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The Quilt as Art Form
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19288 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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6 / 1991 |
743 Words |
| Author
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Samantha Taylor
Samantha Taylor writes on arts and crafts from Cambridge,
Massachusetts. |
Everyone knows that jazz is indigenous, but how many people realize that the quilt is an American contribution to the arts? And are they aware of just how hot the quilt is in fashionable circles, not only as a collector's item but as an evolving art form?
Quilting-stitching two layers of fabric together, often with wool or cotton batting between them--has long been practiced in China, India, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. In Europe, quilting bedcovers was a minor art between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries.
But it was in America that the "quilt," as it is now called, first emerged. Originally from necessity and later from choice, the American quilt became a patchwork of colored fabrics.
This distinctive look is not the only tradition American quilts embody. Beginning in pioneer days, quilting bees created community and fueled the desire to pass on heritage. Quilting was an arena for making artistic, political, social, historical, and personal statements. Making quilts was never a simple functional activity like hemming linen.
Older quilts reflect support for abolition, prohibition, or labor unions. They display virtually infinite variations on the Stars and Stripes. Fabrics from babies' bonnets, grandmothers' shawls, and husbands' jackets are ingeniously pieced together into visual family histories. We know quilts not only as bed warmers that nurtured us but through these associations. This heritage anchors the quilt renaissance occurring today.
Quilts were fairly modest heirlooms until the 1960s, when widespread interest in quilting began to emerge--interest boosted by the coming America's Bicentennial.
Then, in 1971, the exhibition Quilts as Abstract Art, mounted by Jonathan Holstein at the Whitney Museum in New York, took quilts off the bed and hung them on the walls. Holstein set aside function and concentrated on the pure art of the quilt. It didn't take long to see what would happen next.
The quilt became a collector's item. Prices soared. Specialists began touring the back country of New England, Appalachia, the South, and the Southwest questing after the treasure. Quilts were featured in design and fashion magazines. Feminists as well as art critics posthumously honored thousands of anonymous women for their sophisticated
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