Category Archives: art

General arts and culture posts

Weaving for the Future: Anni Albers

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Albers, 1925

Albers, 1925
Speaking of color theory and Bauhaus, another artist who caught my eye at MoMA’s exhibition was Anni Albers (wife of Josef). Albers produced textiles that explore color values and composition as well as the technical properties of fabric. She began study at the Bauhaus in 1922. Being female, she was denied access to disciplines like glass (taught by her future husband) and architecture, so the artist turned to weaving. Her initial reluctance disappeared and she grew to love the medium. A focus on production rather than craft at the Bauhaus prompted Albers to develop many functionally unique textiles with qualities such as light reflection, sound absorption, durability, and minimized warping.

Albers is probably one of the most prominent textile artists. In her own day– before the more recent Feminist movement to reclaim the domestic arts as Art– she received recognition for her work. She updated traditional textiles with modern technologies and process of consumption, and she united the craft and art worlds in her designs. These two accomplishments are tenets of the Bauhaus school, optimistic mandates intended to create a better modern world that remain relevant in design today. I can’t help but think that Alber’s career presaged another still relevant Modern trend–that of the successful female artist.

Albers, 1926

Experiment: Slow Art

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Today I’m going to MoMA with a purpose: the challenge is to really look at a work. I mentioned a Slow Art event at MoMA a while ago. It asked participants to pick one or two works and just look at them from 15 minutes to an hour. I don’t think I can handle an hour–so I’m aiming for 30 minutes.

But now I have to choose what to look at for that long? I’m tempted to choose something in the Monet’s Water Lilies exhibition, because it will be big and pretty and I don’t know that I fully appreciate Monet.


I’ve also been checking out the permanent collection. Of course, I can’t go wrong with a Picasso. The collection has a magnificent collection of Odilon Redons–but they don’t seem to be on view. I love Klimt’s The Park, but I’m afraid I would get bored with it.


Of course, maybe I should choose something less well known. If they had Cy Twombly’s Four Seasons up, I know what I would choose (it’s another absolutely beautiful set of seasonal paintings.) I have quite the penchant for landscapes this morning. A portrait would also be a nice choice, because you could make up stories about the person. Ah well, decisions, decisions.

Anybody have any ideas?

Jungian Art?

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I’m fascinated by the recently published Red Book of CK Jung since I read this New York Times article, which is a unique, fabalistic account accompanied by drawings of Jung’s struggle with his unconsciousness. It happens to be the basis of Jungian thought, and shows Jung at his most unhinged, and perhaps transcendent. The drawing above is one that Jung did for the Red Book, which he used more as a journal, and is currently on view at the Rubin Museum of Art. The book has never been seen before. The museum describes the exhibition:

During the period in which he worked on this book Jung developed his principal theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and the process of individuation. It is possibly the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology. More than two-thirds of the large, red, leather-bound manuscript’s pages are filled with Jung’s brightly hued and striking graphic forms paired with his thoughts written in a beautiful, illuminated style. Jung was fascinated by the mandala—an artistic representation of the inner and outer cosmos used in Tibetan Buddhism to help practitioners reach enlightenment—and used mandala structures in a number of his own works.

A great post on Artopia runs wild with mandalas and Jung and Aboriginal art…I highly recommend you check it out. It ends by arguing that none of these are, in fact, art, but tools of spiritual devotion. This kind of argument would rule out a fair chunk of the Western canon as well. Why can’t it be art and be a spiritual tool? However, it’s hard to fault someone who has turned me on to a really exciting exhibition I could have missed–I’ll have to report back after I check it out for myself.