In her opening essay, Rike Frank maps out two sets of oppositions that define the debate on textile within the art context. One is the familiar tension between the formalistic and socio-historical readings of textile, in other words the aesthetic quality of fabrics and their functions both in terms of their actual use and the social structures built around them, that were first put forward by Viennese art historian Alois Riegl in the late nineteenth century. Under this opposition, many other debates such as feminine vs. masculine or art vs. craft are subsumed.
The second, less discussed dichotomy is that of between textile’s relationship to technological advancement and the small-scale, often low-tech or traditional and local modes of production of the types of textile usually regarded to possess higher artistic value, including the unique objects made by artists. This is an unresolved debate that is continuing at least since William Morris. On the one hand, textile, being one of the engines of industrial revolution, played crucial roles in shaping our technological society, for instance by laying the foundation for the advent of computer in the form of punch card-operated Jacquard loom, as well as giving rise to the modern labor movements. On the other hand, artist’s response to this technological development in textile manufacturing has often been an insistence on autonomy and uniqueness of their products, ethos much closer to modernist art than that of mass production-oriented modernist design. The post-colonial reading of textile, as it aims to reassert control over the narrative and interpretation of non-western production that were suppressed by the western expansion, also belong to the latter of this dichotomy.
This publication privileges the socio-economic perspective over the formalist one, and artistic perspective over the technological one. Though it inevitably resulted in some unfortunate omissions (the affinity between the interlace or pixel of video and textile Frank touches upon briefly in her essay is chief among them), it is nevertheless a necessary decision in order to make the book, which does not purport to be encyclopedic, more focused.
The Bauhaus textile artist Anni Albers is a recurring figure throughout the book. Not only her philosophy on textile were hugely influential (explored here in the essay by T’ai Smith), but as the first textile maker to have a solo show in MoMA in 1949, she heralded the arrival of textile as an artistic medium in the modern exhibition space. Fiber Art movement, now rarely discussed school of artists active in the 1960s and the 1970s who are examined in essays by Grant Watson and Elissa Auther, for instance can said to be a development of the theme established by Albers. Indeed, Auther discusses the impact Albers’ exhibition had on the curators who championed Fiber Art, and on the debate around the legitimacy of textile, weaving in particular, as an artistic medium at large. Moreover, her life-long admiration and study of pre-Columbian textiles, originating from the influence textile collections of Berlin’s Museum für Völkerkunde and Essen’s Museum Folkwang had on many Bauhaus artists, functions as a useful bridge between (western) art history of textile and the post-colonial one.
Meanwhile, Georg Vasold’s excellent essay on the economic conditions of textile production in Austro-Hungarian empire during the late-nineteenth century and other sociological factors such as the entry of women in industry and Viennese art education or the emergence of serious scholarship on non-western art, and the significant part textile played in both developments, is a fascinating read. Not only it presents an interesting historical knowledge, but it also demonstrates how these social conditions influenced the writings of Riegl and sowed the seed of what in the twentieth century became the sociological art history.
As discussed above, the book omits many issues concerning the subject of textile. It is, however, done with clear intentionality that it becomes a positive attribute rather than its weakness. The title itself is revealing, emphasizing its open-endedness. (One must remember that this book is a part, rather than culmination, of a series of seminars, screenings, publications and exhibitions that investigate the multifaceted nature of textile as a field.) The aforementioned essay by Frank contains several threads that were not further elaborated in a separate text. But the book is structured in such a way as to make one expect future outputs that address these threads. The musing on textile, it appears, can potentially be extended infinitely, much like a piece of weaving.