Andy Warhol: The Textiles

Like Andy Warhol I began my career in art as a freelance illustrator. Warhol trained at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He arrived in New York in in 1949 and began producing popular fashion and advertising illustrations as well as gift-wrap and greetings cards. Some of these designs were adapted and the licences sold to textile manufacturers in New York's garment district from the mid 1950s. Warhol saw artistic and decorative potential in mundane objects very early in his career. He had a notorious sweet tooth. His favourite food were desserts, and he would eat pudding and ice creams at his favourite cafe - Serendipity in New York. Warhol's fondness for desserts found its way into his drawings and designs for textiles. These designs also featured different everyday motifs such as buttons, butterflies, flags, luggage labels and shoes repeated in his signature illustrative style and would be produced in different colourways. Warhol's illustrative style was to draw in ink onto tracing paper which would then be pressed onto absorbent paper creating ink distinctive drawings with a heavy, blobby, broken outline which he would then apply watercolour to. Although considered a lesser art form than fine art painting this use of everyday motifs/products repeated with slight variations mass produced in different colourways was key to, and prefigured the Coca-Cola bottle and Brillo boxes Warhol created in the assembly-line production in his Factory studio in his later work as a 'fine artist' and part of the Pop Art movement. This exhibition at the Fashion and Textile Museum is the work of collectors of 20th century design Geoffrey Rayner and Richard Chamberlain who have put more than 60 of their personal collection of Warhol textiles on display, many of which are being exhibited for the first time. As Warhol sold most of his designs to textile manufacturers anonymously the pair went through years of exhaustive research trawling archives, researching textiles manufacturers as well as records from Warhol's friends and associates to authenticate the designs. The fabrics bearing Warhol's designs would be transformed into garments by individuals or boutiques making these items quite unique. Visitors to the exhibition get a sense of history and journeying back in time looking at the vintage dresses and clothing exhibited, as the silhouettes of the garments are definitely of the 1950s/1960s period and as such naturally evoke a certain nostalgia. Chamberlain and Rayner have done some great detective work in tracking down obscure fabric designs from this least known and overlooked aspect of Warhol's oeuvre. There must surely be further designs just waiting to be discovered.

 

Andy Warhol: The Textiles

until 10th September

Fashion and Textile Museum

83 Bermondsey Street

London

SE1

Maria Bartuszová

My first encounter with the work of sculptor Maria Bartuszová (1936-1996) at Tate Modern, and I was immediately struck by the absence of colour. Everything here with the exception of small touches of the warmth of bronze or wood, was monochromatic, steel grey, or the pure white of plaster. Bartuszová had chosen to forego the colour spectrum in order to pursue form in her highly tactile sculptures. As such these sculptures appear to have a timeless quality about them. I would like to see some of them juxtaposed against and in 'conversation' with similar white, ancient Greek and Roman statuary. Bartuszová was born in Prague but spent much of her working life in Slovakia. Here under Communist rule she was able to gain commissions to embellish architecture with her sculptures despite the  strict state approval her works were subject to. Bartuszová created large public works in aluminium, bronze and rock, but is perhaps best known for her smaller, more intimate pieces. Some of these were experimental and developed out of her maternal care, playing with her children and involved filling balloons and condoms with plaster and submerging these in water or blowing air into them to create casts. Many of these pieces were inspired by nature and natural forms and were cast in aluminium, bronze and plaster. Some were used in workshops and classrooms to introduce art to partially sighted and blind children to stimulate their senses. As a former teacher of art and design myself, I found this element of Bartuszová's practice the most touching, and remember exercises in class we did where students would have to work blindfolded and rely on senses other than sight when creating artworks. Even though Bartuszová worked in relative isolation, there were elements of the works or ideas here that reminded me of those of other artists such as Jean Arp's amorphous sculptures, and the large paintings of almost luminous white cloth and paper by painter Alison Watt (here). My favourite pieces in this retrospective were those that resembled eggs in the various stages of being hatched, containing other egg forms inside like Russian nesting dolls, or those that had been artfully pierced with irregular holes. Their cocoon-like shapes, with their highly tactile, apparent sense of fragility, combined with the dazzling white of the plaster medium were just irresistible.

Maria Bartuszová

until 25th June

Tate Modern

Bankside

London

SE1