African Textiles at the MFA

Examples of kente cloth, from Ghana.

Global Patterns: Textiles and Dress in Africa is on view through January 8, 2012; learn more here: http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/global-patterns

Wedding outfit of extraordinary beadwork.
Note the ornamented broom, symbol of housewives everywhere.

Wedding ensemble, rear view with beaded train.

As I walked through this exhibit, I developed a heightened sensibility towards the garb and accessories adorning my fellow visitors, who included a tall young man, extensively tattooed, wearing "ventilated" shorts, a souvenir T-shirt and toting a messenger bag, as well as adolescent girls in crocs footwear, flowery t-shirts and, inevitably, women dressed like me, in sensible sandals, crop pants and jewelry or scarves, to distract from the wrinkles.

Left, photo of tribal leader, from 1959.
Right, detail of beaded crown, mid-20th century.

As Boston Globe critic Sebastian Smee notes in his excellent review, this exhibit, for once, places African artifacts in a context - in addition to the textiles, there are sculptures and images, including postcards and photos, of people dressed in comparable items.

See Smee's piece here: http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-06/ae/29517367_1_textiles-african-objects-african-countries

We Westerners seem conflicted by the signals we receive as we view the costume of others around us and in the media - on the one hand we "shouldn't judge a book by its cover," nevertheless "clothes make the man." In Sub-Saharan Africa, the region from which these artifacts originate, there seems to be less confusion about the role of wardrobe and identity. As this exhibit demonstrates, in these cultures a highly refined approach to attire deliberately telegraphs characteristics such as level of affluence, personal aspirations, and even marital status, in a very direct way.

Wrapper, mid-20th century, imported for the African market.
A woman who wore this fabric valued education and learning.

Wrapper, early 21st century, celebrates the opening of a
Coca-Cola bottling plant in Mozambique, in 2004.

Apparel fabric announces that the wearer is up to date,
and cognizant of technology.

(Apologies for the blurry photo.)

While we tend to view colonialism as purely exploitative, this exhibit also makes clear that Western imagery could be creatively co-opted by African artists, resulting in designs that became part of a textile tradition which managed to survive into the post-colonial era.

Resist-dyed fabric with design based on
Silver Jubilee images of British monarchs.

Left, raffia skirt, Republic of Congo, 2oth century.
Upper right, Bonwit Teller ad for African-inspired frocks.
Bottom right, wide trim produced in France, copying the indigenous cloth.

In addition, Westerners learned from African artists, particularly in the 1920's when artists such as Picasso and Braque were admiring African masks and other art, often brought back to Europe by Belgian colonists.

Beaded crown with bird finial.The human face, with cowrie-shell eyes, symbolizes that the leader is all-seeing.

Sashiko pillow

Design combines sakura - cherry blossom motifs -
and traditional hemp pattern.

My second sashiko project is this pillow. I purchased the pre-printed design on cloth from Miho Takeuchi at a quilt show and selected the dark blue and orange threads. After stitching, I added 2" borders to the design and backed it with the same batik fabric, purchased from The Fabric Corner, in Arlington, which has the best selection of batik fabrics around. Inserted a 16" polyester-stuffed pillow form and voila! - a gift for my Japanese language teacher. I hope she likes it.

Miho's website is: http://www.designbyaika.com/

The Fabric Corner's website is: http://www.fabriccornerinc.com/

Sonia Delaunay at Cooper-Hewitt

Montage of textiles designs.
All images from
Color Moves: Art & Fashion by Sonia Delaunay.

In March, Jay and I went to Manhattan to view a super exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, http://www.cooperhewitt.org/exhibitions/color-moves

In the "roaring twenties",
Delaunay had her own fashion house.

Color Moves: Art & Fashion by Sonia Delaunay, on view until June 19, 2011, is an expansive survey of the work of Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) with an emphasis on her textile designs.

The exhibit is upstairs from a show of Van Cleef and Arpel jewelry, a shameless display of over-the-top-bling for the rich and famous. So, security was tight throughout the building, and photography was not allowed. The images in this blog entry were scanned from the eponymous exhibit catalog.

More images can also be seen in the excellent review of the show by NYT reporter Roberta Smith:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/arts/design/sonia-delaunay-show-at-cooper-hewitt-review.html

Top row: sketches.
Bottom row, right: sketch made into repeating fabric design.
Bottom row, left: design card, with colorways.

Fabric sample.

Following the Depression, Delaunay closed her fashion house but developed a special relationship with the fashion-forward Metz Department Store in Amsterdam, selling textile designs for their exclusive use. Importantly, both Delaunay’s sketchbooks and Metz Company documents survive, allowing us to see the process of apparel fabric production from artist’s sketch to finished fabric.

Top: Design card with colorways.
Bottom: master print.

The translation of sketch to yardage is a multi-step affair, including fine-tuning the original motif, creating the print repeat, and keying the gouache sketch palette to fabric inks. Somehow, in the hands of an obviously sympathetic textile manufacturer, these steps improved upon Delaunay’ s delightful initial sketches, with the end result being scrolls of pattern that happen to be bolts of fabric.

Snippets of fabric samples, with color chips and notes.

As Roberta Smith states in her review, the show …may change forever the way you look at dry goods. I know that, if these designs were in fabric stores today, I would be adding them to my fabric stash.

Large fabric sample.

Catalog: ISBN 978-0-910503-84-6

From alizarine to vermilion: color history

The book cover features a box of Foinet artist's pastels, c. 1930.

The production of dyes and pigments for use on textiles has had a huge influence on human events, yet conventional histories largely ignore this thread (pun intended.) "Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments" is a profusely-illustrated book that travels from 40,000-year-old painted caves in France to the chemistry cartels of Germany, weaving a fascinating tale conflating commerce, industry and art.

There are many examples of the impact of consumer demand for better textile colorants on world history. For instance, while it was a British chemist who invented the first commercially exploitable synthetic dye, cheap labor in the British colonies continued to prop up the use of natural dyes for textiles. Germany, which had come late to the table as a colonial power, sought solutions in industry, and in their search for domestically-produced pigments German chemists helped invent the field of organic chemistry. By 1904, Germany was exporting massive amounts of synthetic indigo, to the detriment of colonial India and the ports of France; as the books states, "many markets were lost to German chemistry".

Indigo dyer at work.
The British established an agricultural monoculture of indigo in India.


British chemist William Perkin with shawl featuring yarn
tinted with his synthetic mauveine.

There are also particularly fascinating sections on color in medieval iconography, the toxicity of some early pigments, and the emergence of chromatics, the science of color and perception.

This book is the nearest approximation of an economic and cultural history of textile pigments and dyes that I've found to date, and has excellent production values, a good index and appendices of primary documents and further reading.

Nuts and bolts info: authors Francois Delamare and Bernard Guineau; ISBN 0-8109-2872-8.

Art of Lan-Chiann Wu

Lantern Festival, Lan-Chiann Wu.

Through my blog, I have had the opportunity to connect with many wonderful people, including award-winning artist Lan-Chiann Wu. Ms. Wu is one of the few women working professionally in the medium of Chinese ink brush painting and was kind enough to contact me after viewing my blog entry of the "Fresh Ink" exhibit at the MFA earlier this season. With Ms. Wu's consent, I have posted some images from her website, www.thetranquilstudio.com

But Lan-Chiann's big news is her participation in "3 Paths to Expression" at the Sam Maloof Foundation, www.malooffoundation.org, from March 3 through September 3, 2011. Sadly, I have no plans to visit the Los Angeles vicinity this year, but the exhibit looks well worth a trip if you're in the area. A MacArthur "genius grant" recipient, Sam Maloof (1916 - 2009) was, along with Wendell Castle and George Nakashima, one of the foremost furniture craftsmen of the 20th century. Maloof's work is in many museum collections, including Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Settee, Sam Maloof.
Image source: http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/settee-43060

Ms. Wu's work reminds me of another MFA-related artist, Childe Hassam. As in Hassam's views of city life, there is a tenderness in her renderings of people in city scenes and village landscapes that is appealing without being overly sentimental. Both artists also use the color red judiciously to establish depth and to create a spark of tension in the scene.

Snowflakes Quietly Descending, Lan-Chiann Wu.


Snowstorm in Madison Square, Childe Hassam.
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Childe_Hassam_Snowstorm_Madison_Square.jpg

In addition to painting and drawing, Ms. Wu, like Mr. Maloof, also works in furniture design, creating delightful lacquer vignettes for casegoods. I hope that some of her work will come to the East coast in the near future!

Design for furniture, Lan-Chiann Wu.

Lacquer design on casegoods, detail, Lan-Chiann Wu.

Credenza with finished lacquer decoration, Lan-Chiann Wu.

Dale Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass

Entrance to Gallery Shop.

On April 8, Jay and I took advantage of the members' preview days to visit the crowd-pleasing exhibit "Dale Chihuly: Through the Looking Glass." Chihuly, a well-known Seattle-based glass artist, directs a large corps of artisans in creating monumental glass installations all over the world. In this show, some of these installations are re-created in a gallery context.

Sketches for Ikebana series.

This latest exhibit, at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) though August 7, 2011, also includes objects from Chihuly's own extensive collections, notably trade blankets and Native American baskets. A few of Chihuly's vigorous concept sketches are displayed as well.

Gallery with wall of trade blankets,
glass vessels on rough-hewn wood slab.

Glass shapes share color palette of Native American baskets.

Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee's review, which I recommend reading after visiting the exhibit, follows the usual party line that's there no intellectual content in Chihuly's work. (See the review here: http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-08/ae/29397522_1_chihuly-show-chihuly-installation-dale-chihuly)

Smee's review is another example of establishment art criticism creating a false dichotomy between the so-called fine arts and decorative art. This out-of-date distinction traps some art critics in an uncomfortable place, limiting them to snide, sour dismissals of objects in fiber, clay and glass, materials which often have functional associations.

Chihuly's works have moved far from their vessel origins, but his carnival color palette and biomorphism probably don't help his cause with art critics. The neon colors and swirly forms do make his work appealing to a wide audience, however, and of course there's the alchemical, almost magical, quality inherent in glass. Chihuly's had great commercial success; I attended the book signing held earlier in April and the line for signed catalogs was quite long. His glass objects were priced between $5,000 and $6,000 in the shop.

Blurry photo at book signing;
line of fans can be seen through glass wall.

Prints and glass for sale.

It may be more useful to examine Chihuly as one of the few contemporary glass artists continuing the tradition of glass as a monumental material. Glass and stone form the immense rose windows of Gothic cathedrals; few would argue that the windows of Chartres are not works of art. An institution like the medieval church could afford to build on such a scale, and had the management framework in place to continue projects over generations. Enormous resources are expended with each of Chihuly's temporary installations which then endure only in media or in gallery reconstructions.

Rose window, Chartres Cathedral.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ru_boff/520066529/

Glass was also used for the glorification of another institution, the Bourbon monarchy, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where the light from huge windows reflects endlessly off mirrors and chandeliers. Mirrors are, after all, plates of glass with silver on the back. In both Chartres and Versailles, glass is an integral part of the architecture.

Hall of Mirrors, Versailles. Image source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Galerie_des_Glaces_02.jpg

Closer to our own era, Louis Comfort Tiffany and Philadelphia-area architect Frank Furness both used glass to great effect.

There are some permanent installations of Chihuly's work in museums and public spaces, but none, to the best of my knowledge, in Boston. Other cities have enjoyed large-scale temporary installations, notably Venice, with its glass-blowing island of Murano, and Jerusalem, where ancient Roman glass may be seen in the archeological museums.

Blue and White Tower, Jerusalem installation. Photo source: http://i12bent.tumblr.com/post/192611659/dale-chihuly-glass-art-master-is-68-today-sep

Chandelier in the entrance of the Tower of David museum.
Permanent installation. Photo source:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chihuly_P8040009.JPG

My favorite pieces in the MFA show are the chandeliers, whose cascading forms both defy and respond to gravity. The Victoria and Albert Museum has a chandelier permanently installed in a lobby and I hope that the MFA might acquire one.

Gallery of chandeliers, and close-ups.

Onyx and Caramel chandelier.

One work, "Lime Green Icicle Tower", was created specifically for the new courtyard of the American Wing. While this 42-foot tall spiky form is a dramatic introduction to the exhibit, I'm not sure I'd like it as a permanent resident. With its green thorns protruding from a metal armature, it unfortunately conjures up nothing so much as those artificial aluminum Christmas trees assembled by sticking graduated shiny branches into a central metal pole.

Lime Green Icicle Tower.

Lime Green Icicle Tower, detail.

Viewing glass forms in the
outdoor landscape pocket adjacent to the new courtyard.

Slender orange rods of glass are visible in the landscape pockets between the new courtyard and the older building. I wish more of the MFA installation could have been viewed out of doors in natural light; indeed many of the pieces in the MFA's galleries were originally outdoor installations.

Looking through glass at
another view of glass garden forms.

More reedy forms in Mille Fiori.


Mille Fiori.
The installations were recreated on reflective plinths,
with high contrast, dramatic lighting.

The Persian Ceiling.

One highlight of the show is an overhead installation called the Persian Ceiling. Wouldn't a pavilion with these forms incorporated into the roof be a great addition to the Rose Kennedy Greenway? That bland expanse would become a destination.

The Persian Ceiling.


The Persian Ceiling, detail.


The Persian Ceiling, detail.

From the Ikebana series, form and two details.

Chihuly's team has achieved great technical mastery in glass. These forms are huge and it takes great skill to produce glass objects of such size. Without some knowledge of glass-blowing it's hard to fully appreciate the challenges of this medium. Videos of the Chihuly's hot shop (glass-blowing studio) can be seen at http://www.chihuly.com/cbs-early-show.aspx . There are many feature DVDs of Chihuly's work.

Neodymium Reeds.