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In 1963, Albers accompanied her husband to the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where she recalled, “I, as a useless wife, was hanging around, until June Wayne, head of the workshop, asked me to try lithography myself. I found that in this medium the image of threads could project a freedom I never suspected.” She returned the following year for four weeks as a full-fledged fellow and, taking advantage of the technical expertise of the workshop, applied her skills as a textile designer and her sensitivity to materials to launch her career as a printmaker. After 1970, she abandoned work with fabrics and made only prints, having realized “Prints gave me a greater freedom of presentation. The multiplication and exactness of the process of printmaking allow for broader exhibition and ownership of work. As a result, recognition comes more easily and happily, the longed-for pat on the shoulder.” [1]
Red Meander revisits, but does not replicate, a design that Albers had invented years before in linen and cotton, and also one with an ancient and extensive history. On a field of orange, a boldly red rectilinear pattern wanders across the picture plane at a carefully measured pace. In a paler hue, an abbreviation of the pattern is repeated slightly offset to the right. This second, lighter configuration appears to lie underneath its brighter counterpart, creating an optical effect. The asymmetrical composition lacks a focal point and presents several visual points of entry. In contrast to the textile version of Red Meander, 1954, collection of Ruth Agoos Villalovos, the screenprint has harder edges and more intense color, and lacks the porous and tactile qualities of the fabric. Albers also explored the design in a more square screenprint, Yellow Meander, collection of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, in which a brilliant yellow is juxtaposed with a faint gray.
The device of the meander is named for a river in Greece, which winds its way through the countryside. The pattern was used extensively by the Greeks in their geometric pottery and on archaic sculpture, and by pre-Columbian cultures in textiles and sculptural reliefs. In 1935, while based in North Carolina, the Alberses made their first of fourteen trips to Mexico and began a collection of pottery and textiles. Drawing meanders had been a requirement of the basic design course at Black Mountain College, and was a motif favored by Josef Albers for its formal properties and also for its fluctuating relationship of figure and ground. He explained: “the lines are active and the leftover part is just as active. The things done enclose the things not done. … I do one thing and I get another.” A student of his from Yale recalled his saying, “The rhythm of the great meander is beautiful … no beginning, no end, stable and at rest, vertical, horizontal, male, female. One of the great inventions of the human mind. … It is like the music of Bach.” [2] The meander is also a metaphor for the relationship of Anni and Josef Albers: similar in tastes, ideas, and aspirations, complementary, and interdependent.
Notes:
[1] Anni Albers, interview with Richard Polsky, January 11, 1985, Orange, CT, “American Craftspeople Project,” Oral Research Office, Columbia University, New York, transcript, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation archives, quoted in Nicholas Fox Weber and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, Anni Albers (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1999), 176.
[2] Josef Albers, “Fundamental Design of Today,” transcript of a five-day workshop for art teachers at the Museum of Modern Art, July 16–22, 1941, and John Frazer, interview with Frederick A. Horowitz, July 24, 1996, quoted in Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale (London and New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2006), 132–133.
ProvenanceTo 2009
Susan K. Carson, Winson-Salem, NC
From 2009
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Susan K. Carson on December 2, 2009.
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History2016-2018
Off the Wall: Postmodern Art at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/2016-6/11/2018)
2020
Question Everthing! Women of Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Ashville, NC (1/24/20-8/15/20)
2023
Black Mountain College: Seedbed of American Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (3/10/2023-6/25/2023)
Published References
DepartmentAmerican Art
Red Meander
Artist
Anni Albers
(1899 - 1994)
Date1969
Mediumserigraph
DimensionsFrame: 31 1/4 x 26 3/4 in. (79.4 x 67.9 cm)
Paper: 27 15/16 x 24 1/2 in. (71 x 62.2 cm)
Image: 20 x 16 1/2 in. (50.8 x 41.9 cm)
SignedAnni Albers 1969
Credit LineGift of Susan Carson in honor of Susan E. Moore
Copyright© 2021 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundations / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number2009.3.1
DescriptionWhile a student at the Bauhaus, there were few avenues for Anni Albers to pursue; women were discouraged from any pursuit that required heavy lifting. As a result, Albers not only studied weaving but conquered it, and became one of the most highly regarded textile artists of the twentieth century. Benefiting from the instruction of Paul Klee and from her marriage to Josef Albers, Anni Albers solved innumerable aesthetic and technical challenges.In 1963, Albers accompanied her husband to the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where she recalled, “I, as a useless wife, was hanging around, until June Wayne, head of the workshop, asked me to try lithography myself. I found that in this medium the image of threads could project a freedom I never suspected.” She returned the following year for four weeks as a full-fledged fellow and, taking advantage of the technical expertise of the workshop, applied her skills as a textile designer and her sensitivity to materials to launch her career as a printmaker. After 1970, she abandoned work with fabrics and made only prints, having realized “Prints gave me a greater freedom of presentation. The multiplication and exactness of the process of printmaking allow for broader exhibition and ownership of work. As a result, recognition comes more easily and happily, the longed-for pat on the shoulder.” [1]
Red Meander revisits, but does not replicate, a design that Albers had invented years before in linen and cotton, and also one with an ancient and extensive history. On a field of orange, a boldly red rectilinear pattern wanders across the picture plane at a carefully measured pace. In a paler hue, an abbreviation of the pattern is repeated slightly offset to the right. This second, lighter configuration appears to lie underneath its brighter counterpart, creating an optical effect. The asymmetrical composition lacks a focal point and presents several visual points of entry. In contrast to the textile version of Red Meander, 1954, collection of Ruth Agoos Villalovos, the screenprint has harder edges and more intense color, and lacks the porous and tactile qualities of the fabric. Albers also explored the design in a more square screenprint, Yellow Meander, collection of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, in which a brilliant yellow is juxtaposed with a faint gray.
The device of the meander is named for a river in Greece, which winds its way through the countryside. The pattern was used extensively by the Greeks in their geometric pottery and on archaic sculpture, and by pre-Columbian cultures in textiles and sculptural reliefs. In 1935, while based in North Carolina, the Alberses made their first of fourteen trips to Mexico and began a collection of pottery and textiles. Drawing meanders had been a requirement of the basic design course at Black Mountain College, and was a motif favored by Josef Albers for its formal properties and also for its fluctuating relationship of figure and ground. He explained: “the lines are active and the leftover part is just as active. The things done enclose the things not done. … I do one thing and I get another.” A student of his from Yale recalled his saying, “The rhythm of the great meander is beautiful … no beginning, no end, stable and at rest, vertical, horizontal, male, female. One of the great inventions of the human mind. … It is like the music of Bach.” [2] The meander is also a metaphor for the relationship of Anni and Josef Albers: similar in tastes, ideas, and aspirations, complementary, and interdependent.
Notes:
[1] Anni Albers, interview with Richard Polsky, January 11, 1985, Orange, CT, “American Craftspeople Project,” Oral Research Office, Columbia University, New York, transcript, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation archives, quoted in Nicholas Fox Weber and Pandora Tabatabai Asbaghi, Anni Albers (New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1999), 176.
[2] Josef Albers, “Fundamental Design of Today,” transcript of a five-day workshop for art teachers at the Museum of Modern Art, July 16–22, 1941, and John Frazer, interview with Frederick A. Horowitz, July 24, 1996, quoted in Frederick A. Horowitz and Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers: To Open Eyes: The Bauhaus, Black Mountain College and Yale (London and New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 2006), 132–133.
ProvenanceTo 2009
Susan K. Carson, Winson-Salem, NC
From 2009
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC, given by Susan K. Carson on December 2, 2009.
Notes:
[1] Deed of Gift, object file.
[2] See note 1.
Exhibition History2016-2018
Off the Wall: Postmodern Art at Reynolda
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (12/3/2016-6/11/2018)
2020
Question Everthing! Women of Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Ashville, NC (1/24/20-8/15/20)
2023
Black Mountain College: Seedbed of American Art
Reynolda House Museum of American Art (3/10/2023-6/25/2023)
Published References
Status
Not on view