Woven Histories - by Lynne Cooke (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Published on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Lynne Cooke, Woven Histories offers a fresh and authoritative look at textiles-particularly weaving-as a major force in the evolution of abstraction. This richly illustrated volume features more than fifty creators whose work crosses divisions and hierarchies formerly segregating the fine arts from the applied arts and handicrafts. Woven Histories begins in the early twentieth century, rooting the abstract art of Sophie Taeuber-Arp in the applied arts and handicrafts, then features the interdisciplinary practices of Anni Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, and others who sought to effect social change through fabrics for furnishings and apparel. Over the century, the intersection of textiles and abstraction engaged artists from Ed Rossbach, Kay Sekimachi, Ruth Asawa, Lenore Tawney, and Sheila Hicks to Rosemarie Trockel, Ellen Lesperance, Jeffrey Gibson, Igshaan Adams, and Liz Collins, whose textile-based works continue to shape this discourse. Including essays by distinguished art historians as well as reflections from contemporary artists, this ambitious project traces the intertwined histories of textiles and abstraction as vehicles through which artists probe urgent issues of our time"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Richly illustrated volume exploring the inseparable histories of modernist abstraction and twentieth-century textiles.

Published on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Lynne Cooke, Woven Histories offers a fresh and authoritative look at textiles--particularly weaving--as a major force in the evolution of abstraction. This richly illustrated volume features more than fifty creators whose work crosses divisions and hierarchies formerly segregating the fine arts from the applied arts and handicrafts.

Woven Histories begins in the early twentieth century, rooting the abstract art of Sophie Taeuber-Arp in the applied arts and handicrafts, then features the interdisciplinary practices of Anni Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, and others who sought to effect social change through fabrics for furnishings and apparel. Over the century, the intersection of textiles and abstraction engaged artists from Ed Rossbach, Kay Sekimachi, Ruth Asawa, Lenore Tawney, and Sheila Hicks to Rosemarie Trockel, Ellen Lesperance, Jeffrey Gibson, Igshaan Adams, and Liz Collins, whose textile-based works continue to shape this discourse. Including essays by distinguished art historians as well as reflections from contemporary artists, this ambitious project traces the intertwined histories of textiles and abstraction as vehicles through which artists probe urgent issues of our time.

Review Quotes

"I[Woven History's] purview stretches from Sophie Taeuber-Arp's glittering geometric beadwork (1918) to Analia Saban's glittering circuit-board Copper Tapestry (2020), with space for Agnes Martin's ascetic sublime, Jeffrey Gibson's eloquent excess, the numinous painted grids of Jack Whitten, and the Arte Povera tangles of Marisa Merz."-- "New York Review of Books"

"Another welcome distinguishing feature [of this exhibition] is the excellent catalogue, featuring essays by several of the field's leading scholars. . . . Cooke's volume . . . will serve as a permanent record of this expansive moment in the history of an unjustly neglected art form."-- "Art in America"

"Woven Histories makes clear that the relationship between textiles and modernist abstraction is multifarious. The artists working at the intersection of the textile medium and the abstract mode enter a variety of different conceptual, aesthetic, technical, and technological spaces, some embracing handicraft traditions within a feminist context, others producing eccentric geometries, others moving toward new mechanics of making, and much more."-- "Women's Art Journal"

"Woven Histories, edited by Cooke, addresses a long overdue realignment of the role of textiles in relation to modernist and contemporary art and architecture. . . . a comprehensive and illuminating collection of scholarly writings that bring new focus to fascinating aspects of textile history."-- "Galleries West"

"In centering weaving--thread, fiber, and cloth--Woven Histories differently tracks adaptations from within the frame of its traditions."-- "Brooklyn Rail"

"Placing textiles -- and centrally weaving -- at the heart of modern abstract art, Cooke selected from the work of around fifty textile artists. She also invited five art critics to respond to the thorny issues raised when weaving and abstract art are linked. Most powerfully, six contemporary fiber artists were asked to draw on their creative perspectives to comment on the works of other fiber artists in the show. . . . Cooke's majestic compendium of woven artists contains over one hundred finely reproduced illustrations."-- "Arts Fuse"

"This major looker of an exhibition catalog loosens up the warp and weft of conventional views of modern art--all those tight-knotted hierarchical categories (high versus low, art versus craft) on which our institutions and markets still rest--and demonstrates the universe of formal and conceptual brilliance that has always traveled on a parallel track. The sheer variety of work produced by more than 50 artists chosen by the book's editor, Lynne Cooke, will knock your socks off. (Just wait till you see what's happening in the field of basketry alone.) So will the visual imaginations of individual geniuses we already know like Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Gego, Lenore Tawney and Sheila Hicks, and the others we're introduced to here."-- "New York Times, on "Best Art Books of 2023""

About the Author

Lynne Cooke is senior curator of special projects in modern art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Her work has been published in Burlington Magazine and Artforum, as well as in numerous exhibition catalogs and books. The catalog for her National Gallery of Art exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art was also copublished by the University of Chicago Press.