Anni’s art Textiles at Tate Modern
THIS WEEK, a new exhibition opened at Tate Modern dedicated to the work of Anni Albers (1899-1994), the first major retrospective of her work to be held in this country. Some might consider it unusual for Tate to focus on this artist as she is best known not for paintings or sculpture but for her textiles, and perhaps in the past an exhibition like this would have been more at home at the Victoria & Albert Museum with its emphasis on design.
Indeed, Albers turned to printmaking later in life because it was more respected, saying “I find that, when the work is made with threads, it’s considered a craft; when it’s on paper, it’s considered art … Prints gave me a greater freedom of presentation … As a result, recognition comes more easily and happily, the longed-for pat on the shoulder.”
However, as exhibition curator Ann Moxon makes clear, Tate Modern is the perfect location for this exhibition. “The weavings that she made, she termed her pictorial weavings which meant that they were her art works. They weren’t for design purposes but to be looked at.
“It is about recognising that there are artists in the 20th century who happen to have been using textiles as their primary medium. But they are artists and we have a duty to reflect that. This is very much exploring Anni Albers the artist.”
One reason for the exhibition taking place now is that next year sees the centenary of the foundation of the famous Bauhaus art school in Germany where many great pioneers of Modernism worked and studied. Several were, like Anni Albers, of Jewish heritage. She was born Annelise Fleischmann in Berlin in 1899. Her mother was an Ullstein, a family of famous Jewish publishers who had in the late nineteenth century converted to Protestantism en masse. Her father, a furniture salesman was also a convert and Anni had been baptised as a child. Although she only considered herself Jewish “in the Hitler sense”, her background would become critical in the 1930s.
The young Annelise was keen to become an artist and after an unsuccessful attempt to study with renowned artist Oskar Kokoschka and then two terms studying at art school in Hamburg, she heard about the radical nature of the Bauhaus and was determined to become a student there, succeeding on gaining a place on her second attempt.
Famously, she only entered the weaving school after she was turned down by the stained glass, carpentry, wall painting and metalwork departments but this was a happy result as she became one of the most innovative and influential weavers of the twentieth century.
Ann Coxon explains that in some ways Albers was very traditional. ‘She was very interested in hand-weaving which is a slow and meticulous process.’ However, her designs are notable for their abstraction and particularly when designing for public buildings, she steered away from intricate motifs and colourful patterning preferring designs that were delicate and subtle to blend in with the surroundings.
She loved experimenting with unexpected combinations of materials including horsehair, cellophane, rayon, other synthetic fibres and plastic. In 1930, she was awarded her diploma for creating a soundproof, light-reflecting fabric incorporating cellophane and chenille for the auditorium of the Trade Union School in Bernau.
Her innovative nature can also be seen in the exhibition in the jewellery that she created, for which she used paper clips, sink strainers, hair pins, tap washers to make what Albers expert Nicholas Fox Weber describes as ‘necklaces of astonishing originality and panache.’
Perhaps one reason that it has taken a long time for Anni Albers to have a major solo exhibition is that her work is often shown with her much better-known husband, Josef Albers. He was 11 years older than her, also a student at the Bauhaus and was soon promoted to its teaching staff.
They were very much at the centre of Bauhaus life, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, the school was forced to close down as its style was regarded as too modern and un-German. At this point, the Albers were offered teaching posts at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and decided to leave Germany.
Anni Albers had always felt very ambivalent about her Jewish roots, once describing her Jewishness as “that stone around my neck” and apparently feeling guilty that it was her Jewish heritage more than the closure of Bauhaus that meant that she and her husband had to leave Germany.
However, post-war, especially when she learnt of the death of her friend and fellow Bauhaus textile artist Otti Berger in Auschwitz, she seems to have had a change of heart.
Ann Coxon comments ‘You do get a sense that she had a survivor guilt and that hearing about Otti Berger had a strong impact on her’. Perhaps it was this that led her to accept three major commissions from Jewish institutions, two from synagogues and one, which Ann Coxon describes as her masterpiece, entitled Six Prayers.
This piece was commissioned by the Jewish Museum in New York in 1965 as a memorial to the 6,000,000 who perished in the Holocaust. Whereas the two synagogue commissions remain in situ but are represented in this exhibition by preparatory studies, Six Prayers will be shown in this country for the first time.
By this point, the Albers had travelled a great deal in Central and South America and Anni had become fascinated by their ancient cultures and language which become a theme in her works and many of her works appear to have writing running through them.
She commented ‘I used the threads themselves as a sculptor or painter uses his medium to produce a scriptural effect which would bring to mind sacred texts.’
This can certainly be seen in Six Prayers which are six separate pieces, each one long and thin, thus bringing to mind a Torah scroll. The weavings are almost monochromatic, with highlights created by the use of silver thread that meanders back and forth across each piece suggesting lettering.
They also resemble prayer shawls, which are used , of course, as shrouds, thus commemorating the murdered 6,000,000.
This long overdue solo exhibition thus not only highlights this fascinating artist but also brings to London one of the most original and moving of Holocaust memorials.
Anni Albers continues at Tate Modern until 27th January 2019