Special Topics in Modern Art (368-0-1)

Topic

Women and Textiles

Instructors

Christina Hilleboe Kiaer

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-329: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

Women and Textiles

This course examines woman artists of the twentieth century who worked with textiles—as fine art, as collective industrial production, and as craft. Textiles were historically associated with "women's work" and domestic life and not taken seriously as art. We will investigate such topics as the modernist artists of the 1910s-1930s who challenged this division between craft and high art, such as Anni Albers at the Bauhaus, Sonia Delaunay in Paris, Liubov Popova of the Soviet avant-garde, and Norwegian Hannah Ryggen's acclaimed narrative tapestries; the female collectives of industrial textile designers of mid-century Italy and the Soviet Union (with a focus on acclaimed designer Anna Andreeva); the feminist artists of the 1960s and 1970s who upended the masculine art world status quo through their shared knowledge of traditional and experimental textile techniques, such as Faith Ringgold, Harmony Hammond, Miriam Schapiro and the Womanhouse collective; and throughout, the particular importance of textiles to speak to stories of exclusion and marginalization for artists of color and indigenous artists.

*Course under review for FD-HS and FD-LA

Class Materials (Required)

No textbook required.

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area

Associated Classes

DIS - NO DATA: NO DATA