Yesterday I asked you how you would vote on these three works if you were jurying Quilt National. The vote was overwhelmingly NO. Some people pointed out correctly that the pieces aren’t quilted, so they would be ineligible, and that’s true, but most of you looked past that and rejected them on their design. Not everybody was as plain spoken as the reader who said “I think even I could whip all three of them up in a few hours without much thought,” but I got the vibes that many of you had similar thoughts, just expressed them a little more tactfully.
People didn’t seem to like them much for a gallery show, either. “They show very little creativity and little technical ability,” one reader said. “I'd vote no to both as none of these make me want to look at them again. Nor do they tell a compelling story,” another said. “I find all three pieces uninteresting in terms of design and color… They do not draw me in, or do they invite me to linger,” a third said.
One commenter said, “Kathy, I hope these aren't yours.”
Well, gentle reader, not to worry. They aren’t mine. They were made by Louise Bourgeois, described by the gallery mounting this solo show as “the most important female artist of our times.”
Bourgeois, who died earlier this year, had stashed away many pieces of fabric over her long lifetime, from clothing and linens used by herself and her family. In the last few years she pulled them out and cut and restructured them into “fabric drawings.” A show of these fabric works opened in London last week and other fiber art bloggers have commented on it (here) and (here).
Interestingly, the tone of some of these comments has been adoring – totally opposite from what my readers thought! For instance, one wrote, “I find all of these pieces engaging and attractive on first view, and then despite their apparent simplicity – maybe because of their deceptive simplicity, I am intrigued to gaze on them longer. I think that it’s a question of the compositions, the balance and choice of colours, the intensity of them which detain me.”
Bourgeois had what we might charitably call an unconventional or uncharitably call a traumatic childhood, as suggested by her signature motifs of spiders, cages and genitalia. I find it comforting to read her statement, “I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.”
Louise Bourgeois, Crouching Spider, 2003
I confess that when I set up yesterday’s “quiz” for you, I deliberately chose some of the least interesting (to me) images of those posted on the gallery’s website. Some of the other works might have gotten our votes for Quilt National, especially those riffing on her spider motifs.
Her pieces where she wove fabric into grid patterns are also interesting.
But what struck me about the show in general (at least the images shown on the gallery website, which I assume are representative of those on exhibit) was the importance of CONTEXT. When we see the images without knowing anything about the maker, they are described as uncreative and uninteresting. But when the viewer knows they were made by the most important female artist of our times, they’re described like this:
“Bourgeois’s fabric drawings are abstract yet acutely personal works, retaining allusions to the materials’ past incarnations… Stripy and chequered drawings that Bourgeois began making in 2002 weave thin strips of her garments together, bending the modernist grid…. Rather than being minimalist, these morphing geometries are supple and embracive, softly corporeal.” (quotes from the gallery press release)
If you visit the gallery site you can see several more of her fabric drawings, plus some sculptures -- well worth your time, I think.
So what lessons do we take from this little exercise?
- that if you are a world-famous sculptor you can sew a couple of pieces of old fabric together and people will rave about them
- that if you or I made the identical pieces, people would not rave about them
- that if you or I made the identical pieces, people would not rave about them
- that fiber art shows, such as Quilt National, have different standards than the big-time art world – blind jurying being one important element
- that the big-time art world is totally built upon the foundation of reputation, connections, sales track record, and market trends
- that fiber artists kind of bristle when art made of fiber doesn’t play by our rules
- but that fiber artists may also feel validated in some respect when a world-famous artist chooses to work in our medium instead of her customary one.
Are we being defensive when we bristle? Do we love the work because of the famous name? Or does the emperor have no clothes? I don’t know. What do you think?
