Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction foregrounds a robust if over-looked strand in art history’s modernist narratives by tracing how, when, and why abstract art intersected with woven textiles (and such pre-loom technologies as basketry, knotting, and netting) over the past century. Although at times unevenly weighted, the diverse exchanges, alignments, affiliations, and affinities that have brought these art forms into dialogue constitute an ongoing if intermittent narrative in which one art repeatedly impacts and even redefines the other. In short, the relationship between abstract art and woven textiles can best be described as co-constitutive, and their histories as interdependent. With over 150 works by an international and transhistorical roster of artists, this exhibition reveals how shifting relations among abstract art, fashion, design, and craft shaped recurrent aesthetic, cultural, and socio-political forces, as they, in turn, were impacted by modernist art forms.