Artapestry7 Exhibition catalog
Essay


Slits & Interlacements:
Reflections on the Intersections of Contemporary Tapestry in Europe and North America

By Shelley Socolofsky

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Kompozcja Bialych Form / Composition of White Forms (1962) made its first appearance to an international audience at the inaugural Lausanne International Tapestry Biennial in 1962. Woven on a large 2-meter-wide loom, the tapestry measured 2 x 6 meters tall to meet the 12 square meter requirements of the exhibition rules. Since availability and financial restriction limited the sourcing of traditional tapestry materials of linen and wool for Polish weavers following the devastation in the country after World War II, Krystyna Kondratiuk, the director of the Center Museum of Textile Industrial History approached the Ministry of Culture in Lausanne to request approval of the use of cotton cords in both warp and weft to be used in the tapestries representing the Polish weavers. Composition of White Forms was one of several tapestries displayed in the room representing Poland and, unlike most of the other tapestries in the exhibition – which followed the French tradition of tapestry production using cartoons designed by artists, then woven by trained weavers – the tapestries from Poland exhibited there were experimental in materials and techniques. (1) Traditional tapestry ateliers in the Lodz area had been destroyed during World War II in Poland, leaving behind the atelier system of tapestry production. Equally influential, Poland had a history of privileging the teaching of hand crafts as equals to other artforms in art academies and schools; weaving labs were taught alongside painting and sculpture. These circumstances freed post-war artists in Poland to experiment unrestricted without the impulse of tradition or the delegation of hierarchy in form. (2)

CITAM (The International Centre of Ancient and Modern Tapestry) was founded in 1961 by Jean Lurçat, artist and tapestry cartoon designer, along with Pierre Pauli, the forthcoming curator of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs de Lausanne, Paul-Henri Jaccard, director of the Lausanne Association for the Defense of Collective Interests, Rene Berger, director of Musée des Beaux-Arts, and the mayor of Lausanne, George-Andre Chevallaz. Founded as a way to record, document and display contemporary European tapestry, the Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials (1962-1995) project was the platform through which CITAM could display and document the 20th century Modern revival of contemporary tapestry. (3)

Composition of White Forms is woven of varied thicknesses of materials, creating a surface full of cracks, slits, fissures, and holes. The unrefined, uneven, and raw surface present in this tapestry, and the works presented in the Polish Room, was purported to have greatly upset Lurçat and the French tapestry artists, who remained close to tradition. The five Polish artists represented in the inaugural biennial were nicknamed the “new barbarians” in response to their radical departure from the refined surfaces woven in traditional tapestry. (4) Lausanne, in 1962, was witnessing a birth of a new tapestry language whose forms quickly became known as “the tapestry of tomorrow”. (5)

A slit, in tapestry, is an opening in the cloth; a joining location where juxtaposed weft shapes come together without interlacement. (6) Slits occur when shapes are woven with weft for several rows, turning around the same warp thread each time. The slit can be virtually invisible, or a larger gap can be produced by increased distortion of the vertical warp threads on which the weft turns occur. Although these juxtaposed weft shapes do not interlace at the location of the slit, the surrounding cloth, which is interlaced, holds them in place within the larger tapestry body. When woven without distortion, the slit is slightly or barely visible. The slit, as a technique, was used as a shadowing strategy in Medieval and Renaissance figurative tapestry to suggest the wrinkles on a finger or the fine line details surrounding an eye. (7) In contemporary terms, and in the woven Polish tapestries of 1962, slits can function to cause gaps, holes and exaggerated surface distortions. (8)

Tapestries have always been carriers of information. Offering a recent perspective on textile’s function as a carrier of cultural information, Shannon R. Stratton posits all textiles as interfaces: “Cloth, as an artwork, has amplified power when it is the medium, as opposed to the substrate, for ideas. As art objects, (tapestries) are capable of representing the state or condition of interface, conjuring an effect given our physical relationship to them. Cloth is not so much a stand-in for the body as a representative of the condition and physicality of transmission or mediation. After all, text and textile share the same root word: texo, “to weave”. From the beginning, communication has been at the root of cloth.” (9)

When reflecting on the intersections and differences between contemporary European and American tapestry, it may be useful to look at the cloth itself as a metaphor. Current tapestry practices in both Europe and America sit side by side; a part of an integral and interlaced body, yet separated by a slit – a gap in orientation and perspective – of the function the tapestry practice plays out in the subconscious mind of the weaver, and in the social and cultural contexts in which tapestries are produced. Historically, tapestries bore records of cultural identification, local data, lore, and propaganda. Contemporary tapestry is no different and must be understood within the social and cultural contexts in which it is woven.

Europe has centuries of robust tapestry production documented throughout historical and folk lore accounts. Many ateliers in Western Europe immediately come to mind: the Flemish tapestries of Arras, the Gobelins atelier, and Aubusson, the resurgence of Aubusson-style tapestry in Great Britian during the Arts & Crafts movement in the 19th century, the Bauhaus school in Germany, the Dovecot in Edinburgh, West Dean in Sussex; it is easy to locate tapestry in the cultural mind of Europe.

The Americas, too, have ancient roots in tapestry weaving from well-documented examples of Pre-Columbian /Andean textiles to the Indigenous rugs continued to be woven throughout the Americas today. Yet, in the cultural mind of the United States artist, tapestry is somewhat complicated. We share a common site specificity with the Indigenous rug weavers of the South West, North West Coast, and the Americas to the South and North. Many non-native American tapestry weavers today practice techniques of the Navajo, Hopi, or Oaxacan, whose land we now inhabit, while many regional and national tapestry organizations (10) look to the training of the French traditionalists to help them define “true tapestry”.

Yet, in the United States, these tapestry weaving organizations and practices stand alongside other complex narratives and truths within a more recently acknowledged framework of settler colonialism. (11) Such acknowledgements of our migratory histories significantly and directly impact current art trends in the primary and secondary markets and influence the perspectives of stake holders, scholars, contemporary curators and academics surrounding what is considered “contemporary tapestry” as an artform.(12) These 21st century values further suggest course corrections that we, as tapestry weavers in the United States, might wish to embrace, or at least understand, within our current studio practices - especially if we hope for increased exposure and continued relevance.

Circling back for a moment: The tapestry movement in North America migrated from France when Aubusson weaver Jean Pierre Larochette and his wife Yael Lurie, began teaching tapestry techniques at San Francisco State University in the mid 1970’s. In 1976, Anna Bennett, curator for the Fine Arts Museum, brought Larochette and nine of his students to publicly weave a Mark Adams-designed tapestry in the museum space during the Five Centuries of Tapestries exhibit. (13) As a result of the success of this experience, Larochette and Lurie opened the San Francisco Tapestry Workshop and began producing tapestries designed by Judy Chicago, Mark Adams, and Lurie while teaching classes to the public, atelier-style. This moment sparked a following in the United States. Others (myself included) who graduated from the then-popular Fibers programs at university, traveled abroad to France to study with Gobelins masters. This was an unexpected mid-century moment of synchronicity that brought the world of American Tapestry weaving together. (14)

Not having a clearly defined and accessible lineage of tapestry practice in the United States with which to identify, the newly minted American tapestry artist, during the 1970’s, was confronted with “the questions that preoccupied artists in the 1960’s-1970’s that centered on the fiber artist’s identity as a “craftsperson or sculptor?”. In her essay The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in America, art historian Elissa Authur identifies three groups of artists working within weaving/ fibers in the late 1960’s-70’s who attempted to traverse the boundary of the fiber/ fine art divide in the United States as:

a.) fiber-artists - artists experimenting with materials, liberating themselves from the loom by creating dimensional [not merely flat] works which they hoped would distinguish them from crafters, b.) post-minimal sculptors who sought to distinguish themselves from a domestic/craft-centered discourse towards the frontiers of sculpture, and c.) feminist artists who politicized the opposition between high and applied art, linking it to the oppression of women and the feminine.

Several seminal exhibitions took place in North America during this period that further complicated the identity crisis of the American tapestry weaver while echoing the gendered politics of the time:

WovenForms (1963), Museum of Contemporary Crafts, Eccentric Abstraction, (1966), Fischback Gallery, New York City, Soft & Apparently Soft Scultpure (1968), American Federation of the Arts, Wall Hangings, (1969), Museum of Modern Art (which included tapestries by the Polish weavers Jolanta Owidzka and Abakanowicz, and Womanhouse (1972), Los Angeles. Wall Hangings, curated by Mildred Constantine, curator of MOMA’s Architecture and Design and Jack Lenor Larson, an American textile designer, received only one critical review written by artist Louise Bourgeois who wrote: “A painting or a sculpture makes great demand on the onlooker at the same time that it is independent of him. These weaves, delightful as they are, seem more engaging and less demanding. If they must be classified, they would fall somewhere between fine and applied art”. (15)

As a way to mitigate these categorical divides, alliances were formed among groups of artisans. One such alliance was the American Tapestry Alliance which found its beginnings in 1976 by friends and weavers Hal Painter and Jim Brown. On a road trip across the United States to mark the 200-year Bicentennial celebrations across the country, the two set out to connect with weavers as they drove the 2,800 miles from east to west coast. ATA was officially established as an organization in 1982 with the mission to promote an awareness of and appreciation for woven tapestries designed and woven by individual artists, and to encourage educational opportunities in the field of tapestry. Other mission goals were to sponsor tapestry exhibitions, to establish an international network of tapestry weavers, and to educate the public about tapestry. (16)

Globalization has significantly altered the way we understand the world and our accelerated interconnectivity within human activity in time and space. Aided by the internet and mass media, and our access to contemporary art in localities around the globe, Western institutions are rethinking the canon of “art”. Rigid distinctions between media, high/low culture, technical correctness, and singularity challenge old guard hierarchies in art, education, science, and many other areas within culture and society. “Art of the 21st century is a dynamic combination of materials, methods, concepts, and subjects that challenge traditional boundaries and defy easy definition…Curiosity, openness, and dialogue are the most important tools for engaging with works of art… Diverse and eclectic, contemporary art is distinguished by the very lack of a uniform organizing principle, ideology, or -ism. In a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world, contemporary artists give voice to the varied and changing cultural landscape of identities, values, and beliefs.” (17). In working to connect past and present, and in the stated spirit of ATA’s mission statement “Honoring Tradition, Inspiring Innovation” ATA is honored to sponsor a forthcoming exhibition featuring tapestry works by artists who explore the expansive properties of tapestry. Using the definition of tapestry as a non-functional, handwoven pictorial structure, artists included in Beyond: Tapestry Expanded may combine both hand and digital processes, incorporate the use of non-traditional materials, or create dimensional forms or multi-media components as a way to think through the nature of contemporary tapestry. (18)

In her curatorial essay Turning and Unraveling: Thinking about “Tapestry” and Contemporary Practice written for the B:TE exhibition, art historian Erica Warren writes “The ATA belongs to and has participated in making this historical context, embracing the dynamic vitality of the 1970s and early 1980s and sustaining a community of artists engaged with tapestry for more than forty years. It is fitting that in reflecting on the Alliance’s prominent focus on tapestry as a technique, the ATA has decided to examine its position within a wider discourse and turn towards the possibilities offered in welcoming and including all that “tapestry” connotes. In this project, the ATA finds itself with good company, as scholars increasingly are examining and acknowledging textiles formative presence in histories of modernism as well as contemporary practice”. (19)

After decades of working to untangle the complicated threads within the practice of tapestry weaving in America, we may finally be finding our way out of tradition and into an ever-expanding potential to claim our place as tapestry artists in the contemporary field.



Notes and References

  1. Giselle Eberhard Cotton, "The Lausanne International Tapestry Biennials (1962-1995)” The Pivotal Role of a Swiss City in the ‘New Tapestry’ Movement in Eastern Europe After World War II," Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings (2012), 670. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/670

  2. Catherine S Amidon, “Different Voices with Common Threads: Polish Fiber Art Today” The Polish Review, Vol. XLIII, No.2, 195-206 (1998), The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences

  3. See Fondation Toms Pauli, http://www.toms-pauli.ch/accueil/ Lausanne, Suisse

  4. Jessica Gerschultz, “Traversing Myths and Regions: The Collaborative Tapestries of Jolanta Owidzka and Georgette Saliba”, IntitutulPrezentului, November (2019)

  5. New East Digital Archive “Poland’s Textile Renaissance: the Frenetic, Storied Fiber Art of Jolanta Owidzka”, https://www.new-east-archive.org/

  6. Irene Emery, “The Primary Structure of Fabrics”, Thames and Hudson, (2009)

  7. “Great Tapestries: The Web of History from the 12th to the 20th Century” (c1965), Edita S.A Lausanne, Switzerland

  8. Magdalena Abakanowics ,“Red”, 1965-80, sisal; from the Jan Kosmowski collection, photo Beatrijs Sterk

  9. Weaving Data, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Portland State University, “Interface; Communicating at the Boundaries”, Shannon R. Stratton exhibition catalog essay (2023)

  10. See regional and national tapestry group websites: Tapestry Weavers West, TWINE (Tapestry Weavers of New England), Tapestry Artists of Puget Sound, Tapestry Weavers South, American Tapestry Alliance

  11. See Ariella Aisha Azoulay, “Potential History/ Unlearning Imperialism” (2019) for a scholarly political theory argument on the imperial foundations of knowledge, photography and the archive, Brown University, Verso Press. See also Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz “An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States” (2014), Beacon Press

  12. Cotton, 4. This goal also is accounted in a contemporaneous article by Cis Amaral. In the essay on the 8th Lausanne Biennial, Amaral notes “the scope of the exhibition has been continually changing and enlarging” and cites the aims as “to display contemporary tapestry in all its techniques, means of expression and researches.” “What is a Tapestry,” Art and Artists 12.4 (August 1977): 5.

  13. Anna G Bennett, “Five Centuries of Tapestry from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco”/ SF Museum Publisher, (1976)

  14. For more on the relationship between American and France in the postwar period and the role of tapestry, see K. L. H. Wells, Weaving Modernism: Postwar Tapestry between Paris and New York (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).

  15. Bourgeois, Louis. 1969. “The Fabric of Construction”, Craft Horizons 29, March, 31-35

  16. See American Tapestry Alliance website for historical documentation and mission goals

  17. See Art21Site, Contemporary Art in Context (2002-2018)

  18. See “These Artists are Changing Our Expectations of What Tapestry Can Be”, Julia Wolkoff, Artsy (2019)
    See also Glenn Adamson, “The Fiber Game,” Textile 5.2 (2007)

  19. See forthcoming Beyond: Tapestry Expanded, Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, Curatorial Lecture: September 10, exhibition: August 26- December 8 (2024)

Bio: Shelley Socolofsky

Shelley Socolofsky’s work investigates the intersection of textiles, architecture, and landscape. Exploring a layered perception of place through the entanglements of technology, ritual, and geological processes (elements that inform human experience), her practice is situated within relationships between ancient weaving technologies and modern computers. Creating handwoven tapestries, collage, digital imaging and drawings, these works exude surface and imagery that suggest complex records of deep time and narrative.

Traditionally trained with master tapestry weavers at the Manufactures des Gobelins in France and Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio in Italy, an historic Jacquard cloth fabricating workshop, Shelley’s current practice utilizes both preindustrial and new digital loom technology. The connecting thread between the ancient and contemporary weave together forming a symbiotic collective reality.

Socolofsky’s work can be found in both public and private collections. Recent exhibitions include Weaving Data at Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon, The Material Turn, FOFA Gallery, Montreal, QC, Canada, World Tapestry Now and The Art is the Cloth at NHIA Amherst Gallery at New Hampshire Institute of Art, and Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts.  Recent awards and residencies include Astra Zarina Fellow from the Civita Institute with visiting artist residency in Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy, the Jacquard Center in North Carolina, and the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation of New York.

Currently on the faculty in Portland State University’s School of Art + Design, Socolofsky serves as Director at Large/Board President of American Tapestry Alliance.

She lives and works in Portland, Oregon, USA