Historically Modern: Quilts, Textiles & Design: March 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

Modern Print Monday: Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt, Vienna

Swatch of printed fabric with imagery recalling The Kiss.

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Emilie Flöge,

his long-time companion, about 1905.

Gustav Klimt is best known today for his 1908-9

painting "The Kiss," a very decorative and romantic

image.

His Tree of Life from 1909 has inspired numerous

textile designers in recent years...

Klimt designed his own repeat pattern but very little evidence of this survives. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a small collection of swatches, printed by the Wiener Werkstatte (Viennese Workshop.) The catalog says these are from about 1920 but Klimt was dead by then, a victim of the 1918 influenza epidemic. I'd guess they were more likely from about 1910.

Because they are relatively small samples of a large repeat we

get no idea of the overall design.

The collection appears to be four prints in different colorways.

See the Metropolitan Museum's collection of works by Klimt by clicking here:

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections?ft=klimt&ao=on&noqs=true

The rare samples were a gift from Joanne F. du Pont and John F. Pleasants, in memory of Enos Rogers Pleasants, III, 1984

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Prints As Propaganda

Dress made of Arnold Lever's Victory Fabric, 1945,

picturing the flags of the Allies in World War II.

London Walls print By Arnold Lever for a scarf for Jacqmar, which

did a series of English patriotic/propaganda scarves

during World War II.

Uncut kimono fabric,

Japan, early 1940s

Propaganda seems a harsh word. We feel most comfortable using it to describe ideas we don't care for rather than values we hold dear.

Another Lever/Jacqmar collaboration

Perspective rests on a sliding scale between Patriotic and Propaganda and each viewer has to decide where to situate herself as she views the imagery.

These images of Japanese kimono from World War II

are from

Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in

Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931-1945

Printed yardage V For Victory from the collection

of the Victoria and Albert Museum

At least two V for Victory American prints have been documented.

Feedsack print from the Rick Rack Rag

Both use Morse code for V

..._

Percy Kent's 1942 feedsack print

Cloth of the United Nations must have been a good seller,

based on the number of surviving examples.

To the die-hard modernist, however, any use of art for the sake of the state was an unwelcome return to the past.

Read more about prints as propaganda in Jacqueline Atkins's catalog Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931-1945

See pictures from the exhibit:
http://www.designboom.com/history/propaganda.html

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Mar/11/il/FP703110326.html

See also Beauty as Duty (2011) by Alexandra Huff and Frederic Sharf, catalog to an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:
http://fileunderfiber.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html

Read more about the Jacqmar scarves:http://alfiesantiques.blogspot.com/2014/01/propaganda-scarves.html

Monday, March 24, 2014

Modern Print Monday: Jean-Denis Malclès

“Déjeuner sur l’herbe” by

Jean-Denis Malclès for Pierre Frey, 1944,

Paris

Jean-Denis Malclès (1912-2002)

Book Illustration for Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant, 194

Malcles was primarily a set designer for theater, film, ballet and opera from the 1940s until the end of the 20th century, but he also painted designs for Pierre Frey.

Malclès's mid-century patterns are in the same style as Cecil Beaton's

painterly prints. Splashes of color, sketchy lines and few defining outlines---

Gouache painting for fabric

but Malcles's are as French and frothy as a Maurice Chevalier movie,

which were probably inspired by Malcles's vision for set design.

Paris Streets, circa 1950,

features street signs

You can still buy Dejeuner Sur L'Herbe (or Fruits)

Click here to see the Pierre Frey catalog.

http://www.pierrefrey.com/uk/produit/tissus/2292-F2936001-dejeuner_sur_l_herbe.htm

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Modern/Not Modern? Art for Propaganda's Sake

Soviet textile

celebrating communal agriculture

Despite the modernist prohibition against art to glorify king and country, designers in the new Soviet Union combined modernism with imagery celebrating the revolution.

Varvara Stepanova

Initially Soviet artists like Stepanova confined the revolution to

innovative geometries.

But as the totalitarian government dictated

that communist principles invade all aspects of life,

fabric artists incorporated industry, agriculture and

the five-year plan into cotton prints.

Gouache design for fabric by

Sergei Burylin (1876-1942)

Sergei Burylin's repeat patterns

combine art deco modernism and propaganda.

Sergei Burylin

Here the USSR's symbol, the Hammer and Sickle, is

the figure in what looks like an old-fashioned

shirting print.

Liubov Popova, painting for as print (gouache)

1923-1924

Unknown designer

Sarra Buntis, 1931

V.I. Maslov, 1925

These textiles were featured in a 2006-7

exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Soviet Textiles: Designing the Modern Utopia

By Pamela Jill Kachurin

http://www.mfa.org/collections/publications/soviet-textiles

Another publication: I. Yasinkaya, Soviet Textile Design of the Revolutionary Period.

Do a web search for images and the words Soviet Textile to see a display of print design.

Read more about prints as propaganda in Jacqueline Atkins's catalog Wearing Propaganda: Textiles on the Home Front in Japan, Britain, and the United States, 1931-1945

See pictures from the exhibit:
http://www.designboom.com/history/propaganda.html

http://alfiesantiques.blogspot.com/2014/01/propaganda-scarves.html