Annie Albers
I researched the Bauhaus weavers for my Research Methodologies essay, especially their writings about the cycle of making, thinking and writing. I feel that adding writing to my knitting and thinking would help to tether my thoughts and subsequently to develop them. Anni Albers (Albers et al, 2017) describes the connection between making and thinking when she says ‘thoughts…can…be traced back to the event of a thread’ (p xi). However, Albers also added critical writing into her cycle of reflection, confronting a ‘long standing assumption in art history that the crafts are manual or technical, but never intellectual, arts’ (in Smith, 2014, pxxi). Of the Bauhaus weavers, art historian T’ai Smith goes on to say:
‘thinking indeed emerges within manual practices...craft and labor are not about turning off the brain but about reactivating different centers…ideas became manifest in their physical manipulation of the loom’ (ibid. pxxv –xxvi).
I visited the Albers exhibition at Tate Modern, and I appreciate that technically she was part of the vanguard for textiles being accepted as a medium in fine art, but I didn't find her especially visually appealing; it's very flat and ordered, and of its time. The colours and patterns are also not especially appealing to me.
Although I'm not so interested in her art, some of her writings are fascinating:
'For Albers, understanding textiles requires a kind of methodological reticulation, a netting of the past, present, and future. (Smith, p167)
'Albers' investigations into material as metaphorclarify, the medium occupies, for her, the aporia between materiality and communication or touching and touching on.'
Smith, T (2014) Bauhaus weaving theory: from feminine craft to mode of design Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press
Have a look at Tai Smith's Bauhaus Weaving Theory here for more details of Annie Albers' writings
‘thinking indeed emerges within manual practices...craft and labor are not about turning off the brain but about reactivating different centers…ideas became manifest in their physical manipulation of the loom’ (ibid. pxxv –xxvi).
I visited the Albers exhibition at Tate Modern, and I appreciate that technically she was part of the vanguard for textiles being accepted as a medium in fine art, but I didn't find her especially visually appealing; it's very flat and ordered, and of its time. The colours and patterns are also not especially appealing to me.
Although I'm not so interested in her art, some of her writings are fascinating:
'For Albers, understanding textiles requires a kind of methodological reticulation, a netting of the past, present, and future. (Smith, p167)
'Albers' investigations into material as metaphorclarify, the medium occupies, for her, the aporia between materiality and communication or touching and touching on.'
Smith, T (2014) Bauhaus weaving theory: from feminine craft to mode of design Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press
Have a look at Tai Smith's Bauhaus Weaving Theory here for more details of Annie Albers' writings