take the Floor. Gallery 328, in the American wing of the museum, displays part of this overall installation, with the theme
Beyond the Loom: Fiber as Sculpture/Subversive Threads. A stand-out piece in this gallery is the woven wire sculpture by Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa, created about 1952, in the image above.
The image of the gallery below gives an idea of the scale of the sculpture.
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| Gallery 328, with work by Sheila Hicks, Olga de Amaral and others. |
From the wall text:
Born in California to Japanese parents, Ruth Asawa overcame great adversity to achieve renown as an artist. During WWII, she and her family were forcibly relocated to Arkansas, as part of the U. S. government's internment of American of Japanese ancestry. Later, she was denied opportunities that would qualify her as an art teacher. In 1946, however, she began studying at Black Mountain College with Josef Albers. During her tenure at the college, she also studied with dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, mathematician Max Dehn, and visionary architect Buckminster Fuller.
A trip to Mexico in 1947 led Asawa to experiment with the technique of wire-looping, inspired by traditional Mexican basket weaving. The resulting forms, hovering suspended from the ceiling as here, became her signature style. The method of continuous looping was key to her art, and Asawa noted:
"I was interest in the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out. It's still transparent. I realized that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere."
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| Untitled, detail. |
