If your vision of fiber arts is a macrame wall hanging, say farewell to that knotty concept of yesteryear and take a look at the latest twist in this genre at the 1989 Chicago International New Art Forms Exposition: 20th Century Decorative and Applied Arts, which opens Thursday at Navy Pier.
”Fiber work is featured far more this year than in other years,” said Kristin Poole, director of the exposition, in its fourth year.
The New Art Forms show is one collectors have come to recognize as a kind of distant early-warning system for innovative creative and collecting trends.
Selected art galleries and dealers from the United States, Canada, Europe, the Soviet Union and China are participating in an exposition of sculpture, unique furniture and utilitarian artworks by artists, artisans and architects from the turn of the century to the present. Works to be shown include contemporary ceramics, glass, furniture, jewelry from precious metals and nontraditional materials, works in fiber and wood, outsider and folk objects as well as Art Deco, Art Nouveau and American Arts and Crafts pieces. Outsider, folk and ethnographic art are strongly represented in the show, underlining the increasing attention these genres are getting from collectors. There is a strengthening of the non-American dealers and lots of work form Eastern-bloc countries.
”I think one of the interesting things about this show is that the work that`s coming from non-European countries is all fiber work. That`s what`s coming from Poland and from China,” Poole said. ”In Poland there`s a long tradition of fiber artists as serious artists. In the U.S., it`s always been a woman`s art, and for that reason it`s been labeled a craft with real secondary status. In other countries of the world, that`s not so.”
”You`ll really be able to see how other cultures greet this kind of stuff at the show,” continues Poole. ”The Czech fiber work is very sculptural; they are using fiber as a sculptural tool. The Americans are using a very traditional format, quilts, but not limiting it to one that says, `this is something that must be laid on a bed.` In a way, it is a breaking of the boundaries of its original tradition.”
So what visitors will see at New Art Forms this year may elevate our perception and understanding of fiber arts as a genre.
A highlight of the show will be a special installation of Polish artist Lilla Kulka`s large-scale fiber forms, under the auspices of the Polish government and courtesy of the Jacques Baruch Gallery.
Visiting the United States for the first time, Kulka has come to Chicago to design and install the exhibition of her unique, forceful and expressive figures.
”Kulka`s haunting, large-scale forms have great impact, whether they are free-standing or silhouetted against backgrounds,” Ann Baruch said.
With sisal, wool and various other materials, in muted or vivid tones, the artist translates fiber into powerful, moody figures, creating positive, negative and phantom-like shapes.
”She might use all kinds of different fiber materials to work in, from wool and nylon hosiery to curtain material,” Baruch said of the 43-year-old artist, who also works as a professor of art to support herself. She does not do this out of a sense of whimsy but because of the difficulty of getting normal materials.
”To get paper in Poland is impossible,” says Baruch. ”So they use materials we wouldn`t think of using. Polish artists are an inspiration to the entire world. For a long time after World War II, they had no place to work, so they used caves as they studios and worked by candlelight. They would take horse`s or dog`s hair to use for brushes and that`s the way the use of other materials started. They`re short of food, but the art goes on,” says Baruch. In another genre, but also innovative, are the contemporary quilts presented by Perimeter Gallery of Chicago and Great American Gallery in Atlanta.
”The many artists working in the traditional quilt medium in nontraditional ways are virtually unknown to the Chicago audience,” said Linda Glass, assistant director of Perimeter Gallery.
”In an effort to remedy the situation, Perimeter Gallery will be exhibiting the work of at least 12 quilt artists who demonstrate the richness and diversity of work being done in the quilt medium.
”A traditional pattern is usually a repeated image. With most of the work being done now, they don`t stick with repeated anything. . . . They`re using it in a painterly way, and they`ve gone beyond the simple color design,” Glass said.
Douglas Dawson Gallery is bringing a group of ethnographic textiles to the show, including a Guatemalan upan, or dowry cloth, in ikat patterning; a man`s khalat, or robe, from Afghanistan, also in ikat patterning; a showa panel from the Kuba people of Zaire in raffia with raffia embroidery; a hunter`s shirt from Mali in cotton with leather strips and animal teeth; a ceremonial scarf or shawl from Lombok island, Indonesia, in silk tie-dye; an agbada, or chieftain`s gown, from Yoruba, Nigeria, in woven cotton with silk embroidery.
”Kuba cloths are the oldest type of textile in Africa,” Dawson said.
”Because of the political necessity for them, they kept making them, long after other types of textile making had died out. The Kuba cloths are pieces made of raffia, an unspun fiber from leaves of the raffia palm, usually 36 inches long, with a design made of patches. It`s an African version of our quilt.
”The Kuba are renowned above all Africans for being remarkable designers, especially in textiles, which have been ignored until the last 10 years. I think the principal reason (they were ignored) is because they`re made by women. Anthropology has been dominated by white males until recently. Among the Kuba, there`s an interesting differentiation of labor. Weaving is done by men, but the decorative work is done by women. Coming up with something new in design was a principal way for women to achieve status within the tribe. They could name the design, and it would become the hereditary property of the designer, who passed it on to the daughters and nieces.
”There were two basic categories of textiles, big long skirts and small panels of geometrics. The size is contingent on the length of the palm fiber; it causes the artists to be very resourceful.”
Anthropologists, viewing the very asymmetric designs in these cloths,
”thought these women were so dizzy they couldn`t get it right. That`s why the geometrics were so quirky.” But they were made from a very sophisticated consciousness, rather than by dumb tribal hands.”
New Art Forms` preview party is from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Thursday, a benefit for the Meryl Suzanne Weiss Fund at Children`s Memorial Hospital. Tickets are $100 a person.
The show is open to the public from noon to 8 p.m. Friday and next Saturday and from noon to 6 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets are $8 but $6 for students, senior citizens and groups of 20 or more. A three-day pass is $15.
For more information, call the Lakeside Group, 787-6858. –
