Designer of the Month: Anni Albers

Week 3: Black Mountain College

As I mentioned last week, Anni and Josef Albers emigrated to the United States at the urging of Philip Johnson, whom had be charged with finding someone to run Black Mountain College's art department.[1] Now, Black Mountain has a bit of a special place in my heart. A good portion of my Master's thesis, which discussed the work of Trude Guermonprez, a weaver, textile artist, fellow Bauhausian, contemporary, and student of Anni Albers, was devoted to the subject of Black Mountain. So what, exactly, made this school so interesting? Well, for starters, in addition to the Albers' and Guermonpez, some of the more notable names of the 20th century spent time at Black Mountain, including the artists Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, the writers Charles Olson, Anaïs Nin, and Robert Creeley, the engineer and visionary Buckminster Fuller, the composers John Cage and Stefan Wolpe, the choreographer Merce Cunningham, and the dancer Paul Taylor.[2]

Black Mountain College, North Carolina, ca. 1942. Photo: Will Hamlin Courtesy of the N.C. Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina and the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation.

John Andrew Rice and Theodore Dreier founded Black Mountain College, an experimental and progressive interdisciplinary school located in North Carolina, in 1933, with Rice as the innovator and Dreier as teacher, fund-raiser, and as a link to the New York art world (including, Philip Johnson).[3] While only remaining in session until 1956, Black Mountain held as its core the belief in the idea that the arts should be central to any education and integrated into all aspects of a liberal curriculum, attracting a wide range of avant-garde artists, writers and performers, including many Bauhaus-educated and inspired teachers and students like Anni Albers, who headed the weaving department.[4]

Anni Albers, Display Fabric Sample, 1944. Cellophane and jute, 35 x 38" (88.9 x 96.5 cm). Gift of the designer. © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Anni Albers's weaving program was meant as an alternative to craft classes in which nothing more than "ashtray art" was produced.[5] For Albers, weaving was a serious and complex process that involved responding to materials, the structure of textiles, and to function, and of all the workshops at the school, it was the most successful.[6] Under Albers's tutelage, weaving and textile design were taught as a "preparatory step to machine production," with the structure of the weave rather than color or texture emphasized.[7] This emphasis on structure made the textiles at Black Mountain distinguished by their limitation of color, serving as a foil for other objects.[8]

Anni Albers, Drapery, 1945. Cotton and metal foil, 13 1/2 x 17" (34.3 x 43.2 cm). Gift of the designer. © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Black Mountain College is most-often described in conjunction with the word "experiment." It was an experiment in education and in art, and the work created at the school is a reflection of this. Albers may have taught weaving as a step on the road towards machine production, but she also encouraged experimentation in both her own and her student's work, most notably in her use of abstracted imagery and incorporation of unconventional materials.[9] Rayon, jute and metallic threads were used beside cotton and linen, not only in her own work, but in her designs for commercial textiles as well.[10]

Anni Albers, Tapestry, 1948. Handwoven linen and cotton, 16 1/2 x 18 3/4" (41.9 x 47.6 cm). Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. Purchase Fund. © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

Albers' time at Black Mountain was when her career as an artist really flourished, culminating in her 1949 solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.[11] In addition to her flourishing career as an artist and commercial textile designer, this was also the time when Albers became prolific as an author, all while working as a teacher at the school.[12] During their time at Black Mountain, Josef and Anni also traveled widely, both in the United States and Mexico, a country that "captivated their imagination and had a strong effect on both of their art."[13] In addition to all this work and travel, it's amazing to think not only of Albers' impact on the weaving and textile world at the time, but the impact that her students went on to have as well, many of whom (Ruth Asawa, Sheila Hicks, Dorothy Ruddick, and Trude Guermonprez) went on to became the first generation of studio artists in the U.S. working with fiber.[14]

Anni Albers, Free-Hanging Room Divider, 1949. Cellophane and cord, 94 x 32 1/2" (238.7 x 82.5 cm). Gift of the designer. © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art.

The Albers were connected with Black Mountain for 16 years, finally leaving when the school took a direction that they didn't see as appropriate.[15] In 1950, the Albers moved to Connecticut, where Josef took a position teaching at Yale, and where Anni continued writing, teaching and weaving.[16]

[1] Tara Leigh Tappert, "Artists and Advocates," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 227.

[2] Vincent Katz, “Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art,” in Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, ed. Vincent Katz (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 18.

[3] Ibid., 15, 18.

[4] Mary Emma Harris, “Introduction,” The Arts at Black Mountain College, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), xxi.

[5] Janet Kardon, "Craft in the Machine Age," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 27.

[6] Ibid., 27.

[7] Marcia Yockey Manhart, "Charting a New Educaitonal Vision," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 65.

[8] Ibid., 65-6.

[9] Vincent Katz, “Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art,” in Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, ed. Vincent Katz (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 25.

[10] Ibid., 25, 31.

[11] Ibid., 25.

[12] Ibid., 25, 31.

[13] The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation online, “An Introduction,” http://www.albersfoundation.org/Albers.php?inc=Introduction (accessed November 17, 2009).

[14] Marcia Yockey Manhart, "Charting a New Educaitonal Vision," Craft in the Machine Age: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft, 1920-1945, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995), 66.

[15] Vincent Katz, “Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art,” in Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, ed. Vincent Katz (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 24.

[16] The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation online, “An Introduction,” http://www.albersfoundation.org/Albers.php?inc=Introduction (accessed November 17, 2009).