• Recording of the talk
• Anni Albers at the Tate Modern

Germany

• Born 1899 in Berlin, applied to the Bauhaus in 1922. At this time, students would do a 6 week Vorkurs, then apply to the school proper. Didn't get in but met Josef Albers, eventually applied again and got in. In the first year (1923), she was placed into the weaving programme (which started out as the "women's department" because the 20s were a sexist time).

• Every workshop had a master of form (someone with technical skill, Gunta Stölzl for most of the time the workshop existed) and master of design (always a painter, Georg Muche in weaving)

• Became one of the most important textile artists of the 20th century. Important aspect of her work is economy of technique and material, following Bauhaus ideas

• Later referred to the act of weaving as the event of the thread

• Weaving (with horizontal and vertical weft and something) lends itself to straight lines, modernist forms. Albers' contribution was to elevate weaving to the level if other arts - she did this to pictoral weaving: The thing exists as a finished object, you're not cutting it up into a fabric and upholstering a sofa in it

• Albers always shows the horizontal and vertical - she never really does anything you as a viewer can't figure out.

• Weaving: Different binary patterns (one thread over/under the other) lead to different 2d patterns

• In 1925 Muche point decided to buy Jaquard looms (without telling anyone)
• Albers and others taught themselves to use it used this to go beyond straight lines

In the 1925 wall hanging you see how the Jacquard loom lends itself to mre complicated shapes, although we see how albers still uses straight lines instead of curves (contrast this to Stölz works fromt the same period)

• Marries Josef Albers in 1925

Some words on Josef Albers

• Born 1888 in Bottrop
• Joined the Bauhaus in 1922 quickly started teaching
• Ran the Vorkurs 1925-33
• At the Bauhaus, started making stained glass work from found objects, like Factory (1925)

• Two layers of glass, one tinted red, some of the red is sandblasted away, then enammel on top

• The Bauhaus didn't have any of the tools for this, so most likely Albers hada a literal factory execute the work for him. We clearly see the parallels between his and Annis weaving drafts (although she says neither copied off the other).

• Hannes Meyer becomes director in 1928, is commissioned the same year to build Bernau Trade Union School

• The auditorium at of this needed wall hangings to dampen the sound. Albers came up with a material that had cotton on the back to dampen the sound, silvery celophane on the front to make the room lighter. Again: economy of materials

• The Nazis shut down the bauhaus in 1933.

The Albers's in New York (1933)

Philip Johnson, the architect had met the Albers's at the Bauhaus in the 1920s and to recruits them to join the newly-founded Black Mountain College (NC), where they worked from 1938 to 1955. The Albers basically formed the art department, Joseph doing esentially the Bauhaus Vorkurs, Anni doing weaving.

Anni started teaching weaving without a loom, through techniques like:

• Gathering seeds, adhering them to paper in regular patterns and textures

• Typewriter studies (using repeated letters that read like a textile)

• Puncturing cardstock to create fabric-type textures

• Pieces of corn (repeated patterns)

• She would have known that "textile", "text" and "architecture" all come from the indo-European word (s)teg-: to cover, to build, to weave - combinging simple materials to create more complex structures.

• In "On Weaving" (1965) Anni talks about how every material has three properties:

  1. Strucure (how it was formed)
  2. Texture (what its superficial surface feels like)
  3. Facture (what's done to it, twisting etc)

Our materials come to us already ground and chipped and crushed...

The Albers's start to go to Mexico, where anni learns to backstrap weave. Also starts to use found materials

[la luz 1934]

Probably the masterpiece:

• Here she's moved beyond the horizontal and vertical, this looks simple but is layered and complex on closer inspection
• Anni has the first solo show for a weaver, first solo show for a woman at MoMA, curated by Phillip Johnson. Functional fabrics are shown alongside artworks
• In 1950 Josef becomes the chair of the design department at Yale, they move to New Haven.
• Anni doesn't have to teach anymore, so she produces a lot more varied work from 1950-1965
• The last weaving is Epitaph (1968)

• Paul Klee: "Take your line for a walk"

• Open Letter, 1958

• Exploring the smilarity between textile and text (see also lines)

• Enmeshed (1963): Again taking the event of thread into print

• Begins to make lithographies in the 1960s: Line Involvements (1964)

• Eventually screen prints: Camino Real (1967-69)

• Where texture was central in weaving, colour becomes more importand in printmaking

• Commercial photo-offset prints in the 1970s: Fox 1 (1972)

• Drawings in the 1980s make use her shaky hand

• All of this about showing what these materials can and can't do: When the Albers came to Black Mountain College, it was the middle of the depression, hence no materials could be bought.

• At the Bauhaus, these material studies are all pretty architectural - at Black Mountain College they become much more abstract and poetic.