Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Wednesday 16th January 2019
Today we visited Tate Modern in London to see the Anni Albers exhibit. Her exhibit was nine rooms full of her work, ranging from weaving to painting to collage using corn kernels. I found this very interesting as most artists and designers who display work in a museum will have one specific field of art, such as only photography or only weaving. I felt this was important to see as I have always been drawn to both art and textiles, but after seeing the Anni Albers exhibition, I have now realised I don't have to choose just one. We also had a look around the rest of Tate Modern, including artists rooms like Jenny Holzer and Fernell Franco. Jenny Holzer used a lot of 3D elements in her work as well as lots of light. But within all her work was an underlying, impactful message. I think this is why she used light to portray it, as we would walk into a room and be blinded, almost like Holzer was trying to make us see the reality. As you walked into her room, the walls were covered in tiny controversial messages such as, 'It's a gift to the world not to have babies' and 'It's good to give extra money to charity'. Even though it would be difficult to include light within my design, I think that i could easily include some of her messages as I feel that they link well to sustainability. Fernell Franco is a black and white, monochromatic photographer who, in some of his pieces, collages his photographs together. I looked at his work as it inspired me through the way he laid out his work. I think this could be translated into textiles through patchwork, and if the fabric has meaningful prints on it, it would look very effective and purposeful.
Anni Albers
Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann was born in
Berlin on 12 June 1899 to a middle class family. She was one of the leading
innovators of the twentieth-century modernist abstract art. She wanted to
combine the ancient craft of weaving with the language of modern art. She was
among artists like Josey
Albers, Hninnerk Scheper, Gorge Muche, Laszlo MoholyNagy, Vassily Kandinsky,
Paul Klee, Herbert Bayer and Joot Schmidt who worked at the Bauhaus, where she
was initially introduced to hand-weaving. She began as a student there in 1922,
when she met Josef Albers. They married in 1925. In 1933, the couple emigrated
to the United States of America due to the forced closure of the Bauhaus by
Nazi Germany. Here they both became teachers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. As an artist, designer, teacher and
writer she transformed the way weaving could be understood as a medium for art,
design and architecture. Throughout her artistic career, Albers explored the
possibilities of weaving as a modernist medium as well as one deeply rooted in
highly sophisticated and ancient textile traditions from around the world. Albers
also experimented with printmaking later on in her career, but continued to
explore textile related concerns such as pattern, line, knotting and texture.
Overall, I thought Tate Modern was a very good trip as I was extremely inspired by the work that I saw and the techniques and artists history. I thought the Anni Albers exhibition was intriguing and I liked how it related to Bauhaus which we had research in art history. One feature of the Museum is a look out over the whole of London, which made the trip even more exciting.