A quick and dirty post this morning from June, since Kristin was unable to do one. I would like to have some continuation of a question that Terry’s last post and subsequent comments suggested. The question is — what are the differences between painting media and stitched textile media? Olga pointed out that making curves in textiles is less physical than doing so in paint, and I think that it’s much harder to make curves with textiles than with paint, and that the effect of the finished work differs subtly in the different media.
Faith Ringgold, Dinner at Gertrude Stein’s, 1991, Acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, pieced fabric border, 79 x 84″
I’m not looking for champions of either format, just a list of what, as an artist, you can do with this but not with the other medium; what effects you can get with this but not that medium; what subjects work better in that medium than this one; etc. I would also like to hear from people who work in an opposite manner to the obvious way that the medium might suggest.
Yesterday, Terry Grant, Gerrie Congdon, and I saw Faith Ringgold ’s piece, Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied, A Painted Story Quilt, (1994, Acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 89 x 59.5,”) in the Cooley Gallery at Reed College.
Marlon Riggs: Tongues Untied
Ringgold is obviously a painter, with a strong point of view and subject matter that she works in sophisticated (albeit apparently “naive”) ways. She paints in acrylic on canvas, and in the piece I saw, she stitched (”quilted” is too strong a word) with what looked like dental floss in a large all-over grid pattern. But her work, even if it stretches it a bit to be called quilted, references quilts, particularly in her use of borders and repeated motifs, like flowers. In the piece we saw, she centered her figure, bed quilt fashion, and echoed the border floral pattern in the pattern on the chair in which her primary subject was seated. Her borders and corners, however, while from a distance might appear to be a commercial fabric, are painted (even if “pieced”) in a fairly primitive style. She binds her paintings with traditional colorful bindings.
Ringgold’s work is also full, sometimes slightly chaotic, in the manner of many quilted works — lots of busy-ness, in the best sense of the word.
Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach 2, 1990, Silkscreen on silk, 66 x 66″
Ringgold is obviously aware of the confusions her work creates between the traditions of painting, of quilting, of black people, of cultural and material heritages in the world of art as well as the world of African Americans and white Anglos. She loves playing with stories that the confusions can create.
Faith Ringgold, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles , 1991, Acrylic on canvas, tie-dyed, pieced fabric border, 74 x 80″
Comparisons can help us understand more fully why we choose to work as we do and how we can enhance our choices — or change them. So help me with this list — what can you do in your quilted medium that you can’t do with paint? How does Ringgold subvert the quilted medium while also referencing it? Does she honor it with her referencing?
Wow! And how long do we get to write this thesis? This is a fascinating question, but such a huge one. In essence it is the fundamental why-make-art-in-the-form-of-a-domestic-craft question. What follows is more or less top of the head stuff.
I kept mulling over the curves subject, and began thinking about the work of Magdalena Abakanowicz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalena_Abakanowicz She started with large textiles, weavings which used curves in the overall outline, but which also described curves in the way that they hang. http://blog.roodo.com/weavery/56d07e5a.jpg It strikes me that this latter curve is an important one in this choice of medium. Soft random curves. Somehow I feel that the randomness, or at least the probable unpredictability of the curve is vital. I have not really thought about this - it’s just an instinctive feel.
Anyway, MA has gone on to make figurative sculpture, hard, often without heads. It is such a change of medium. Is this an artist becoming serious in her choice of ‘legitimate’ medium? Are textiles limited in expression, or just limited in serious outlets?
Does Faith Ringgold use textiles with her paintings, or does she paint her quilts? I suspect that she is a painter who wants to include the materiality and the evocative qualities of domestic cloth in her imagery. I think that the loose category of art quilts can be a muddying of waters, and a fudging of thought about purpose.
I stop and ask myself why I am working in cloth and stitch. Part of the answer is that I need the theraputic meditative calm of repetetive stitching with the soothing feel of fabric through my fingers. Another part is that I am concerned with expressing emotions which arise through a domestic/family situation, and I want to evoke as well as subvert thoughts of comfort/discomfort/enigma in that way, so for the most part I believe that the materiality of fabric and its companion marks of stitch can get me nearer to what I feel I am saying.
However, I do find myself editing my work because not everything is appropriate for the medium. Only the other day I encountered a case where a piece has developed through use of stitch out into a kind of limbo where I don’t know what medium is appropriate other than perhaps photographic print, whether on paper or on fabric. This is fine if simply developing work for oneself, but is a knotty problem if trying to achieve some kind of position in the gallery/exhibition/art/craft/whatever world.
I suspect that this reads in too rambling a fashion, so I shall stop here. I’m sorry that no-one else has commented, because it is such an interesting question. On the other hand, as I said - such a huge one too that perhaps it just is to big even to nibble at coherently.
Hi Olga,
Just because a question is unanswerable doesn’t mean we shouldn’t conjure up conjectures — some of the best unanswerables have many tomes written and still being written about [add snort here].
The weaving you linked to is extremely interesting in part because it seems to violate the gridded regularity of weaving, but makes apparent what happens to fabric when it’s hung. It emphasizes the textility (drape) of the textile as opposed to the usual stretching of it like a canvas; at the same time, it violates the usual gridded character.
I also think separating out the gallery/exhibition/art/craft questions from the smaller ones of what can the artist can achieve with different media and how the artist matches intentions to specific media is useful (and you have helped to make that sort). The external world is generally layered over our personal preferences — we learn to work around/with/through the Art World, while holding onto what we feel works best.
So that still allows for the questions of personal preference — like you, many textile artists simply love textiles — the touching folding softness and the connotations of fabric; many painters simply love the paint (James Elkins connects this to a scatological primal element, which always makes me laugh, because I love the smooshy pudding/mudness (to be less primal) of paint).
And you have pointed out that sometimes the subject matter makes the choice quite clear — certain subjects seem to go better with certain media. But many can go either way, and I think I’m interested in what happens when you make the choice — what happens to the imagery, and the intention that gets focused because of the media.
And then there’s what you can actually do with the media with any ease and coherence and whether to bother with a different mode.
Thanks for attempting to respond to a Big Question. The question is not as bad as “how to fix the American Economy” or “Whether there’s a God or not,” but I find it a whole lot more interesting. Your ideas contribute to the ongoing interest.
Hi June,
In answer to the question “What can you do with quilted medium that you can’t do with paint?” One answer is: Wrap it around your body to keep warm.
This idea may be simple, but to me it is no small thing. In fact it may be the single biggest reason that I prefer fabric over paint. Part of the appeal of using fabrics is the feeling described by Olga. When I’m stitching a quilt (small, large, art quilt or other), inevitably some of the material rests on my lap or runs across my arms. At that moment I’m reminded that what I’m creating has been created millions of times, over centuries, in myriad forms all stemming from a basic human need - to protect us against cold.
This drive to create may come from deep within my DNA, a primal “nesting” instinct passed down from my cave woman ancestors. Quilts have a unique potential to be pratical utilitarian objects or evocative works of art (even both at the same time).
As our technology advances and we no longer need to quilt for physical warmth, we still hang onto the practice. Without the pressure of survival resting on our work, we can use what we’ve learned to stretch the boundaries & explore the limits of fabric as an artistic medium.
How cool is that?
I like how neatly Olga defined the big question: “In essence it is the fundamental why-make-art-in-the-form-of-a-domestic-craft question.”
Like the rest of us, I have no good answer. I do know I like the contrariness of presenting serious ideas in a medium that the world has defined as comforting. It allows me to draw people into a work. The serious questions sneak up because of the medium.
I was raised with textiles. My grandmother taught me embroidery before her death when I was in first grande in a one room school house. Cloth is definitely one of the defining parameters or domesticity. That’s that for good or bad. I picked it up again in my forties when I had time available.
The other aspect of the continuting choice is a statement the late Arlene LewAllen made at a saqa conference in Santa Fe in 1999, “Show me something I’ve never seen before!” That command comes into play if, as artists, we wish to engage in the public aspects of our work.